The Edinburgh Festival – millions of people and thousands of shows. The streets are crowded with buskers, acrobats, fire-eaters and thousands of people like us – trying to find their way around. Everywhere are posters for shows – all very enticing and all involving much mathematical and geographical calculation to ensure we can skip from one event to the other.
Day 3
The sun is shining and we wander down to the Scottish parliament. We are whisked through security (C Swiss Army knife will be returned when we leave) and we step inside. It is a modern building – the first debate between members took place in 2004 – and there are many pleasing curves in pale wood. Downstairs in the lobby there is a World Press Photo exhibition – photographs taken in 2018.
For lunch we have a rather awful sandwich at Patisserie Valerie (I thought they’d closed) and then move down North Bridge to the Hilton Hotel, where, surprisingly, we shall spend the afternoon. We have tickets for three shows.
We walk upstairs and wait in the light comfortable bar and then we’re called in to see Walls and Bridges
It is a play about students in 1953 East Berlin, performed, I think, by students. The poster is great, Two or three of the actors are excellent, but the play lacks any real political insight above the usual stereotypes of life in East Germany – the ardent communist who speaks rather woodenly and the young free thinkers anxious to break out of their narrow lives. It is a bit depressing.
We therefore decide to give the next play a miss. We had booked it not knowing it was the same group. Then we read some of the reviews and see it may have more to it than we realised, but it is too late, which is a shame. However, the Hilton Hotel is a very comfortable place to wait for our next show, so we find an empty sofa and have a whisky – Jura.
A woman advertising another show – In Pursuet – wanders through the bar with a life size cardboard cut-out of Sue Perkins. The woman herself looks a little like Sue Perkins, but it is not her. In a corner someone is doing face painting. Is it for a show? Or is it just Art?
Our next show is Sherlock Holmes and the conundrum of Arthur Conan Doyle.
We are at the funeral of Conan Doyle, his second wife is here and who should turn up but Sherlock Holmes. There is community singing. This is difficult at a real funeral, let alone in a small dark room with 20 strangers. It is a confusing 40 minutes. I am not even sure what the conundrum is. I am pleased that I have actually heard the Radio 4 programme Great Lives talking about Conan Doyle – Gyles Brandreth was very knowledgeable and funny.
It is bucketing down! The new fab walking shoes are not wet-weather proof.
We make our way to the Surgeon’s Hall to see Dr Phil Hammond talking about the NHS and health generally. He is very good, charming, amusing, with thoughtful easy politics, which is very welcome. There hasn’t been much political content in the shows we’ve seen.
Day 4
Today we are wearing the plastic macs we bought specially for the Fringe and brought to Edinburgh so carefully and neatly and which we left in the room yesterday when we went out in the pouring rain. It is still pouring. We sit damply in a cafe and have a Scottish breakfast.
Friend Gill is heading down from Dundee to have lunch with us at David Bann, a very nice vegetarian restaurant.
We meet Gill at Waverley Station and walk to St Mary’s Street. They don’t take bookings during the Festival, but we are very early and there is space. The restaurant meets with Gill’s approval. There is tofu, cooked in a way that even I like it. All is beautifully presented, the staff are friendly and the coffee is good.
Then we dash to the National Museum of Scotland, where there are many obscure and interesting things to see.
At 3 o’clock those toes are feeling very tired – but happy – and we board our train back to London. And then begins another adventure, as the great power cut hits. Our night in Retford.
Sunset over Retford