Even out of Fringe time driving into Edinburgh gives me butterflies in my stomach. I am conditioned to believe that I am at the start of a big adventure, with a new show that might succeed or fail. So even though consciously I knew I was here to perform a tried and tested piece, my stomach moths were too thick to realise this and started fluttering around all excited (and yet dulled somewhat by the preconditioning that arrival in Edinburgh also means four weeks of debauchery are about to start).
A few years ago being in Edinburgh made me feel queasy and sad a lot of the time. I had so many memories of various failures (romantic and otherwise), as well as the various maulings from press and public (and the occasional actual fight) and sometimes couldn't shake the pessimism and the painful reminiscences. But now I just out and out love it. I like the fact that almost every corner has some incident or person attached to it. I love the fact that the city can promise both success and failure. I have (I think) conquered the demons that used to make me feel like throwing myself off bridges in despair or at least give up my stupid job and do something useful.
I have come a long way in the last four or five years. Edinburgh now just makes me smile. In or out of Fringe time. It is a second home to me and I have been here man and boy and I love the fact that I can not escape the stinking shadow of my younger thinner (and occasionally fatter), stupider, more self-obsessed self. Or more pessimistic self maybe. I am still pretty much up my own arse.
I was staying at possibly the poshest hotel I have ever been in, with the biggest, most comfortable bed I have ever been in. I was tired enough to want to sleep through the afternoon, but had regretted that a bit yesterday, so stayed up and went down the shops.
The hotel had an honesty bar, where you had to write down in a book what you had drunk, but you helped yourself. They obviously weren't used to having someone like me staying in such a place. They were lucky they didn't find me in a heap, surrounded by empty bottles, spewing my guts out and claiming I had just drunk one bottle of tonic water. And if it's a honesty bar, how honest of them is it to be selling a half bottle of wine for £12.50? Especially when they weren't even paying anyone to serve you.
Anyway the people at this hotel are idiots. If we have learned anything in the last few months it is that rich people are the most likely to steal stuff and the least likely to have to face up to their crimes.
The gig at the Stand went fine, though I was exhausted during the interval and immediately afterwards. My argument with myself took on almost genuinely schizophrenic proportions when I for some reason claimed I was a comedian wielding a "needle of satire" - an image that genuinely amused the alter-ego version of myself in the conversation, who then started taking the piss out of me and asking what kind of needle it was. I had been thinking of a knitting needle, and it was only under questioning from him (me) that I realised that a sewing needle was probably a better weapon for pricking pomposity. I had reached a point where I didn't seem to know what the other version of me was thinking and where one side of me was genuinely ridiculing the other. It might be a good thing when the tour is over.
I suggested a few places off the top of my head where the Edinburgh folk could deposit their stick-on toothbrush moustaches, before then realising the ideal target was Greyfriar's Bobby. And indeed one Gwilym James managed not only to achieve this, but was clever enough to use one of the white moustaches. I felt that my life had been worthwhile once I saw this picture.
I went and sat on my expansive balcony and drank some champagne (that like the non-posh fool that I turned out to be I had actually signed for). The malty smell from the brewery hung heavily and pungently in the air (unless this was just the beery farts of a thousand drunks and tramps that had gathered in the gully outside my room).
Strange as it was to be experiencing such luxury on my own, it was pleasant and civilised and I was very glad that I had made the decision to stay at good hotels on this tour.
And that bed was brilliant. I slept like a corpse being guarded by a tiny Hitlerian Scotch scotty dog.
