I got up pretty early to head to the Pleasance to see “Take A Break Tales”. I liked it a lot. It’s very funny and has excellent performances across the board. Afterwards I was hungry and decided to make August 14th my Tempting Tattie day.
At least once during every Fringe I am a part of it has become a tradition to visit this fine baked potato shop which is down the hill and then up the hill from the Pleasance. I am not utterly convinced I have gone every single year (I know we frequented a different baked potato shop in 1987 on my first visit to the city, but may still have gone for a Tempting Tattie at some point), but certainly since I have been coming up as a non-student it is a place I have frequented every Festival. Early on I probably ate here at least three times a week, but now my visits have declined to one per year, but I feel it would be bad luck or bad form to not pop through their potato portal at some point (this is not a euphemism). Again in the early days I allowed variety in my potato toppings, but now I have become a creature of habit and must always have cheese (good Scottish orange Cheddar) and mango chutney. I go for the middle sized potato, which is fucking massive. God knows what kind of hungry glutton can eat a large one.
I suppose in a Festival that changes so readily it is good to have something that always stays the same (though I think the shop may have gone through a change of management in all this time). I particularly enjoy the fact that in all this time the shop has not addressed the fact that by dolloping the mango chutney on top of the cheese and then closing the polystyrene container lid, it always results in the chutney transferring itself from the cheese to the lid and you have to scrape it back with your plastic fork. Such dependability delights me.
To be honest in recent years the visit has become a bit of a chore. Though the potatoes are nice enough, I do not covet them as much as I once did. My tastes have changed and the thought of a gigantic potato covered in cheese and mango chutney makes me feel a bit sick. But you can not buck a tradition like this. And the potato was fine. It filled me up for the whole day (I actually forgot to have my dinner) and at least that is a box ticked for another year. At not point did it even strike me that I was eating a potato which is something I talk about for about 10 minutes in the show. Sometimes you forget.
The show tonight is up there with the very best performances I have given in this town. The room was amazingly practically full and the crowd was so up for it that it was almost unbelievable. It spurred me on and I got to the hour point with plenty of stuff still to do. Luckily there was no-one on after me again, so I told people they could leave if they had somewhere else to go, but IÂ’d be doing another 15 minutes if they wanted to stay. Nearly everyone remained in their seats, apart from the girls in the front row who I had been harassing, who had tickets to Priorite a Gauche. Even this led to some extra banter as they left and I realised two of them looked like twins and how an earlier realisation might have affected my comments during the threesome bit.. It was so great to do such a good show and to have so many people in that I was walking on air for the rest of the night. It totally made me forget how tired I was and I stayed up stupidly late again. I think this is shaping up to be my favourite Edinburgh ever.
