I have been walking around with a big smile on my face. I am so looking forward to this year like never before. In five days doubtless I will be contemplating suicide as usual, but for the moment I am properly in love with the Edinburgh Fringe 2006. Even though there are some gaps in my show I am not worried at all. Usually I spend these few days fretting, but I have been relaxed and happy. Hopefully not too relaxed. Maybe having to work on my Channel 4 script has distracted me, but I don't think it's that. Doubtless it is partly delusion, but I somehow feel like I have got somewhere new with my performing. It feels like my moment. I am anxious to get out there and do it (it was weird in the flat tonight because everyone else had just done their first show, but the Underbelly starts a day later- and finishes a day earlier. Ha!). As I sat in my venue, waiting for my tech to start, I was listening to my iPod and thinking these things and the song "Blackbird" came on. "You were only waiting for your moment to arise" Paul McCartney told me. A tear came to my eye. Why Paul should be offering me encouragement after the slightly dodgy remarks I make about him in my show I don't know. I hope it all goes well.
The Oxford Revue were teching before me. I said hello to one of the young men and told him I was Richard and when he told me what show he was involved in I told him I had heard of this company. I don't know if he knew that I had been in the Oxford Revue in 1988 - I don't think he did. But I made myself feel old and realised how detached I must have seemed to him even if he knew of my connection as I realised this would have been the equivalent of me meeting someone from the Oxford Revue 1970 in the year I was doing it. Which would have seemed like an age ago. I can't find out who was in the Revue that year (from a cursory look through google). I wonder who it would have been. I think I might have acted more impressed!
My tech was very easy indeed. They had two hours pencilled in for me, but I was done in half an hour. This is why stand-up rocks.
It should be clear that I am in an emotionally heightened state by now and that any small disappointment will send this delirium crashing down into despair.
My madness is making itself apparent in the way that I am misreading signs and things as I walk around the town in a hallucinatory daze. I passed a sign that I thought said "Rosemary's B&B" which I thought was an excellent name for a guesthouse as a kind of pun on the film "Rosemary's Baby". Then I looked again and realised it said "Ramsay's B&B". I was making up my own jokes. Later I saw a newspaper billboard that I thought said "Giant Glossy Squid Poster", but on a second viewing I was disappointed to realise that the word was "Squad" not "Squid". My hand had already been in my pocket to purchase the paper. I'd love a glossy squid poster. Only a glossy one.
Earlier I had been for a swim. The changing rooms were not partially accessible. The church opposite the gym had a banner proclaiming the advice "Act Justly.... Love Tenderly...Walk Humbly."
I agree with the first two, but felt the third comment might have just been added at the last minute to fill up a gap on the banner. How does one walk humbly? And would it be possible to go everywhere with a humble walk or would you just look like an idiot? Surely it would slow you down. I imagine you would have to walk slowly, maybe looking at the ground, which would be a daft way to get around, but I may be wrong. I think they need to at least have a picture of how one might walk humbly, because the other two things are easy to envisage, whilst the humble walking is a bit of a leap for the imagination. I could see how to act humbly, but not how to perambulate. Do you have to show deference to everyone you pass? In a way wouldn't forcing yourself into such a mannered way of walking be drawing attention to yourself and actually thus be quite a vain way to behave. "Oooh, look at me everyone, look how humbly I am walking!"
"Stop walking humbly. Walk normally. It's embarrassing."
"No... no. I am going to walk even more humbly now. The church told me to. I have to walk humbly, even though that makes little sense."
"I think they just meant you should live your life humbly, not go to all this effort to try and interpret the act of being humble through movement, like a slow and elaborate dance."
"No, if they meant that they would have said that. They said, 'Walk Humbly' and so I will do that. I have to be the best at walking humbly in the world."
"Why don't you go down by the docks and walk humbly down there and see how all the hard drunk Scotch men like it."
"No, no, I'll stay up here near the Fringe and walk humbly, because then I will blend in with all the other young idiots walking around in costumes and singing in close harmony and talking in loud, posh English voices and generally being dicks. They'll definitely get beaten up before a man walking humbly"
"You were a dick like them back in 1988."
"I know, but now I am not. I have learned to walk humbly since then. At least I think I have. It's hard to know how to suggest humbleness in a step."
"You are the most arrogant humble walker I have ever seen."
"As long as my walk is humble nothing else matters."
And so on.
Better get ready for my show now. Just another reminder that as the edfringe website has sold all its tickets for the cheap shows that you can still get them by ringing Call 0870 745 3083. Still quite a few left for Thursday and Friday, but Sunday is approaching sell-out, so book for that now or come along tomorrow or the next day if you want to get cheap tickets. It would be lovely to have as many people in as possible for these early shows to keep my confidence up, so take advantage of these cheap offers. Although there might be moments of the ramshackle I don't think the quality of the show will be much less than later in the run. And I am trying to keep the ramshackle in this year. Which is why I am going to try and bridge the gaps through adlibbing rather than writing it. Oooh, it's exciting. Spread the word to all your friends please.
Oooh and the programmes are finally ready. I was reading one tonight and it's looking good. I will get them sent out to the sponsors just as soon as I get a spare couple of days to organise it. Any extra prizes will follow at a later date. Thanks so much again to all those of you who contributed to this fund. Bye!
