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Another fire alarm at the Pleasance, luckily for me this time, just after I’d signed my final programme after my show had ended. So I didn’t lose the last five minutes or the collection for Scope. It was more or less at the exact same time as the last one (but my show had gone up nearly on time today) so I was fairly confident it was caused by the same thing that had caused the last false alarm, so like a man trusting the boy who cried wolf is a fucking idiot, I went to the dressing room to get my stuff. So I could go home. And not stand in the street in my T-shirt getting cold for 30 minutes.
Luckily I did not burn to death.
The show had been a good one. A healthy score of 200 people in (which is the number beforehand that I had accepted would be a fine result) and though I lost my way a little bit near the start, I managed to find the ant trail back to the script and had some fun.
I was tired after a day trip to Dundee to perform a 20 minute set at a festival. I think had I had to make the decision as to whether I would take this gig whilst I was up here I would have turned it down. But pre-Fringe and worried about losing money and not considering that this would mean a seven hour jaunt out of town I had accepted. It was actually a really nice gig, even if I was up against the racket of the band on the main stage and I shared a minibus there with some nice comedians that I don’t know too well, but enjoyed talking to (although two of them had been out drinking until 6am, had glitter on their faces in a way that, to me, suggested they had snogged each other’s faces off, and promptly fell asleep.
I had had a bit of a sleep in and was feeling OK, though I did discuss the possibility of pretending to my wife that the gig had gone so well that I’d been booked up for every day of the Fringe, so that I too could sleep in a minibus for the afternoon. I would then have to tell her that the company that had put on the gigs had got bust so we hadn’t been paid. But it was a flawless plan.
To be honest, I was more annoyed that I had had a day taken away from me that could have been spent with my family. It was a nice gig, but one that I didn’t actually need to do.
Meanwhile the outside world, that is sometimes possible to forget about during the Fringe (but not so much this year), is like a match held up to a bonfire. Every bad step that gets taken I hope that people will see through their idiocy and stop this whole thing in its tracks. But nothing seems to stop it. No Republican senator seems to be worried about being the equivalent of one of those weak and arrogant German politicians who underestimated a comical, but populist candidate, wrongly thinking they could use them for their own ends. Maybe they don’t worry about it because so few people actually remember those guys names (though I used to know them). Will they stop and stand up for what’s right, rather than think about their own self-interest? I don’t think so. So their place in history is assured as the blokes who let it happen, but who you have to look up the names of. Looks like we might have to let this thing play out again, in spite of having been here before and even though even the real Nazis would be embarrassed by this shit-shower of Nazis.
And what a world where even actual defeat in war can’t allow the Confederates or the Nazis to get over it. Even Remainers have largely capitulated to their narrow, non-war defeat of a year ago (incorrectly of course). I think we’re screwed.
Of course we’ve been screwed in the past and still come out of it. But we tend to forget all those who didn’t come out of it.
Good luck everyone. How do you think ISIS are feeling about all this? Americans using their tactics against other Americans. Seemingly because they are against ISIS. But doing their job for them.
It’s little Donkin Herring that I feel sorry for. Not even born yet and yet about to be born into all this.
