Yesterday was a long day mixed with high and lows. It began with me waking up at 5am well I say waking up, I hadn't really been a sleep, I spent the night awake with a mixture of excitement, fear and dread. The Fringe is something I've wanted to do since I was 16, every since then I've been promising myself that next year I'll take up a show and the moment had finally arrived. I briefly slept and had a weird dream where Jeremy Paxman and Chris Morris teamed up and went on a road trip to bring peace to the Middle East. My brother drove me to Crewe and after 3 attempts at trying to use a lift and very awkward attempt at buying coffee, I was on a train heading north of the boarder. I arrived in Edinburgh on time and with minimal difficultly with the lift. I jumped in a taxi along the way I saw a city covered in posters and then a group of school children walking down the street wearing bright yellow Stars of David, I presume they were on their way to do a show about the Nazi either that or the Scottish Nationalist Party wasn't what I thought it was. I met Gary and Hayley for breakfast in the purple pig cafe. I had the big breakfast, the waitress said they were out of potato scones but I could substitute with another sausage, I said "perfect" (I hadn't even noticed that the breakfast came with a potato scone.)
We then headed over to see our first show of the day. Big Wow the art of falling down. It's a fast pace piece of comedy theatre, with the two actors playing several characters as we follow one character as his life appears to fall apart filled with bizarre characters and absurd situations. The show was great, strong characters, good gags, it had something to say and was surprising uplifting.
Joe arrived and we headed over to our accommodation which proved to be more complicated than it needed to be. We got into the flat later than planned, but these are possibly the nicest student halls I've ever been in (seriously the broom cupboard alone is bigger than my room from first year halls). We unpacked our bags and began to rehearse the sketch at the start of the show and then headed over to flyer for it. We didn't spend as much time as I would have liked flyering but we got a fairly decent crowd.
I opened tonight, my set was OK , but my pace and rhythm were slightly off and I flustered a few strong gags, I had spent the day worrying about the sketch and flyering and hadn't put anytime into go through my set. Joe and Gary both went down well. Afterwards I stayed for drinks with two friends who had come to see me. I didn't know they were at the fringe and it was really nice to see friendly faces at my first gig here.
The night ended with me and Gary in Brew Dog when my phone buzzed with a Guardian update told us Robin Williams had died, suspected suicide, I'm not a huge fan of his work, but I like the fact that as a comedian he always approached stuff with warmth and heart and that tends to be rare in comedy and helped Good Will Hunting get made. It was a sober way to end what had been quite frankly an exhausting day.
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