Blog: The Final Furlong

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Friday morning began with a choice. On the one hand, I was taking part in the biggest arts festival in europe with literally hundreds of performances to choose from and all I had to do was leave the house to find them. On the other hand, the Horror Channel were showing Tom Baker's last two episodes of Doctor Who, and it *does* feature Tegan, who we mention quite a bit in Hey Hey 16K.

It was thus quite late in the afternoon when I eventually strode out into daylight and stomped once more to our venue, where I found Steve stood outside talking to what would turn out to be all three of our audience! It's been really weird this time how much audience levels have fluctuated, but I must admit I quite enjoy playing to small crowds (it is, after all, mostly what I'm used to), especially when they're as nice as this particular trio were.

After a post-show pint I scuttled home again to drop off gear before returning to meet Steve and Ms A King in The Blue Blazer - how had it taken me over TWO WEEKS to make it to the Blue Blazer?!? Here we were joined for more PINTS by Mr F Wadsworth and a FINE old time was had by all until Steve and I decided to decamp for our traditional Indie Disco trip. This time we bestowed our DANCING SKILLZ on Citrus which was EXACTLY what an indie night should be: a sticky black box containing music and beer! We DARNCED and had some BEER but by 2am I felt SATED, and left Mr Hewitt to his BOOGYING.

Saturday got off to quite a SLOW start, possibly due to the antics of the night before, but once we were both mostly mobile Steve and I spent a jolly hour or so buzzing round the flat TIDYING things. The main part of this was putting TONNES of flyers that we'd collected over the preceeding fortnight in a bag with the TONNES of flyers we'd still got left for OUR show and then lugging the LOT down to the recycling place. It is a Fringe Tradition!

By the time we'd done all that it was nearly show time, so we mooched into town to be faced with our biggest audience yet, PACKED with friendly faces. It was GRATE fun, even if we DID have to stop a couple of times to ask a bunch of old regulars stood at the bar to keep their voices down, but it was a LOVELY way to finish the run. Afterwards we went to Bannermans with said array of chums for a MARVELOUS couple of hours of CHAT and LARFS before heading over to Summerhall, where we had our final pair of tickets booked .

It was TIPPING it down with rain as we strode over, and we considered ourselves VERY lucky that the weather had held out this long - it's been the sunniest Fringe I've ever been to, I reckon. Some years it's LOBBED it down with water every day, but this time I almost got sunburnt! We dashed through the precipitation to see Josie Long and Grace Petrie do their "Alternative Reality Tour" show in a Big Yurt, and it was ACE. We were sat behind Owen Jones AND Mark Steel, it was like being at the centre of THE COUNTER CULTURE!

HUGS and back to the flat and then, all too few hours later, we were getting up EARLY to get our taxi to the station and HOME. The journey back was one of TWO parts - the first HORRIBLE as the air conditioning was broken and the carriage was HOT and STINKY, the second DELIGHTFUL as we moved to another, cool and fragrant, one.

Then suddenly we were back in London and it was DONE! We hugged our goodbyes and went home again, with (I think) a very succesful Fringe behind us. I'll leave the full analyses until after this weekend's shows in Camden but I think, overall, it's been the best one we've done, certainly in terms of audience and definitely in terms of everyone understanding the plot - unlike every other year, NOBODY has asked me to explain it this time!

posted 25/8/2015 by MJ Hibbett

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