I woke up absurdly late... Well: 9am; Got dressed; Cleaned the foot powder from my shoes that I must have drunkenly and liberally scattered all over the place before going to bed last night; and set of into the warm morning drizzle.
"Ocean Terminal" seemed appealing. It was apparently where the Royal yacht Britannia was currently berthed. I'm not an especially huge fan of the monarchy, really, but maybe this glorious testament to British engineering and luxury travel would change my mind! Or at least it would be something to look at. So I hopped on a likely looking bus and went. To be fair the yacht was quite interesting, although I wasn't sure if I should have been doing something so unashamedly touristy during a famous cultural festival.
Still... Only a single bed, eh Liz?
After the audio tour I decided to celebrate and have steak for breakfast at Frankie and Benny's. Despite being delicious and awesome, this luxury made me later getting back into town than I would have liked. I just about arrived in time for the "Two o'clock show", which comprised of 3 pretty good stand ups and a compère. If my memory serves that was on at about 2 o'clock. Afterwards we decided to make our way across town to see Stewart Lee.
There was time to kill before that so we chose a nearby show at random: "Shane Brown: generation y and the doomsday whistle" which was a decent stand up set, although it was underneath a restaurant so buying 2 pints meant I had to sell a kidney in order to recoup my losses. We then made our way to be punctual at "The Stand". We quickly learned that he wasn't on there, so rushed to the right place to be marginally late. We nearly didn't have enough time to get beers, which would have been highly upsetting.
Stewart Lee was one of the few shows we were seeing that were part of the "normal" Edinburgh fringe. Ostensibly this meant it would cost more than voluntary donations, and be somewhere proper - rather than a crusty pub cellar. This place turned out to be the new "Assembly Rooms", which was a huge and impressively grand venue. A point Stewart Lee pounced on to explain a problem with the demographic this made his audience. It occurred to me I might even be a little under-dressed here, clad as I was in jeans and hiking shoes. But then I had steak for breakfast so screw them.
After this the rest of the day was spent at various free shows. Unfortunately the details about some of them has become a little obscured by time and inebriation. One I do remember well was an entirely heart warming tale about a man's love of film, and the films he and his father would watch. I do remember it well, although I forget what it was called.
Another was "PBH and some comedians XVI". This was advertised as "now being in it's 16th year so you can legally shag it". There were a number of acts from other fringe shows, and they did not disappoint despite their condensed sets. Afterward we bumped into the compère of the show: Peter Buckley Hill. He is the founder of one branch of the free fringe so talked to him about that a little bit, before staggering off to bed.
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