What would Alison Goldie do?

If the editor of Whatsonstage.com had realised what my Edinburgh experience would be like, they might not have picked me to write this blog. Somewhere out there in the rain-sparkly streets there is an actress about half my age, wearing a fairy costume by day, bumping into celebrities that she’s slept with the night before, taking in shows like I take in cups of tea and experiencing The Fringe like a giant orgasm. She should be writing this blog. But then, she wouldn’t have the time…

Here I am again, dear reader (Joe, my tattooist friend, that means you), sitting in bed trying to conjure some words out of my gentle Edinburgh life…

Actually, what I really want to write is pure poison. For example, I’d  like to slag off a rubbish show that I saw yesterday, one that inexplicably has had good reviews. It was so safe, so cosy, so tediously prosaic, I wanted to run out of the theatre and into a pub after about 5 minutes, but I’d sat in the front row so I had to keep a fixed smile on my face so that the actor wouldn’t be put off by this hatchet-faced broad sitting two feet from her (I am too kind). It was not the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but it was so far from being of-the-zeitgeist that I felt I’d been transported back to the Fringe of the 1950s when it might have passed muster. But I can’t slag off that show properly because I don’t want to diss another person doing a one-person show (can you see the tact here? Not even mentioning the gender…) And it doesn’t feel that this blog is meant to be here for poisonous rantings.

Having said that, there are other people I’d like to eviscerate, not for their poor shows, but for their lack of actorly solidarity. Far from being ‘Fringe-Friends’ which fellow-bloggers on this site have lauded, I have met some mean poster-covering peers on the streets who laugh at my indignation as they paste screes of their own posters over just one of mine that I’ve carefully placed only seconds before. Then there’s other characters in my venue, some recognisable, some just shadowy saboteurs, who leave the stage in a festering mess, hide the broom, steal my make-up and look at me like I’m a totally unreasonable old bat if I so much as squeak a hint of displeasure. I know, I know, I sound like a freakin’ diva. But the excuse ‘This is the Fringe…put up with it’ makes me feel superannuated and fussy and wonder how much appetite I have for all the squalor and mean spiritedness.

There’s always Joe. Since he stumbled across my blog by accident whilst looking for a fetish site (google Lady in Bed, my show-name and you’ll get weird stuff) he’s been to see the show, found it ‘rocking’, bought me a cider in a goth-pub, and is now offering to take me out to dinner. He’s a lovely (ink-covered, undernourished) chap, aren’t you, Joe? I might go because I’m trying to puzzle out how he inserted those giant saucers into his ear-lobes, and frankly, I haven’t had a better offer. (Joe, mate, don’t be hurt by this: it’s just an effort at humour – I think you too are rocking).

Short blog today as I am off to guest in the show ‘Wolf’ where I have to play a tiny role, but which involves shooting a gun. Exciting! Maybe pointing that thing and ‘firing’ it will help me to unleash some grief. After which, I will be calm and serene and ready to be more poised than Helen Mirren when I perform my own play this afternoon. One lives in hope….