No Place Like Home

I want to advance my position. I cannot stay a temp forever. I make my crash landing back to the nine to five, so adjust your watches Edinburgh. A black coffee here reminds me of the last one I take in the sun on Hunter Square with bagpipes in the air.

I wake up to the real world. I feel sick I am no longer within a seagull’s cry of the Royal Mile. I watch the final tweets regarding spaces forming on poster sites fly down my computer screen, sorted by the Edinburgh Fringe tag. The airport bus driver said this would happen, that memories would become selective and the rubbish bits of the Fringe would fall off. I have to pinch myself to remember the times I feel lonely, overwhelmed and frozen for the reviews make my year.

I click together my plain red office shoes to hurl myself forwards towards a lunch break. It becomes a Greek tragedy as I sit on a swivel chair recounting things I could do differently. I decide subtlety in advertising is overrated; perhaps I should have tweeted more and definitely I would like to have performed for the entire month. A third of my show tickets are sold at face value and I find a spare box of flyers stuffed under my bed. There is a moral there.

Habits I pick up include hand washing and drying clothes in thirty minutes flat with a towel and a bar of soap. I learn you can do anything you want to. It may take a bucket of tears and sweat but then no one is afraid of water on the Royal Mile. On the boards of my beloved 6 by 4 metre stage, I develop a stronger understanding of what makes dramatic structure work. After performing 18 solo shows consecutively to very mixed audiences, it is magical to feel what the process of acting can lift up and out of a script. Everything is possible if a crowd is willing. You can surf a car door if you have to!

Now I am safely out of the whirlwind that is captured by the Mound’s Playfair Steps, a slow pace of life of paper clips and filing cabinets surrounds me and is a tough one to adjust to. I photocopy my face a few times to make joke flyers and I pray I can do this all again soon for real. Writing the blog has been a total joy and as I file the final one I am grateful for being given the time of my life. Then a thought cracks open inside my brain. There is a festival down under that performers have spoken of. I need to figure out how to get to Oz. My red court shoes start gleaming for at home under the bed I have plenty of spare flyers. Until I board that Qantas to Sydney though, there is no place like home.