danieldwilliam (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
danieldwilliam) wrote2013-08-19 11:42 am
danieldwilliam) wrote2013-08-19 11:42 am
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On Recent Festival Activities
I have been Festivalling in with my family.
Some good, some bad, some middling experiences to report so far.
The Captain’s nursery is on the Royal Mile (1) and each evening when I have been picking him up he and I have spent a little time looking at the street performers and preview stages. I confess to not having been enthused by much I’ve seen so far. They say the population of Edinburgh doubles during the Festival, judging by the Royal Mile it’s true but this year half of the excess are handing out limp flyer to each other or singing slightly flat.
The Captain likes it and he seems to have clear views about the “singing and dancing” that he likes.
This weekend we engaged more pro-actively with the experience. MLW and I took the Captain to see a show on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday morning.
The Saturday afternoon show was built around the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. Four youngish ladies telling four of the Just So Stories with bits of puppetry and singing. The puppets looked good fun, all made out of bits and pieces. The singing was lovely. The story telling well done. A few grown up jokes slipped in were very funny. The venue was arranged with seats for the adults at the back and lots of bean bags and animal soft toys at the front for the kids. I grabbed myself a crocodile hand puppet.
The Sunday morning show was a medley of child friendly performers giving a taster of their shows, hosted by an Adelaidian MC with coffee and breakfast pastries for the audience. We had a Japanese comedy magician, a stand up, and an Irish parody dance due.
The magican was good fun. One half of Gamarjobat. I particularly liked his mime work with his case. He had quite a few of the kids up on stage, involving then in the tricks and teaching them how to palm a sponge ball or other tricks. This was particularly impressive as he was mute.
The stand up was okay. His routine about how kids don’t quite get the way jokes work was pretty good.
The final act was a parody dance duo, called Lords of Strut. A familiar trope of performers over stating their abililty, squabbling on stage and then turning out to be really, really good at what they are doing. The Les Dawson school of piano playing, but with break dancing. Really well done here. Excellent dancing. Good banter and characterisation. Very funny.
The MC was good value too.
The Captain was rapted and we could tell he’d enjoyed the show when later that afternoon we found him standing on the sofa with a plastic microphone telling the boys and girls, mums and dads that the show was about to start and that he would be making his bouncy ball disappear.
After the show we stayed out for lunch at George Square. I had biltong for the first time. It was surprisingly nice and provides a curious co-incidently link to the stand up we saw on Sunday evening. Whilst having lunch a nice person from the BBC came and told us they were doing a free wildlife based show in a few hours time and had lots of interesting creatures on display. Off we went and bumped into several of the Ladies and Babies from out NCT classes. The wildlife show was not great. Not much actual wildlife. A bit of a quiz about wildlife with four behind the scenes BBC wildlife persons with some limited audience participation. This was the fourth run through that morning of the quiz. The Captain his two friends weren’t engaged. One fell asleep. The Captain decided he would entertain himself by pulling her hair and pinching her (when awake she gives as good as she gets) but it’s a sign of boredom on his part that he wanted to irritate her. The normally really peaceful and delighted third youngster had a rare temper tantrum. It might have worked for kids aged 8 or so but to be honest, if you have a bunch of natural historians who work for one of the for one of the foremost natural history educators in the world in a room with a hundred 8 year olds I can think of better things to do than ask them to identify which species of fritallily butterfly was on screen.
We went home and played pirates for the afternoon.
That evening MLW and I went to see Marcus Brigstock do some stand up. He was very good. I’ve seen him a few times before. This routine was his not politcal stand up. Instead he was telling stories about his life, which include a period as a teenager with an eating disorder and, I think, some alcohol and substance abuse issues. The funny bits were very funny. (2) The serious bits done well. Most excellent.
Before the show MLW and I sat and had a drink on the Mound and watched the sunset over Edinburgh. Very beautiful.
After the show we found a pop up rum cocktail bar and had a drink before heading home.
So far so good.
Three good shows. One bad one but it was free. Three people having some kind of experience. Two rum cocktails. One sunset.
More next weekend.
(1) Those familiar with Edinburgh will know the street. For those that don’t the Royal Mile is the heart of Medieval Edinburgh. It’s a long, broad by medieval, narrow-ish by modern standards, cobbled quite steeply sloping street that runs from the Castle down to the Palace. During the Festival the part around the Captain’s nursery is pedestrianised during the day and acts as a venue for buskers, a place for about half a dozen small stage for previews of shows, mainly those involving music and the place to go to be given flyers for shows. There are also about 20 thousand people milling about, trying to give you a flyer, getting ready to perform, trying to give you a flyer, watching a performance, trying to give you a flyer, taking pictures, trying to give you a flyer, watching the shows or trying to give you a flyer.
(2) (Including the anecdote about a safari being stopped by a massive biltong related fart which struck a chord as I’d just had my first ever piece of biltong.
Some good, some bad, some middling experiences to report so far.
The Captain’s nursery is on the Royal Mile (1) and each evening when I have been picking him up he and I have spent a little time looking at the street performers and preview stages. I confess to not having been enthused by much I’ve seen so far. They say the population of Edinburgh doubles during the Festival, judging by the Royal Mile it’s true but this year half of the excess are handing out limp flyer to each other or singing slightly flat.
The Captain likes it and he seems to have clear views about the “singing and dancing” that he likes.
This weekend we engaged more pro-actively with the experience. MLW and I took the Captain to see a show on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday morning.
The Saturday afternoon show was built around the Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. Four youngish ladies telling four of the Just So Stories with bits of puppetry and singing. The puppets looked good fun, all made out of bits and pieces. The singing was lovely. The story telling well done. A few grown up jokes slipped in were very funny. The venue was arranged with seats for the adults at the back and lots of bean bags and animal soft toys at the front for the kids. I grabbed myself a crocodile hand puppet.
The Sunday morning show was a medley of child friendly performers giving a taster of their shows, hosted by an Adelaidian MC with coffee and breakfast pastries for the audience. We had a Japanese comedy magician, a stand up, and an Irish parody dance due.
The magican was good fun. One half of Gamarjobat. I particularly liked his mime work with his case. He had quite a few of the kids up on stage, involving then in the tricks and teaching them how to palm a sponge ball or other tricks. This was particularly impressive as he was mute.
The stand up was okay. His routine about how kids don’t quite get the way jokes work was pretty good.
The final act was a parody dance duo, called Lords of Strut. A familiar trope of performers over stating their abililty, squabbling on stage and then turning out to be really, really good at what they are doing. The Les Dawson school of piano playing, but with break dancing. Really well done here. Excellent dancing. Good banter and characterisation. Very funny.
The MC was good value too.
The Captain was rapted and we could tell he’d enjoyed the show when later that afternoon we found him standing on the sofa with a plastic microphone telling the boys and girls, mums and dads that the show was about to start and that he would be making his bouncy ball disappear.
After the show we stayed out for lunch at George Square. I had biltong for the first time. It was surprisingly nice and provides a curious co-incidently link to the stand up we saw on Sunday evening. Whilst having lunch a nice person from the BBC came and told us they were doing a free wildlife based show in a few hours time and had lots of interesting creatures on display. Off we went and bumped into several of the Ladies and Babies from out NCT classes. The wildlife show was not great. Not much actual wildlife. A bit of a quiz about wildlife with four behind the scenes BBC wildlife persons with some limited audience participation. This was the fourth run through that morning of the quiz. The Captain his two friends weren’t engaged. One fell asleep. The Captain decided he would entertain himself by pulling her hair and pinching her (when awake she gives as good as she gets) but it’s a sign of boredom on his part that he wanted to irritate her. The normally really peaceful and delighted third youngster had a rare temper tantrum. It might have worked for kids aged 8 or so but to be honest, if you have a bunch of natural historians who work for one of the for one of the foremost natural history educators in the world in a room with a hundred 8 year olds I can think of better things to do than ask them to identify which species of fritallily butterfly was on screen.
We went home and played pirates for the afternoon.
That evening MLW and I went to see Marcus Brigstock do some stand up. He was very good. I’ve seen him a few times before. This routine was his not politcal stand up. Instead he was telling stories about his life, which include a period as a teenager with an eating disorder and, I think, some alcohol and substance abuse issues. The funny bits were very funny. (2) The serious bits done well. Most excellent.
Before the show MLW and I sat and had a drink on the Mound and watched the sunset over Edinburgh. Very beautiful.
After the show we found a pop up rum cocktail bar and had a drink before heading home.
So far so good.
Three good shows. One bad one but it was free. Three people having some kind of experience. Two rum cocktails. One sunset.
More next weekend.
(1) Those familiar with Edinburgh will know the street. For those that don’t the Royal Mile is the heart of Medieval Edinburgh. It’s a long, broad by medieval, narrow-ish by modern standards, cobbled quite steeply sloping street that runs from the Castle down to the Palace. During the Festival the part around the Captain’s nursery is pedestrianised during the day and acts as a venue for buskers, a place for about half a dozen small stage for previews of shows, mainly those involving music and the place to go to be given flyers for shows. There are also about 20 thousand people milling about, trying to give you a flyer, getting ready to perform, trying to give you a flyer, watching a performance, trying to give you a flyer, taking pictures, trying to give you a flyer, watching the shows or trying to give you a flyer.
(2) (Including the anecdote about a safari being stopped by a massive biltong related fart which struck a chord as I’d just had my first ever piece of biltong.
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I saw that Marcus Brigstock show in preview, and really enjoyed it. I might try to get to his ranty show too, before the end of the fest.
Further recs? Rich Hall, either his stand up show or the Hodown, Tubular Bells done by two (very) energetic Aussies, and Sandi Toksvig. Yes, I had a very Radio 4 Festival (I also really like the BBC's Potter Row "village", and would have happily moved in there for the duration if I lived in our capital).
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I like Rich Hall’s stuff when he’s on TV. I’m not sure I’ve ever listened to Tubular Bells all the way through. Might be one for Spotify this evening.
I’m not sure how much we’ll get out to see. MLW is away singing for the last week of August and working quite a lot this week with a few over night trips.
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I remember liking Tubular Bells when I was younger, and went along to the performance on a whim, more or less, and loved it. I then made the mistake of going back and listening to the original, which I love a lot less now :)
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Your relies and dad must have been kicking about at the same time. Although, dad was working on gas production stuff further out and it sounds like MB was on a drilling rig.
What had changed with Tubular Bells.
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I think my taste had changed - plus, as a kid, I was listening to a dodgy cassette copy taped off Radio 1, which was also live. The "definitive" version I downloaded seemed sterile in comparison.
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I spend quite a lot of time moving up and down the Royal Mile but that’s due to working at one end of it and having nursery about two thirds of the way up.
If I wasn’t dropping the Captain off or picking him up I could avoid the Royal Mile entirely and walk to and from work through Holyrood Park. In fact I’d avoid pretty much the whole Festival if I picked my route.
Were I still working on George Street I’d only cross the Royal Mile once in each direction. Or course George Street has been drawn into the Festival café society in recent years.