Day two – more flyering. LOADS more flyering. Got rid of more flyers in one day than any human being has ever got rid of in a day. It’s official. No, really. The flyer situation in central edinburgh during the festival is mad. I’m sure I saw a dead child under a pile of flyers, overcome by the weight having got carried away trying to collect one of each. Many flyerers try to flyer eachother, which just means you end up confused as to which pockets contain your own flyers, and which contain someone else’s, and end up giving out the wrong flyers. It’s nuts.
The stunts people pull to give out flyers, ranging from dressing as the Elephant Man to singing songs from the show to, allegedly, a couple of blokes flyering butt naked one year and being arrested! But I shan’t be copulating with any farm animals on the Royal Mile just to pull a crowd – for me, a smile, a furry coat and a picture of the bloke doing the flyering on the flyer seems to work. And last night it got a few people in. It was always going to be the smallest of the gigs, given that a) the fest proper hasn’t started, and b) tonight and tomorrow are 2 for 1 ticket nights, so no-one who’s here for longer is going to pay double to see the show last night. Still, there were about 11 people in, who were all well into it, very friendly, and the audience sampling thing went marvellously well again.
The one problem I had was that the previous shows were running 25 minutes late, and I didn’t realise til I went on that I had no idea what time I should finish, and ended up stopping a few minutes short of my time. I’m hoping no-one felt short changed (if you were there and you did, come and find me and we’ll sort out another ticket for you to see the show). As it was, I played well again.
My shoulders and legs are now getting very tired from all the walking and carrying big bags of flyers. My legs were particularly exhausted last night as some dickhead had spilt beer on my rack backstage and not cleaned it up, so I got it all over my fingers five minutes before I was to go on, which meant running up four flights of stairs to wash my hands and back down again. Not what I needed after 10 hours on my feet.
Tonight has got the biggest presales of the run, so I’m hoping for a big audience – it’s the official opening to the fringe, and I’m playing at the Fringe party too, so it should be lots of fun, and a bit of a rush to get everything sorted (I needed to steal bits out of my rack to be able to use them for that gig, and will have to return them to the rack before my show tonight, in the same five minutes where I’m setting up my rig from scratch.. I kid you not…)
So I’ll no doubt let you know how it goes.