Friday 27th August

Today I'm off to Edinburgh as the result of an impulsive and probably financially unwise decision to travel north to catch the last weekend of the Fringe (and, peripherally, to visit my younger brother who lives and works in the city and kindly agreed to put me up for a few nights, as well as hopefully coming to see a few shows with me). The train is at 11am, so after saying goodbye to K as she heads off to work I get the tube to Kings Cross and hang around a bit before scuttling through the predictably busy station towards my thankfully booked seat. I say mine – I actually sneakily take the window seat next to mine in order to be next to the plug socket should my phone or laptop need any extra juice. The young woman whose seat it is inevitably turns up a minute later, at which point I politely ask if I can stay in the seat for the aforementioned mobile electricity reasons. She says that she really likes the window seat, but that I can have it if I want. Feeling bad, I then offer the seat back to her – but impenetrable British politeness stops her or I from budging and eventually she sits down and proceeds to play Solitaire on her iPod for the entire journey, rather than gazing out of the window as she probably would have been had I not been so inadvertently selfish.

I pass the four-and-a-half hour journey by catching up with a week of blog posts, listening to music and eating the packed lunch K had, rather wonderfully, made for me to take on the train. My headphones keep me cocooned from my fellow travellers in the packed carriage – though a loud group of theatre types sitting at the table in front of me insist on talking loudly about how incredible everything they like is, dominated by the alpha-intellectual male who has no shame about raising his voice to have his opinions be heard. It reminds me of the scene in Annie Hall when Alvy and Annie are waiting in the queue for the cinema while a loud man “pontificates” about the work Marshall McLuhan. I do this too, sometimes, I suppose – but at least I have the courtesy to keep my voice to myself and the person I am boring.

The journey passes without further incident and we pull into Waverly station at around 3.30. Edinburgh is my favourite city to arrive in by train, as you can walk up the ramp towards Princes Street Gardens and find yourself right in the centre of the city, with the castle above, Scott Monunent to the right and the Old Town to the left. I can't think of another city I've ever been to that is so immediately striking and immediately typical of itself. I call my brother (he is meant to be here to meet me) but his phone seems to be turned off, so I take some initiative and walk up Cockburn Street to the Royal Mile, recalling the geography of this city I once lived in and knew much better, and towards the Fringe box office. There is a short queue, so I join and buy tickets for three shows for tomorrow – two that I had already planned to see and one that I picked more or less on an impulse decision. Excited to definitely be in Edinburgh and defintely seeing some of the comedy I felt I was missing out on only a couple of weeks ago, I call my brother back and discover that he's standing just down the road from me. This road being the Royal Mile during the festival, I have to traverse the clueless, gawking crowds of tourists giddily photographing living statues (how impressive will they be in photos?) and refusing the thousands of flyers earnestly handed out by theatre students dressed as Dorothy Wordsworth or whoever – but eventually we meet up and head for a quick pint at Wash, round the corner on the Mound.

We're soon joined by my brother's girlfriend and we wander towards the Edinburgh Uni buildings, seemingly the epicentre of the fringe, centred around the big Udderbelly tent, and have a drink in the Spiegeltent arena, soaking up a little of the Festival atmosphere. It's clear that these places would have been much more busy maybe a couple of weeks ago – but there are still plenty of people around and queues for shows everywhere you look. We walk up to the Udderbelly itself and stand amongst the crowds sipping Stella from plastic cups before hunger drives us to a nice-looking bar/restaurant place called Biblos, where we eat giant burgers and I start to get a bit knackered. We stop off at one more pub on the way home to my brother's flat (one he complains about a bit; we differ significantly in our taste for drinking venues; whereas tiny, crusty-looking old pubs appeal to me greatly, he prefers a more “sophisticated” bar-type setting, which I absolutely hate) before exhaustion finally propels us home.