My Big Edinburgh Adventure!

Hi everyone! I'M BACK!

So I know I disappeared for a while there (seeing as my last post was in July). This really wasn't intentional; I went up to Scotland meaning to blog throughout my month at the Edinburgh Fringe. In fact, I was (totally naively!) under the impression that I'd have TONS of time to write and share my version of the world's largest arts festival with you.

Of course-this wasn't the case! I ended up working 12 hour days every single day of the festival, as a Front of House team member for Pleasance. Needless to say perhaps, this is the hardest I've ever worked and the least I've ever slept (especially when you factor in all the socialising and partying too!), so I really didn't have time to TEFL, let alone blog. Apologies guys.

However-now that I'm back in sleepy old Pembrokeshire, I've had a little bit of time to process the whole experience. Whilst it's pretty difficult to sum up such a crazy month in a single blog post, I thought I'd fill you in on my best bits and also how I survived! Here goes...

My Top 10 best bits at the Edinburgh Fringe, 2014

1. Meeting these lovely people...

What a cracking bunch.

I think it's fair to say that if it wasn't for my fellow Front of House team members, I would have been driven completely insane by the end of the festival! Anyone who's ever done a Front of House job will know that it's not always easy...it's pretty high pressure and whilst 90% of the general public will be lovely to you, they'll always be the odd one or two who go out of their way to be grumpy or rude (and the number of such people increases if it's raining...which, in Edinburgh, is pretty much all the time!). Luckily, these guys were always there to offer chocolate, laughs and post-shift archers and lemonade when the going got tough. So thank you, my lovely fellow yellows!

2. Dinosaur related wake-up calls! 

As I've already mentioned, I didn't get a lot of sleep over the course of the festival due to the super long days. However-one of the earlier shows we did Front of House for was called Dinosaur Zoo-AKA the world's ultimate wake-up call! If you were a sit-in on this 11am show, then you'd be responsible for hundreds of children (and their parents!) as they were introduced to a whole host of puppety dinosaurs , which gradually increased in size and volume as the show progressed. By the end of it, you'd feel like you'd had about 20 redbulls and whole dose of cute! 

3. Discovering the joys of BBL

Another morning related one...but I genuinely couldn't have got through the festival without this amazing Scottish cafe and its lovely selection of treats (particularly the sausage and egg morning rolls which always sorted me right out). Thank goodness they were just outside my venue, or I probably would have died.

4. Seeing Eddie Izzard live

So this happened-and it was a massive deal for me, having been brought up listening to audio recordings of Eddie's legendary comedy in the car on long journeys (Jazz Chicken, anyone? Just me? Okay then.). He was amazing, and such a presence. Oh, and he made a joke about how when people try and do the Welsh accent, it sounds Indian-which I've been saying for years but no-one's believed me. Until now, seeing as Eddie has spoken.

5. Halfway Party!

So-anyone who's worked the festival before will know that getting halfway through is a bit of a milestone (mainly because it seems like a lifetime has passed), so Pleasance always have a big party to celebrate. This year, it was 80s themed, and there was karaoke and a live band. I think Axis of Awesome performed and Al Murray was on drums for a while, but I can't really remember due to all the discount cider. It was a lot of fun, though (and Dino Zoo inevitably shook off the hangover the next day).

6. Visiting Biscuitland

One of my favourite shows was Backstage in Biscuitland, which featured Jess Thom, who has Tourettes syndrome. She had the most genuine, incredible, and uplifting spirit that I witnessed in any performer, throughout the Fringe, and really opened up my eyes to what living with a disability is like. She also gave us all actual biscuits in ode to her most notable tick, which definitely made her my favourite (mine was a Malted Milk so not bad) ! I can't find any clips of her show online, but she did give this Tedx Talk last year which is pretty inspiring in itself. So watch if you can!

7. Getting on stage with Stuart Bowden

If you go to the Fringe, you will almost definitely end up on stage at some point. For me, this moment came when I went to see Stuart Bowden's 'Before Us' at Underbelly.After making me laugh until I cried, sad until I cried, and being completely ridiculous and bonkers the best part of an hour, he then made the entire audience go and crawl around on stage with him whilst holding singing his performance's refrain. Bloody hell, Stuart. Way to treat an audience. The whole experience was, however, truly life-affirming, so this was without a doubt my absolutely favourite show from this year's Fringe (and I saw 40 odd, so this is praise indeed).

8. Celebrity Spotting!

Okay, so I'm not a fan of name-dropping, but the Pleasance Courtyard is known to be a bit of a Celeb 'hub' so my Celeb spottings can't go unmentioned here. Highlights included-Frank Skinner pushing a buggy, Ian Hislop sitting on someone's garden wall whilst reading a review of Paul Merton's show, Dara O'Brien being lovely and Irish, Simon Amstell saying Hi and Sue Perkins chilling in the Theatre Bar. Oh, and I got a selfie with Neville Longbottom (AKA Matthew Lewis), which was v.v.v.v. cool.

My face only demonstrates about 10% of my inner happiness at this point.

9. Doing 'the Shuffle'

So this was a little queueing manouvre that I had to do about 50 times a day! Occassionally you'd get some stubborn queues, but it was very satisfying when it worked like a dream. Here's a link to a little video made by my fellow FoH colleague Faye, with some FoH members, to demonstrate! 

10. Finishing the get-out

After a whole month of no sleep and several days of heavy lifting to take everything down, I was kind of relieved when our site manager stood on top of a skip and announced that our work was done. I must admit, I'm pretty proud of myself for proving my stamina and endurance, and for keeping my sanity, in what has been one of the most crazy, hard, amazing months of my entire life. It's always nice to realise that you're stronger than you thought.  

That's it for now...I'll be back to more TEFL-y related things soon (need to jump back on the wagon bigtime!). But I hope this goes some way to describing the wonderful madness of the past month to you guys.

Big Love, 

H xx