The Next Day.


While yesterday’s day off left me feeling ready to go home when I woke up this morning, today’s show was bolstered by a lovely audience and some unexpected energy bubbling to the surface, which is proof why having a rest day is very necessary.

It was a welcome surprise how much better I felt thanks to a day off, as I’d spent yesterday evening feeling pretty ropey and sick, though the triple threat of a ginger beer, ginger tea and a few ginger biscuits seemed to stave off my gippy stomach. I felt particularly reinvigorated during the songs today, thanks to a fractionally rested voice and having more energy to call on; just call me Mr Vigorous. My guitar sounded better too as I changed my strings yesterday for the first time since I got here, so things were janglier all round.

To be fair, yesterday wasn’t a complete day off as I got up reasonably early to record an interview for Fringe Festival Support’s daily-filmed podcast at the Pleasance Dome. This was so relaxed it was easy to forget it was being videoed for posterity, so I was relieved it came over well, aside from my tired, tired eyes; my first thought on watching it back was, “My God, I look old.”


Today was another day for self-promotion as I woke up to a text from Bob FM asking if it would be possible to record an interview today, which is something we’ve done for the past few years. I replied quickly whilst in a taxi to the venue (as I had my acoustic in tow and didn’t want to carry it) to say I'd be free to talk from about 2pm-ish, but because reception’s so poor once I get into the space, I didn’t know for sure we were doing it until I came out of the show and ran back to my digs to see his reply.

We did the interview over Skype, which flowed pretty nicely, and lent heavily on the subject of mental health, presumably because the DJ spotted a chain of tweets I posted on the subject yesterday, after having the personal realisation of how significant it was to have metaphorically come out of the closet about my history of depression by exploring the subject in my show.

This was a huge step that was the source of a fair amount of worry as I put the show together, once I’d realised my material was heading that way, though it’s been an upshot that's only been positive thus far. To have audiences laugh with me over my most difficult experiences has been liberating and has helped the show no end, turning it into something I’m quite proud of. So what if The List missed the point? Their review was littered with mistakes anyway; the most bizarre being their assumption that I kept forgetting my own title, which I can only assume was their mistaking my paraphrasing of it while exploring the show's theme. Proof that Edinburgh write-ups are often a shower of shit.

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