just put on a shade of nail varnish labeled ‘Golden Wonder’. Now, I’m sure which flavour of golden wonder this is meant to be, but it doesn’t look like the colour of a bag of crisps to me…
Radio from the Edinburgh Fringe
For the last two days, Danny Baker’s show on Radio London has been hijacked by Amy Lame to present two shows from the Edinburgh Fringe. On thursday she was joined by Sue Perkins, and today by Andre Vincent.
I saw Sue Perkins show at the Fringe, but it’s when she’s just chatting, riffing off whoever the guest happens to be that you really see what a remarkable comic brain she has – even though the guests are often comics, she still racks up four one-liners to anyone else’s one.
It just made me want to be back up there (apart from anything else, I’d probably have a fair stab at getting on the air on a show like that!) – I’m definitely doing three weeks next year. You can hold me to that!
Anyway, head over to the BBC Radio London webpage and click on the ‘listen again’ links for Danny Baker’s show for Thursday and Friday, and that’ll give you the two shows, with some guests from the Fringe and general Edinburgh chit-chat.
A short tennis related intermission…
Now y’all know I’m not really much of a sport lover. Ambivalent would normally be an understatement.
However, I does love me some tennis, so hearing that Andy Murray had beaten Roger Federer yesterday was a pretty amazing moment. This is quite the biggest event in UK sport for quite some time, and it came second on this morning’s news to some football thing (I didn’t even know that England were playing yesterday til I heard the result this morning).
Roger Federer is pretty much the greatest Tennis player to hit the scene since Pete Sampras. He’ll go down in history as one of the all time greats, no doubt about that. His unbeaten record on grass is second to none. Ever. So for Andy to beat him is pretty amazing. And within only a few weeks of signing up with Brad Gilbert as his coach. Given that Brad’s last two high profile charges were Andre Agassi and that other American bloke with the huge serve – whassisname? Andy Roddick, that’s him – Andy Murray could really be onto something. If he does well in this tournament, it may well put him inside the world’s top 20! Amazing stuff.
OK, back to blogging about music and me.
Comments off…
I’ve just switched the comments off, for a few days – the comment spam has just gone mad of late, from one particular source, so I’ve switched it off in the hope that the spambot will stop coming here… no idea if that’s how they work, but I’ll switch it back on in a few days and see what happens…. Failing that, I’ll have a chat with Sarda about preventing comment spam…
Home again…
Back home in North London now. It’s a quieter Giz-less place, and it’s now a bit more real that the little furry chap has gone. V. sad. The other fairly aged feline (tabby model) is very clingy at the moment, which is nice from a lots-of-cuddles point of view, but possibly suggests that he’s missing his ginger buddy…
The last gig on Saturday was great – our biggest audience, and a wonderful reaction from the crowd. I managed to dish out almost every flyer and poster we had (despite being handed a ‘hidden’ stack of flyers at 10pm!) and we played well, again. We didn’t really have an off-night, musically – Thursday was the least marvellous as I think we were both pretty tired by then but even then we played well.
So now I’m back, nursing my knackered knee, having had a mostly fantastic time at the Fringe, met some lovely people, caught up with lovely old friends, played some great fun cabaret shows, seen a few marvellous shows, flyered and postered like a mad thing, and done as much as I could to make the whole thing a success. Which it was. It could’ve been bigger, but with TSP coming back half-way through the week, and julie and her hubby for some reason not really believing in the usefulness of flyering, it was a tough one too. that many days pounding the streets of edinburgh, followed by setting up all the gear, packing down the gear, playing the late night shows was exhausting. But the music was fantastic – it’s a set I’m very proud of, and Julie’s got an amazing voice and sang the songs so well.
In some ways I wish I was still up there – I’ve never been to the Fringe just as a punter, and it’s clearly the single coolest place in the world to go for a holiday, except Greenbelt. I’d love to stay and hang out for a few days, but no time for that – bassists need to be taught, Recycle gigs need to be organised and promoted, Greenbelt needs to be prepared for, and my Italy trip in October needs sorting out… now more than ever, it’s looking like I’ll probably take the train, given that you can’t even take books on the plane (supposedly because you might decide to bored the passengers to death with a reading from Midnight’s Children?)
I’ve also got to sort out some more solo gigs! I’ve had a new album come out, done a launch gig, but don’t have anything as yet planned for the UK – all this New Standard stuff has taken over, and I think it would be prudent for me to work on some more me-gigs for a while!
If you’ve just found this after coming to see us at the Fringe – thanks so much for coming, it was a real pleasure to play for you, and to meet some many lovely people in the audience. I’ll be back there next year for sure. Feel free to join the mailing list to keep up to date with goings on through the year… xx
RIP Gizmo
I mentioned that TSP had to rush back to London – when she got there, The furry ginger one wasn’t well at all. He’d started to behave bizarrely the day before, and by now was showing signs of some kind of real problem with his brain – almost certainly a tumor pressing on it.
She took him to the vets, who offered to give him a steroid shot to see if it would bring down the swelling and stop the pressure, but TSP took what was definitely the right decision, that he’d been through enough. This was the worst she’d seen him – and he’s had some pretty low points over the last 8 months – and it was time to say goodbye.
What shit timing. I’m up here, TSP is in London now, with no car cos I’ve got it here.
Anyway, goodbye lil’ ginger buddy – you had an amazing run, escaped death more times than any animal can reasonably expect, and gave us a couple of years of love and affection that we wouldn’t have swapped for anything.
these two pics were taken just last week…
The Allotment
My mum came up to help flyering yesterday, and while here, we went to a play. As a general rule, I don’t go to plays at the fest. I don’t really go to plays anywhere. Theatre just isn’t an art form that enters my radar.
But I’d been accosted by a flyering lady on the Royal Mile, who told me about this show, and it sounded fascinating, and I’m REALLY glad we went.
It’s called The Allotment, and is set, predictably, on an allotment, where a well meaning but fairly clueless mature student is conducting an experiment in the therapeutic value of horticulture for her MA, and recruits four asylum seekers to work on it. Their clash of worlds values, her ineptness and cliched outlook make for a fantastic story, brilliantly written, superbly acted and far too good for what you expect at the Fringe.
The theatre company website says that it’s touring in the East Midlands in Sept/Oct, so if you can get to see it either here at the Fringe or on tour, go, it’s fab. I hope they bring it to London at some point, I’d love to see it again.
Where did summer go?
Not sure what happened, but when we got north of Leeds yesterday, it suddenly morphed from early August into late October – cold, wet and miserable.
Now in Berwick, and heading up to Edinburgh during the day today, then off to Glasgow for gig tonight at Brel (see you there Weegie Bloglings!). Hoping today’s weather is better than yesterdays – haven’t been outside yet…
Happy Birthday Jyoti
Jyoti is 40 today – happy birthday, sir! Have a marvellous day, and many more years of music making and curmudgeonly ranting about the state of the world.
Too hot to do much…
No, obviously global warming is just a load of made up nonsense. Yup, this being the hottest summer on record is clearly just a fluke. Anyway. it’s far too hot to do anything for long. I’ve been practicing my solo stuff today (next rehearsal with Julie is tomorrow), and working out how to play Blue Planet off the new album, and refreshing my memory on ‘Nobody Wins Unless Everybody Wins’. Sounding good thus far.
The bad part of practicing is that my office/studio/skip is where the ginger fairly aged feline likes to lie as it’s the coolest room in the house, but he’s really not into me practicing, so he leaves, looking a bit pissed off.
He’s doing remarkably well, considering – I mean, he’s not skipping around like a kitten, but he’s looking better than he was when we came back from the vets not expecting him to last more than a couple of days. if he lasts for more than two weeks, TSP won’t be able to come to Edinburgh with me, and while I’ll miss TSP hugely (not only cos she’s great company, but she’s a wizard with flyering and selling t-shirts and CDs!) I am hoping that the little fella is still around and enjoying life. We’re not going to drag things on when he gets to the point where he’s not enjoying life at all, and aren’t going to put him through any more invasive vet stuff like drips and chemo, but he’s looking pretty good at the moment, so who knows how long he’ll last.
Anyway, I’ve been practicing, sending out CDs, emailing and texting people about Wednesday’s gig, and fielding lots of requests to book Julie and I for cabaret type things at the festival – we’ve really managed to create quite a buzz already! Could end up being the surprise hit of the fringe…
Right, back to learning the songs…