Swords, Sci-Fi and Strange Ramblings

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:33:12 GMT

My friend Alistair was on this thing called '3 Minute Wonder' - 3-minute documentaries aired around lunchtime on Channel 4. Now, someone has fallen in love with him and is desperately searching the interwebs for him.

BRB LOLING FOREVER.

PS: Here is the video where all the magic began... to be fair, he is talking about fluorescent monkeys.

So... caffeine.

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:58:30 GMT

When I was growing up, I never liked tea or coffee. The latter is understandable, but the former, in England, is met with similar reactions to kicking over the Queen and throwing her crown into the mud. I also never liked most fizzy drinks. The long and short of it is, I grew up with little to no caffeine in my life.

Now, you may have noticed in my LJ that I've been very busy lately. This, combined with the clocks going back and it getting dark so much earlier, means I've been much more tired. In my third year, I tried to combat this by taking Pro Plus - just one tablet would usually be enough to perk me up for an entire morning, two would almost have me bouncing off the walls. Possibly not as healthy as getting enough sleep, but it worked.

This year, I've been trying a different tack. The other day, I tried buying myself a mocha. I was in too much of a hurry and didn't quite like it enough to finish it, I only had a little less than half, but I was intrigued. I figured, in an emergency, a whole mocha would be great to get me through it.

This morning was was such an emergency. After getting to bed at 1am, I had to be up at 7am to finish reading an article before a 9am seminar, where I'd have to discuss it in close detail. No way was I going to be awake enough without some kind of miracle. And lo, this miracle, I thought, was a mocha. So after I got up, I headed straight to O'Briens with my reading to get a mocha and finish my reading before heading off to the department.

..... If you have read the bit of Girl Genius where Agatha has coffee for the first time, you can probably get a good idea as to what I was like.

The reading was suddenly simple! It all made perfect sense! I bounded up to the seminar and sat there, buzzing, as everyone else slouched and tried to stay awake, and when the lecturer asked for our opinions, I found myself expressing them. Loudly.

"THIS GUY IS JUST RIDICULOUS I MEAN HE GOES ON AND ON LIKE SOME SENTIMENTAL IDIOT I MEAN OMG IT'S A CONSPIRACY WHAT THE HELL MAN CRY MOAR!!!"

"Er, that's a good point, Katie, does anyone else-?"

"AND THIS!! HOW THE HELL DOES FREUD FIT INTO THIS??? THEY HAVE NO PERSPECTIVE AND JUST GET EMOTIONALLY ATTACHED TO THE ISSUES AND IT'S REALLY REALLY STUPID!!!"

The seminar was an hour and a half, and by the end, I was fiddling with my pen A LOT and clicking it frequently. After being let out at the end, I was walking up to the library, and the world was so - sharp, and in focus, it was actually dizzying. I felt like I was drunk, or had a fever, and was wondering if this was what it was like to be on drugs. I was actually a little worried that the effects of the caffeine weren't showing any signs of wearing off, but actually seemed to be getting stronger. I had to go and sit in the library quietly for, like, an hour, and try to get my head together, because by now I was both dizzy and nauseous from being SO GODDAMN AWAKE.

It is now about seven hours since I had that mocha, and I'm finally starting to feel vaguely normal again. I can't believe I had such a strong reaction! I was just... so focussed and awake, and I could feel my body going "Dude, what the hell?..." and my brain going "SILENCE WORTHLESS PEON WE HAVE CLASSICS TO DO!!!! WE SHALL SHOW ALL THOSE SCHOLARS, SHOW THEM ALL!!! TODAY, THE DISSERTATION - TOMORROW, THE WORLD!!!"

Maybe the Agatha Clay comparison was even more appropriate than I thought...

Have had sleep, all is good

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:57:36 GMT

Wow. This is pretty much the first time I've had time to sit down and chill in a WHILE.

So, I've had a crazy week. I was trying to catch up on work after being ill, which wasn't helped by taking two days away from Durham to go see Green Day in Birmingham with my mum (AWESOME) and there was a Night Bash on Friday which I had to finish writing and organizing AND a pirate bar crawl which was awesome but didn't help with sleep deprivation.

Basically, I was getting up really early and going to bed REALLY late and working constantly throughout the day, doing reading for seminars and trying to get Akkadian into my head. I even tried mochas in desperation for caffeine (I don't like coffee, but can now stand mochas) and basically didn't stop until I ran into Ali in the marketplace the evening before the Night Bash. I had just been running around frantically looking for glowsticks, crying out praise to Glowstick Jesus in the middle of the shop upon finding some, and she very quickly saw how manic I was, and dragged me off to the pub to make sure I had a sit down and a proper meal before the adventure that night. It was amazing, and SO necessary, I hadn't realized.

So, Night Bash went awesomely, I DID get all my necessary work done (and then some), and I finally got sleep afterwards. I just slept in till 11 on Saturday, and noon today. But sleeping in so late today was because of my awesome day yesterday.

First, I had auditions for the Society Film (a film noir, this year) and, according to Richard, have almost definitely got a part. WOO. Then I had the debrief for the Night Bash, finally explaining the deal with the glowsticks. Then I had Improv Comedy, where I got into a vociferous debate during Conducted Story about the values of Kent (defending it to the last) and discovered there's an Elvet Underground show today, and then it was the Naked Calendar photoshoot.

Somehow, it was less awkward than last time, even though there were more of us and most of them were freshers and thus we didn't know them all that well. AND we all had a lot more on show - basically, we had John in the middle holding up the VaryTale die, and us all kneeling and lying around him reaching for it, without even drawing boards to hide behind like last year. Like last year, there was a lot of definite "NOT LOOKING AROUND OH MY LOOK AT THE CEILING ISN'T IT FASCINATING." At one point the photographer called "Can you all get a bit closer together?" Fuuun.

THEN I headed off to Improv Katie's Halloween party in Neville's Cross. Her house has awesome parties - their housewarming had the theme the Cold War, and I went as the secret communist McCarthy was always warning about - and this time's theme was Victoriana horror. I went as Queen Victoria turned into a banshee after the death of Albert, in a really hot black dress (well, a top with swooshy sleeves and a skirt with my black underbust corset over it) and creepy-ass grey corpse make-up on my face and in my hair. It was a good effect, if I may say so myself.

That party was mostly hanging around with Richard, Sophie, Alex and Katie and talking about random stuff. We also tried to cheer Richard up, since he was a bit dejected on not finding anyone new and awesome at the auditions earlier. Then, at 11pm, I got a taxi (booked WAY in advance) over to Gilesgate to the Treasure Trap Halloween party, which involved a LOT of people crammed into a living room (seriously - all over the sofas and the floor and leaning against walls) and much alcohol and singing. Alistair was there too, already an impressive way through various cider bottles and breaking into the rum, who'd never heard the songs before and was amazed.

That party went on till 4am, but after a rousing rendition of Super Vampire Bunny, it was time to pack it in and go to bed. Which I did, until being woken up by MattMatt at noon.

Now, I have to do my ancient Greek exercises and write a scene for the Society Film before meeting my college family in the pub later and the show this evening - but first, I wash the make-up out of my hair.

Zoe STILL doesn't know where I get my energy.

As ordered by Jackie, the Raptor Bar Crawl

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:32:31 GMT

So, last night was my first organized social as social secretary of Improv Comedy. Perhaps some backstory is required.

Before I ran for social sec, Alistair had been talking a lot about how much he wanted to do a Raptor Bar Crawl some time. He was quite vague about what it involved, but insisted everyone would have to buy dinosaurs. And when I actually ran for social sec and was husting, he asked "What kind of socials would you run?" I replied, "Well, I was once given the BRILLIANT suggestion of a Raptor Bar Crawl..." and he said, "YES, I am voting for YOU."

Of course, the result of this was that I actually had to have a Raptor Bar Crawl, and I had even less idea of what that involved than Alistair. But still, I announced the time and day to the society at large, and told them all to try to find a toy dinosaur.

This turned out to be quite the task. I tried the toy store in the Indoor Market, going up to the lady and asking if she had any toy dinosaurs. "You're the third person we've had in today asking for them," she said, looking slightly confused and wary, "But the first guy bought them all, we're sold out."

"... Was he really tall?"

"YES."

So, Alistair had gotten there before me. Undefeated, however, I went to Poundland, that magical place, and found some raptor-esque toy dinosaurs which - AMAZINGLY - even made a roaring noise when you pressed their stomachs. There were only two left, so I got one for me and one for whoever needed one, which ended up being Max - we couldn't very well have the President without a dinosaur. Asking around at the Improv workshop, I discovered a lot of people were having trouble getting hold of dinosaurs, but - intriguingly - were making their own...

Now, I was worried at the start of this social that people wouldn't 'get' why we had to have dinosaurs, and honestly, I couldn't automatically think of a reason to have them other than that they were awesome. Alistair suggested the dinosaurs had to make friends with each other over the course of the bar crawl, but with the wrong crowd, I knew that could fall totally flat.

Turns out this was exactly the RIGHT crowd. By the arrival of the fifth person, all the dinosaurs were out on the table - my cheap roaring one, some tiny ones, a wind-up walking one, a toy cow with green spikes stuck on it and a cardboard one - and everyone was explaining their dinosaur's names, personalities and goals in life. One guy showed up with a dinosaur made entirely of pipecleaners and was a HERO. By the time we left the first bar, we had LOADS of dinosaurs, my dinosaur was a single mother of two different dinosaurs with two different fathers (one possibly Dinosaur Jesus), we had timetravel and renegade cops and the One Black Dinosaur and illicit love affairs, and I think there was a jailbreak or something going on.

So yeah. They REALLY got into it. I was astonished. And it turns out? EVERYONE loves dinosaurs. We've tried to do publicity bar crawls at Improv before, but never really gotten much attention. But it seems that when you go into a bar and immediately set up loads of dinosaurs on the pool table and start acting out some epic drama, you will get an audience, and that audience will think you're the coolest people in the city.

I'm very sad I had to duck out at 10pm. I wasn't worried it'd fall apart without me there - the soap opera was in full swing, everyone was getting along great, and there were still many bars they could go to, I didn't see it winding down any time soon. But right before I left, two dinosaurs were about to get married, and my own dinosaur stormed in yelling her objections, announcing to the dinosaur populace at large that the groom was her secret biological son, and she wasn't going to let him marry 'that harlot'. 'That harlot''s dad had just challenged her to a duel, but she had Roger the War Veteran on her side ("Why's your roar function broken? And why is there a dent in the back of your head?" "YOU DON'T KNOW, MAN! YOU WEREN'T THERE!") and the dad was about 1/3 of her size, so that wasn't going to go well for him... yeah, I was sad to leave at a cliffhanger.

But yes. SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL WITH DINOSAURS WOOOOOO.

Quieter Saturday, hopefully

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:42:25 GMT

OK, I guess I learned my lesson. No million different social activities today - just improv comedy workshop in the afternoon, followed by the Raptor Bar Crawl, whiiich I'm still not sure what will happen on, but I guess since it's the FIRST Raptor Bar Crawl, I GET TO DECIDE. First step: find a toy dinosaur.

I had a couple of people try to get me to go on the adventure again, either monstering or charactering, but I decided last night (on my way with Beccy, Thorley and Alex to see As You Like It, which a friend of my family was in and got us free tickets for, and was AWESOME) that that would be a bad idea. For one thing, I'm still not fully better - this cough probably won't be going anywhere for another week at least - and running around in the woods in the cold/rain is not advisable. For another, bigger reason, I still have two chapters of Akkadian to complete by Tuesday, and it took me 3 hours yesterday to do the first one.

I don't quite know whether I love Akkadian or strongly dislike it (I think I'm incapable of hating things.) While I was in the depths of that chapter yesterday, trying to work out how one syllable could have so many different meanings, I was pretty damn frustrated, but now that I've (sort of) got the hang of it? It's... kind of fun. I mean, translating directly from the cuneiform is like a PUZZLE. You have to identify all the symbols and write out the syllables represent, then figure out which syllables are phonetic and which are Sumerograms, and finally compact them all together into words, and THEN you translate it! Yeah, I'm back to loving it for now. Ask again once I've done chapter two.

So I hopefully get at least one more chapter done, then head off to improv and the bar crawl, and OH WAIT then I'm going round Thorley's to watch horror movies and write the Halloween Night Bash, probably ending in a VERY late night. So much for a quiet day.

Wow, being ill actually sucks. Who knew?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:21:35 GMT

Forget what I said about loving being sick. I'd forgotten the downside - the sheer damn nuisance of not being able to do everything you want.

(Oh, and actually being sick. But that's not so bad.)

I wanted to go to Improv tonight. I wanted to go see Up before it went out of cinemas. Most of all, I wanted to go to my first Akkadian lecture tomorrow. But because of this goddamn plague, I'm bedridden, and have to reschedule everything. I've played so much Solitaire I dream of the cards, and so much Hearts I've actually figured out the rules and a strategy. I haven't yet resorted to Minesweeper, but it's only a matter of time.

On the plus side, I've been writing, and one scene has been writing itself more easily than I imagined it ever could. It's AWESOME.

Stopped

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:45:19 GMT

As mentioned in the last entry, on a particularly busy Saturday, the question was raised as to whether I ever stopped. Today, the answer has been changed to yes - when I get plagued.

Freshers flu has finally caught up with me. It basically struck yesterday, and I tried to keep going with my daily routine as much as possible, including staying out at TT till 11. But this morning, it would seem my body has gone "NO *SMACK*" and is insisting I stay in bed. While I'm feeling OK enough to smell someone in my house cooking some sort of fried breakfast and think "Ooooh...", it basically took me 45 minutes to summon enough energy to get out of bed. As long as I do very little, it's OK, but as soon as I start moving, my head spins, my body aches, and I generally sneeze and cough the house down.

So. No going out for me today. Except maybe to get ice-cream from Sainsburys.

But the plus side? This means I get to do WRITING! ALL DAY! EEEEEEEEEEEEE I LOVE BEING SICK.

Er, busy

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:57:27 GMT

So, yesterday? I:

* Woke up early and tried to recover from the previous night's Loinfire Club, where we read The Tao of Sex by Jade Lee, one of the best/worst books we've read there EVER,
* Went on the freshers adventure, where I won Best Monster for my portrayal of Igor,
* Caught the second half of the Improv Comedy workshop, which has become REALLY POPULAR since Edinburgh,
* Went up to Mary's with a few of the others to look at the room where we're doing the naked calendar photoshoot,
* Went to get falafel with improv veteran Kate,
* Went to the DSU Ceilidh, where I was asked to dance twice by a random, but subsequently scared him off with my re-enaction of earlier portrayal of Igor,
* Went to the last ever Durham WitTank show, which was fantastic and I really hope those guys become famous,
* Got chips with Alistair and his housemates,
* and finally got home just past midnight, where I realized I'd forgotten my keys. Luckily MattMatt was still up, and I ended up watching the last twenty minutes of Heat with him.

I was also asked on two separate occasions by two different people, "Do you EVER stop?" and "Do you do EVERYTHING?" I... guess so.

Life gets busy fast

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 09:48:59 GMT

Classes are beginning properly. I got so much reading material for one seminar, to be read over the next fortnight, it was almost as thick as the pad of paper I brought for notes - and that's a class I'm AUDITING.

Also just got my first look at Akkadian. It's terrifying. It's a bunch of lines and triangles. Being able to read and write in it will be the coolest thing in the world, but learning it? Over 4 2-hour sessions? ACK.

So, of course, just as work kicks in, it makes sense for me to get my prompts for the xover_exchange.

!!!!!!!!! THEY ARE SO AWESOME. I WANT TO WRITE THEM ALL. Am currently torn between doing a whole bunch of separate stories, or trying to tie them all together in an incredibly complicated web which would probably require diagrams to explain the plot continuum and have all these fandoms collide.

Oh, and it's our Vary Tales comeback show in Durham tonight. EEP.

(in other news, I've just finished reading the entire archive of Girl Genius. If you haven't read it, DO.)

On the Chancellor's Secret Service

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 17:25:23 GMT

If you ever wondered what a Bond film would look like made by students - well, here it is.

AWESOME, NO. Unfortunately, we haven't filmed half the scenes, and the guy playing Bond (or Banner, as he's known in this) didn't get back into the university this year, sooooo either we film it whatever weekends he can come up, or Bond undergoes dramatic facial reconstruction surgery.

Also, I'm making a profound effort not to blog about every TV show I watch this year - which has been especially difficult with How I Met Your Mother and Supernatural, both of which are bringing their A-game this season - but oddly enough it's been MOST difficult with Merlin of all shows! It's just being AWESOME! AND NEXT WEEK LOOKS SO MUCH FUN OMG.

PS: Oh, and my classes for next year are all set - I'm doing both Akkadian AND Ancient Greek for beginners, since my lecturer believed I could manage them without going insane, and Preservation & Transmission of Information in the Ancient World. I'm also doing the Classical Research training module and my dissertation, of course, and auditing a whole bunch for funsies.

Goodbye social life.

Stuuufffff

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:09:32 GMT

Update in the Case of the Vanishing Classicist - one of our lecturers, who usually tells us anything and everything? Says she is NOT ALLOWED to talk about this. Hmmmm. Conspiracy? Clearly alcohol-assisted questioning is necessary at the Classics drinks on Tuesday. I will be wearing shoes I can run away in and my hair up in such a way it will fall down at the first sign of a fight scene. Jackie, you and Tanja REALLY have to get that airship ready, or you'll be sorry when the ninjas get me.

Lala, other stuff. Tried to publicise Improv at the station to newly-arriving freshers, realized there were hardly any of them and societies weren't really on their minds right then. So I went off to the first sword practice of the term and took Alistair and Tim with me, and a fun painful time was had by all.

Just got my new campus card with my new college and new short haircut on it. The camera was set so low I look like a giant. It's quite scary, really.

Need to reshuffle module choices as I have learned that 'Preservation & Transmission of Knowledge in the Ancient World' is apparently pretty boring. Will need to find a diplomatic way of saying "I DON'T WANT TO DO BORING MODULES" by tomorrow as an excuse.

Plan to go to Newcastle today for shoppings and possibly seeing (500) Days of Summer. Also tomorrow, other than module selection, is Freshers Fair, which is also on Wednesday, along with Matriculation (all over again) and, oh yes, the first Improv show of the term, which, honestly, I'm scared is going to suck, because we are all out of practice and three of our best guys have left. ACK.

But hey, we're being paid £150 in advance. WIN.

Life, life, busy busy life.

Weird or AWESOME?

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:19:47 GMT

So... one of the professors in my department? Has just upped and left. Like, practically no warning, he was all set to teach modules and supervise dissertations this year, but then he just turned around and announced, "I'm leaving!" and DID SO. He hardly took any stuff with him, just important stuff, and boom, gone.

I don't know many details, having only heard this from a friend of mine on the street, but the Classics department is apparently scrambling around in a panic going "OMGWTF HALF THE DEPARTMENT ARE ON LEAVE ALREADY NOW WHAT." I feel bad for them, and bad for the professor, because he was probably in a bad place to make such a snap decision, but...

That big damn adventure story I was writing this summer? BEGINS PRETTY MUCH EXACTLY LIKE THIS. The heroine's old university professor just ups and leaves the Babylon excavations, with no warning, leaving everyone going, "Bwuh??" And she goes to investigate and gets embroiled in it all and there are conspiracies and pirates and robots and adventure archaeology and airships and the Russian Mafia and it's basically what I DREAM my life will be like one day.

So I am torn between feeling bad and thinking, "HOLY CRAP ADVENTURE TIME."

Saving the world, one procrastination-fic at a time

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:42:54 GMT

Because I am not busy enough in my life, what with starting an MA, being on the exec of two societies, doing Improv comeback shows and taking part in aurilly's awesome xover_exchange, I am ALSO signing up to offer to write fic for supercharitygo.

Long story short - Philippines hit by typhoon, need money, people offering to write fic for money, I jump on that bandwagon. For the long story, go to the properly coherent post about it HERE. That also tells you how to donate and get proof that you have donated to wave at your fic's author so they write for you.

The full list of fandoms I'm happy to write for is over at my official sign-up post, which is HERE, which is also what you reply to to say "Yes Katie of COURSE I want to read your ridonkulous claptrap" and show me a screenshot of you having donated monies or whatever. Of course, if you'd rather not bother with reading my stuff and just want to donate money, do it! It seems like a really good cause.

~~and that's totally why I'm doing this, not for procrastination opportunities next term or ANYTHING~~

!!!!!

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:33:14 GMT

OMGGG THE LAST EPISODE OF MERLIN SERIES 1 IS FREE FOR DOWNLOAD OFF ENGLISH ITUNES

THIS WILL PROBABLY BE LESS EXCITING IN THE MORNING WHEN I HAVEN'T HAD QUITE SO MUCH FREE WINE AND FLAPJACK

I'm fine, by the way, how are you?

facepalm

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:53:27 GMT

Term hasn't even started yet and I'm already making my first dumb work-related decision.

I've gone from vaguely considering to deciding I really DO want to do the 'Warrior Poets in Heroic Societies' module... even though the professor says I really should have some knowledge of Old Norse for it, and will probably have to audit those classes as well in the winter term just to pick it up. He's happy for me to take it, just warns it's going to be a lot of hard work.

Does this intimidate me? Hell yes. Does it put me off? No, it makes me want to do it MORE. EXTRA WORK WOOOOOOO.

Bets on how long it is till my first 'OMG SO MUCH WOOOOORK' entry?

Is there such a thing as an Inspirational Bandwagon?

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 08:17:52 GMT

Thanks to the website Gives Me Hope, both tahu and ibroketuesday have posted their own stories about what inspires them. After reading both of theirs and a large portion of the site, I kind of want to tell my own.

My Dad has worked as a doctor for over 25 years now, and usually comes across as a bit of a House - he has a sense of humour about his job, and sometimes comes home rolling his eyes about certain patients. He recently got promoted to head of his practice. This would normally mean he stepped back a bit from patient hours and concentrated more on administration, but he hasn't done that. He's kept up the same surgery hours, still does house visits, and still goes to the big hospital in the next town to do check-ups. All this means that he usually has to give up either his Saturday or Sunday to do the administration side of it.

He didn't even choose to become head of the practice. He got the job because the old head retired, and the guy who WOULD have gotten the job above my dad - one of his best friends, best man at his wedding and my sister's godfather - died suddenly of a heart attack, to everyone's shock. But he still works as hard as he can.

This isn't even the story. Basically, as I said, my dad still goes to the hospital for meetings and check-ups and stuff. And every time he goes, he goes past a ward for long-term elderly patients. There's an old lady near the door, who, unlike most of the others, is usually wide awake and alert. Even though she wasn't his patient, my dad started waving at her every time he went past, and she'd always smile and wave back.

He did this for several years until she died. Very shortly after that, one of her relatives came and found my dad and gave him a huge bottle of really nice champagne. When he asked why, they said that the simple act of him waving every time he went past had always brightened up her day, and he'd had a far bigger impact in the last few years of her life than he had imagined.

My dad's my hero, which gives me hope in of itself, but also the impact of his small good deeds reminds me that every good deed we do will make someone's life better, whether we know about it or not. It reminds me to try to always be nice, especially to those I wouldn't normally.

So there you go. If you've been wondering who to blame for my incessant cheery outlook - blame House.

Advice?

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:04:17 GMT

Soooo I'm kinda tired of my LJ username. I chose it years ago, when my main thing on the internet was writing (terrible) Lord of the Rings fanfiction, because my eyes bore a resemblance to Elijah Wood's, aaaand yeah. It was a bit lame.

So, I just thought I'd get some advice. Do you guys think it's worth splashing out on the rename token? Or could I just set up a spanking new journal and you guys would follow me there? Or, is my username in fact awesome, the best username to ever grace the interwebs, and am I being delusional?

Incidentally, what the hell should my new username be?

SO MANY QUESTIONS.

"Who invited BOWSER to our MARIO party??"

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:47:09 GMT

Americaland is being generally awesome. Sure, we spend a lot of time inside playing aforementioned Mario Party (unemployment + broken car + living on top of hill = days in) but it's fun just to hang out with Jackie and Tanja, and when we DO go out, we have ADVENTURES. We went to the Oregon State Fair and pirate mini-golf (I WON SOMEHOW) and the pinball arcade and the zoo and I finally saw both GI Joe (a very special kind of awesomely appalling) and Up (COULD NOT STOP CRYING) and we had another photo day in Finnegan's with all the hats and ibroketuesday and just the other day Jackie and I started running across road crossings in slo-mo as the countdown appears, because clearly, you can only jump clear of the explosion at the last minute. Clearly.

I love it here. I don't really want to go home. But I'm also REALLY excited for my Masters next year, so it's not so bad to go home for that. Why can't we be on the same continent, though? :(

WUT

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:06:46 GMT

omg I'm writing again

it's easy and wonderful and so much fantastic fun there's already a chase scene in Cardiff and a fight scene with pirates

yes it's also 2am what's your point

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Lalala Americaland

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 18:14:49 GMT

Wow, I do an epic 3-part 12,000 word post about Edinburgh and then disappear. My summer holidays are THAT awesome and erratic.

OK, so now I'm in Americaland with Jackie! We're moving back and forth between her parents' house in Portland (where there's stuff to do) and her own apartment in Corvallis (where we sit in playing Mario Party and eating taquitos) and generally are attempting to have an awesome time on a budget. It's working so far! Today we're going to do underground glow-in-the-dark pirate mini-golf (yes, I DO have to call it by its full name every time) and hopefully meeting up with ibroketuesday, GLEE.

Also getting started looking at modules for my MA next year. It's actually all VERY EXCITING. Right now, I'm thinking of doing Akkadian, Preservation & Transmission of Knowledge in the Near East, and this module called Warrior Poets in Heroic Societies from the English department, along with my dissertation and the research methods module. Yay!

OK time for shower.

Edinburgh! - the Journal, Part 3

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:37:47 GMT

Last part. Man, this didn't feel so long when I was writing it THERE.

Day 12, August 18th

Back to work today, more flyering etc. It’s getting more and more fun flyering though as we get to know more of the other performers, and can chat to them about how their shows are going. I saw the girl who played Cinderella at Princess Cabaret and told her how awesome I thought their show was, and also ran into the Much Ado About Nothing guys, who were a bit fragile after getting trashed the night before.

I met up with Frankie as well, and we hung about chatting and watching the showcase of Okla Homo!, a very gay musical which sadly I don’t think I’m going to get to see. She also stayed to watch our own showcase in the afternoon, which… well, I think the Household Olympics (two people commentate on another two people taking part in a competitive version of an everyday task) was our most violent yet, with Gethin throwing jaguars at me at one point.

Title: The Kangaroos of Australia
Hero: Nick as Tom Thumb
Villain: Gethin, a toenail clipper with a phobia of toenails, who decided, upon being fired and replaced by Tom Thumb, to get lots of kangaroos and get them to bite off everyone’s fingers and toes and put his employers out of business.

Possibly the weirdest climax yet, with Nick tickling Gethin to distract him while kangaroos ate his toes.

I got food with Max and Gethin and we watched some truly terrible Hollyoaks before I decided to go see the Shambles, the improv group from York. They were only a pound, and they were really good. Also, on the way there, I was stopped by a little girl and her dad who wanted to tell me how much they’d enjoyed the show that afternoon! We have fans!

I then met Rhys in the bar of the hostel, and we went to see Late Night Impro Fight and Take the Empire! again. Only this time, instead of contestants from the audience, they had the cast of Broken Holmes - the true story of the bromance of Sherlock and Watson, where Watson wonders what he’s doing with such an idiot and Sherlock wonders where he can get more opium – doing the show IN CHARACTER. Seeing Watson struggling to build Big Ben out of cardboard by himself while Sherlock attempted to light a cucumber sandwich in his pipe may just have made my festival.

Day 13, August 19th

NEIL GAIMAN! NEIL GAIMAN NEIL GAIMAN I MET NEIL GAIMAN TODAY LALALALALA.

OK, so I was pretty shattered today, but flyering was still really fun. I talked to a girl who I’d seen in Late Night Impro Fight, who was here doing The Complete Works of Shakespeare: Abridged with two other girls, and chatted to ages to a guy called Stuart from the Shambles, mostly about how awesome Take the Empire! was. Also the Shrimps – the Sheffield Improv group – had arrived, and were holding dance-offs with a guy in a shrimp costume. I, of course, stepped up, and won! I won a dance-off with a shrimp. There’s a story to tell the grandkids.

After another Sainsbury’s splitfest lunch (it was routine now – Ali would go out and buy bread, ham, cheese and lettuce, and we’d make shitloads of sandwiches) I ran off to see Neil Gaiman. I’d found out he was doing a reading at the Book Festival and bought tickets that same red-hot second. I managed to get seats in the very front row – I didn’t even arrive that early, I was just by myself and managed to get a lone seat – and, wow. He did a reading of the ‘Dance Macabre’ chapter of The Graveyard Book, and took some questions from the audience. I asked whether, with books like American Gods, the research he’d done had shaped the story or he’d set out to research with a specific story already in mind. He answered that he’d already known quite a bit about most of the gods, so the first draft didn’t require much research at all, but he hadn’t known much about the eastern gods, and of course he’d occasionally find out something about a god and go, “Oh, I have to work that in.”

Then, THEN, there was a book signing which I hadn’t even KNOWN ABOUT, and was SO GLAD I’d brought the copy of American Gods Jackie gave me just in case. He approved very much of how battered and clearly loved it was (most of the books he was given to sign were brand shiny new) and wrote in it ‘Katie – Believe! Neil Gaiman’ while I told him how my friend Jackie had given it to me after finding out it was the one book of his I hadn’t read.

Up till now I’d been very cool and reserved, but it was now that my inner overexcitable fangirl broke out. I’d spent quite a lot of time that day wondering what I’d say to him, about how much I loved his books and how they influenced my own writing, and hadn’t come up with anything good. So all I managed was a quick gabble of, “Er, you’re one of my favourite authors and I really love your books”, already reddening as the 90% of my brain NOT overcome by fangirl simultaneously facepalmed.

He, however, managed to look genuinely touched and said sincerely, “Thank you!” He has some quality patience for his fans.

I ran off pretty quickly after that, and found myself at a book sale going on across the road. Pretty safe bet, holding a book sale across the road from a Book Festival. In there, I found myself a 1920s edition of The Three Musketeers, properly bound and with painted colour illustrations and everything, for only £7! This was turning into an utterly win day. And that was even BEFORE I got back and found out that the VaryTale had gone AMAZINGLY well.

Title: The Vault of Dental Floss
Hero: Matt, a dentist scared of halitosis
Villain: Gethin, Queen Victoria, who was also secretly Superman, since her weakness was kryptonite

This was the one guys were talking about for ages after as fantastic and full of energy. Especially surprising given that Gethin, one of our top energy guys, had to be more restrained, because he’d been pretty ill for the last couple of days. John was utterly buzzing afterwards, which was a really good sign.

We all went out to see Inglourious Basterds that evening, which was GREAT fun, and all decamped to Burger King afterwards discussing whether it really was Tarantino’s best film yet, and Max was the lone voice of, “I thought it was a bit crap, actually.” Today is generally agreed to have been a GOOD DAY.

Day 14, August 20th

Yet another really rainy day, so I fled flyering around 12 to go and watch Bob’s Date, a play that took place entirely inside a guy’s head on the night of his first date in two years. It was pretty genius, with Logic trying to control everyone and put a greatly-shrunk Confidence in charge until Emotion showed up, and the guy playing Nerves was really fantastic, I actually wanted to stand up and applaud him at one point.

I got pretty nervous myself this afternoon before the VaryTale. The fact it had gone so amazingly yesterday just made me feel like it was on me to make today just as good, since I was the Hero, and general bad weather and tiredness just brought my mood down – but John bought me a hot chocolate and Sam told me to get over myself, both of which helped immensely.

Title: The Return of the Other Monkey
Hero: Me, a monkey who kept losing her keys
Villain: John, Rasputin, who it turned out also used to be a monkey, searching for the elixir of life under a magical three-headed tree.

So, I was happy with it. My physicality as the monkey sucked, epically, but I’ve never been great with physicality, and I’d hoped I’d managed OK in spite of it. But both Ali and Gethin were pretty negative about it afterwards, and after my insecurity earlier, I just took it really hard. But once again John stepped up to cheer me up, pointing out he’d just gotten a message from someone in the audience saying they’d enjoyed it, Matt came back to find me when I fell behind on the way back to the hostel, and Alistair actually went out and bought a freaking CAKE to cheer us all up. These guys really are amazing sometimes.

Freddie, my housemate, came to watch the show today, and afterwards her and Alistair and I went off to find some food and to watch East, another play from Durham which featured a film she’d done. On the way there up the Royal Mile we stopped to talk to various people – we got our photo taken, we all hugged one of the Merrily We Roll Along guys, and ran into one of the Take the Empire! presenters and loaded him with praise verging on fangirling.

East was… intense. Alarming. Really well done, really well acted, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of play you can describe as having ‘enjoyed’. Afterwards, Alistair and I went and got food at Bella Italia, briefly being joined by Nick before he ran off again to join John and people on their way to watch Late Night Impro Fight and Take the Empire! (they got to be contestants!) and generally talked about writing, me about various stories, him about his Penny Dreadfuls-esque play.

And then I got back to the hostel and was ambushed by Gethin, Rhys and Max on my way to the bathroom, and ended up with Rhys and Max jumping in with me. It was… very, very odd, and an all-too-clear example of what happens to guys when they don’t get out in the evenings enough.

Day 15, August 21st

This morning, Max, Alistair, Ali, Tim and I all went to see A Pirate’s Life for Me, a choose-your-own-adventure pirate musical. It was about as amazing as it sounds – it was fun, it was pirates, it had songs, AND we got to choose to what happened! Max was utterly in his element, when the narrators announced the bad guys would indeed stop to plunder Nova Scotia, he cheered. We were more enthusiastic than the kids! The cast loved us. We are SO going back tomorrow.

Had so much fun flyering today. We spent most of our time hanging out by the Shrimps, who were still doing dance-offs, and basically mucked around with them for a couple of hours, managing to flyer a good load of people as well. I won a dance-off again, but was nowhere near as entertaining as Alistair, nor the Richard Simmonds-a-like who came along to try. Also went to see The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged with Freddie, featuring the girl from Late Night Impro Fight, and it was really good.

I had to run back to the hostel before the show to move rooms again, this time by myself into an all-girl room. I never thought I’d say it, especially only the day after I’d been ambushed in the bathroom by three of the guys, but I kinda already miss their banter. These girls won’t be playing ‘Who’s Got the Hat?’ any time soon.

Title: The Mysterious Quest for the Holy Grail
Hero: Gethin, a newly-celebrity’d Snow White
Villain: Nick, a surfer obsessed with toast. So obsessed, in fact, he was going to steal the Holy Grail and use it to bribe the Seven Dwarfs – renowned for their toast-making abilities, naturally – to make him toast.

It was… probably one of my favourites so far. It was fun, funny, energetic, had Max the Surfer God-Dude, and so many swipes at celebrity. I became some sort of pop culture-referencing MACHINE.

We were pretty hyper afterwards - to the extent that John and I faked an argument in the street which had him slapping me to the ground and hauling me up by my hair – and went to, where else, Frankenstein’s, where epic merriment ensued. On top of the usual awesome food and bottle of cider each, John also bought us a round of brightly-coloured test tube shots. After drinking an orange one, Alistair mimed having a dramatic scientific transformation, only to tear off his glasses. So we of course started wondering what other colours would do, and ended up having two more rounds just to see. A yellow one made him put the glasses back ON, and a green one – after we all waited with baited breath – made him and Tim switch voices.

Very merry after Frankenstein’s, we all went to see the Shambles, where some sort of brain filter seemed to have deactivated inside my head and I kept yelling all sorts of suggestions for their games, from ‘trained kangaroo’ for a weapon to ‘Brian Blessed’ for an accent. I ended up winning the balloon for Best Suggestion, and also had them make up a boy band song all about me in Serenade. And THEN we all went to Late Night Impro Fight and Take the Empire! WITH the Shambles, and WE GOT TO BE CONTESTANTS. We asked the girl reeeeally nicely, and it took a bit of convincing, but she finally agreed, on the conditions, “OK, ONE? You BUILD A CLOCK! Two?? You DON’T THROW SANDWICHES!!” Both of which may sound strange to someone who has not seen the show. But Alistair and I went up against a guy and a girl from the Shambles, and oh man, it was AMAZING.

One of the earliest questions is “True or False – when an otter is startled, it climaxes.” Later on, when Alistair and I had to guess one of the whale songs and were looking at each other in faces of absolute bafflement, one of the hosts said, “I’ve never seen such a startled expression in my life.” “Except for that otter,” said the other.

Another earlier remark by a host was, “Utterly disgusting, just like milking a baby.” Now, each team was given a bonnet each, and so of course we made the guys wear them. About halfway through one of the hosts just stopped and stared at the Shambles guy and remarked, “You look like a giant baby.” His response? “Please don’t milk me!”

We lost, though I was making a deliberate effort to get some of the questions wrong, having already seen the show twice. The guys weren’t all that happy to learn I’d thrown the game, but hey, ALL the Shambles were there, and they’d just done an awesome show for us, I was happy to let them win. Though I SWEAR Alistair and I ate more cucumber sandwiches than four. I had at least three crammed in my mouth at one time.

But lalalalala BEST NIGHT EVER.

Day 16, August 22nd

We all went to see A Pirate’s Life For Me again this morning, this time deliberately choosing completely different options and thus getting a completely different story. BEST IDEA FOR A PLAY EVER. And we were just as enthusiastic, if not more, cheering and booing and singing along and getting REALLY into it. Again, we were even more enthusiastic than the kids, who by the end were watching us as avidly as the play. And the bad guys won!! It was AWESOME.

They then returned the favour by coming to see our show, which alack was my last one, but also YAY, because what a hell of a show to go out on! Full house, high energy, and, well –

Title: The Ladybird of the Labyrinth
Hero: Matt, the Prime Minister, scared of penguins
Villain: John – BATMAN. FREAKING BATMAN!

Alex Parsons came up to watch us today – I went and got a baked potato with him at lunchtime – and he, wonderful guy that he is, suggested Batman, and oh man, Alistair’s and my festival was MADE. John was Christian Bale-esque Batman, with lots of “BROODING!”, and I, I got to be Adam West-esque Robin!!

“Well golly gosh gee willikers Batman, that was some adventure!”
“Silence, Robin! I am BROODING.”
“Oh, right! Because your parents are dead!”
“YES THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME.”
“Sorry sir, shall I get the therapist couch?”
“Yes, I think that would help.”

And the plan was that Batman would go on holiday for a chance to be evil and team up with THE Penguin and there was a labyrinth and Batman was ultimately defeated by a minotaur who was also the Chancellor of the Exchequer because – alas! – customs had taken away his Cow Repellent, and the burden of Wangst and BROODING passed onto Robin, and EEEEEEEEE IT WAS SO MUCH FUN.

The short form beforehand was also crazy fun. I have become such a fan of the Voice Throwing game, especially with John, and in Weakest Link – where four people do a scene then vote out one performer at the end before repeating it with just the people left still doing all the roles, and keep going till there’s one person doing the whole scene – I had such crazy energy that I was the one left at the end, trying to carry out a whole jousting tournament, ending by yelling, “I’M BRIAN BLESSED!”, which… like everything in improv, made perfect sense at the time.

I fully intended to finally go see Broken Holmes this evening, but when I got there I found out not only was it the last night but they’d also sold out. So I went to see The Noise Next Door instead, who were pretty fantastic, I must say – seriously professional improv comedy, even managing to take my suggestion of ‘Antarctica’ for an Apocalypse survivor and portray it as a person – and ended up staying up till 1am for Improvaganza, which was like Late Night Impro Fight only strangely had more of an atmosphere of a rock concert. Both were absolutely awesome, though I will be SHATTERED tomorrow.

Day 17, August 23rd

How do you celebrate your last day, and use up all your leftover posters at the same time? By taping performers under them to pillars on the Royal Mile, of course. John and Tim went first, and John was yelling so much and attracting so much attention (we gathered a small crowd at one point) that we got told off for detracting attention from the street performers. Best of all was one tiny girl who just came and stood pointing and laughing at John for ages. Then, when John wanted to go see a show, he started yelling for some princesses to come and kiss him on the cheek to set him free, and he seriously startled a couple of girls when he kept his word and erupted free from the posters with a yell of triumph after they obliged. I then took his place, even though it had started to rain, and shouted about how I’d become Poster-Girl after being bitten by a radioactive poster.

Around 1 the prodigal John Shafer returned and discovered me still taped to the pillar, with a lot of people stopping to take photos. I bust out shortly afterwards for another mini-showcase on the Mile – could have gone better – during the last scene of which I ended up falling flat on my back onto the pavement, whiiiich was really dirty and wet from the rain, sooo I got really dirty and wet as well. He admired my dedication. I marvelled at my lack of forethought.

We all went for lunch at this Thai place to celebrate the last day, which was fun and also delicious, and then went and flyered more. Down to only two flyers, I started declaiming,

‘Two flyers, both alike in dignity,
In fair Edinburgh where we lay our scene,
Where old fairytales break in new comedy,
Where Shellshock acts make Shellshock hands unclean…’

Unfortunately I then had to give away my second flyer, and after finally choosing a particular mother and daughter for my very very last flyer (who did actually come to the show!) I ran off to get ready with the others. It was a great last day’s flyering though – Alistair and I had been dancing to the street performer’s music, along with the Shrimps, and the postering-people-to-pillars was a great stunt, and a great laugh as well – and we ended up selling out again, even having to turn people away!

Title: The Light of the Door
Hero: Alistair, a hedgehog who became a Lego pirate and wanted to change back
Villain: Gethin as Julius Caesar, who could only see in black and white, and so decided to cross a rainbow to get to Kansas and live there instead.

It was such a fun show. It was all the best guys, and I was sitting with another guy called Matt, an improv veteran from my first year, having such a good time and enjoying it as an audience member rather than a performer. Though, seemingly for tradition’s sake, we utterly failed to get the title into the story until pretty much the last line of the epilogue. Hurray!

Afterwards we all headed back to the hostel, where John brought out four bottles of Cava and we made various speeches and gave out various honorary awards. Max got one for Enlightening Questions, Gethin for bruises I’d have to explain to my parents, and I got one for ‘being not only the token girl but a bloody good performer’. I also got one for ‘putting up with us when we keep interrupting her’, after which they yelled for me to make a speech, and of course started cheering as soon as I was one word in.

Four bottles later, we went off in search of food, and ended up in an all-you-can-eat chinese buffet, where we ate ourselves to the point of extreme lethargy. Most of the guys actually went back to their room for a power nap before the second venue party at C Soco gardens, whereas Alistair, Veteran Matt (who is actually a renowned nose-flutist, I should have mentioned) and I hung out in the stairwell, watching various people go by. One of these people was an awesomely cool midget with a bitchin’ hat, who stumbled on one step, then looked round at us and said, “You didn’t see aaaanythiiiing.”

When it became apparent that the guys had been serious about wanting a nap, we headed off to the party without them. The venue staff seriously loved us, they even offered us all jobs for the next two weeks! I would have been seriously tempted to take them up on it if I wasn’t going to America. When the others showed up, we went down to the mini beach (basically, some deckchairs on a heap of sand) and attempted to build sandcastles until it started to rain. I chatted a lot to Veteran Matt, and John attempted what resembled an alluring fish dance, which was just odd and I think he’d rather forget.

And now it’s all over! We all go our separate ways tomorrow – to our various homes, and to our various futures. John, Nick and Gethin graduated this year, and Gethin’s going to drama school while John and Nick have no idea what they’re going to do, but are talking vaguely about starting their own sketch comedy group. I’m doing my Masters, so I’ll still be at Durham with all the other guys, but it’s going to be weird without those three.

All the venue staff were asking whether we’d be back next year. Well, the polite ones were asking – those who’d had a bit more to drink were insisting, “You WILL be back next year, we will ORGANISE it for you.” Honestly? I would love to, but I can’t imagine it being better than this year. This has been exactly the kind of experience I dreamed it would be. I’ve met so many awesome new people, Shellshock has become that much more a tight-knit group, I’ve improved SO much at improv and also (cliché as it is) grown as a person, and most importantly, had all those crazy random experiences which you can’t fully explain to anyone who wasn’t there which make life truly awesome. Not for lack of trying in this journal, of course.

I still keep dwelling on how awesome it was. Just last night (I'm finishing typing this up in America) I dreamed I was back there, only it was all happening on a beach, for some reason. I'm seriously lucky I had Portland to come to straight after, or I'd probably still be at home in a kind of post-awesome-daze.

I'm also still struggling to think of a good way to end this. I guess all I can say is - if you ever get the opportunity to go to the Edinburgh Festival, as a performer or as a visitor, then go. GO. It's completely unlike anything I've seen before. Just for that reason, I bet I WILL go next summer - I doubt it could be the same way twice.

Besides, I want to see what the Take the Empire! guys come up with NEXT year.

Edinburgh! - the Journal, Part 2

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:35:52 GMT

Day 5, August 11th

Today was a momentous day: after my performance in the VaryTale yesterday, I was upgraded from a ‘quiet’ performer to a ‘middler’; I was given a Lad Five by John, to the horror of all the other guys (“She can’t do Lad Fives, she’s a LADY!”); and I got my accidental revenge on Gethin for hitting my head against the stage that time by punching him in the nads. I no longer feel the need to keep the ‘times I want to punch Gethin’ stat – the debt has been repaid, and then some.

Trying out a new flyering technique, Katie and I ran up and down the Royal Mile, asking various guys if they’d seen Prince Charming anywhere, because we needed him for our show that afternoon. Pretty much all the guys – the ones without girlfriends, anyway – would reply, “Yeah, it’s me!”, and some who admitted they couldn’t come to the show still told us it was a good pitch. Guys with girlfriends didn’t seem so keen though. I also ran into my friend David, completely randomly and unexpectedly – when Katie saw me running towards a seemingly random guy screaming and jumping on him in a huge hug, she just thought, “Huh, that’s a new flyering technique…”

Another shout-out to an awesome place in Edinburgh – a café called Chocolate Soup. When it started chucking with rain, we retreated in there and got hot chocolates, which they make with shots of real melted dark chocolate. OM NOM. We also went to see Out of the Blue, an all-male a cappella group from Oxford University, who are… fantastic. Genius. They do versions of modern pop songs, and make them awesome. I never even liked ‘Poker Face’ before I saw them do it.

Onto the VaryTale:

Title: The Arm of the Shotputter
Hero: Gethin, a hairdresser scared of sharks
Villain: Tim, Cinderella, who’d become a pirate for some reason. And wanted to get rid of a village, for a similar reason, apparently.

Slightly messy plot, but still entertaining all the way through. We had the most kids in the audience yet, Gethin was horrified.

We were all going to see The Penny Dreadfuls - a sketch group who’d started off in a Victoriana style, but now were going in a more sci-fi direction - in the evening, much to Alistair’s glee. Quite a few of the others were going to see another show first, so those who weren’t went to Alistair’s friend’s flat and made a giant spaghetti bolognese for all of us. NUTRITION! I originally kept out of the way and let the guys have their manly-cooking-off, but poor Matt clearly never had a parent tell him to keep the root of the onion on for as long as possible when chopping it, and was left in extreme pain with tears streaming down his face, so I stepped in. I’ve watched my dad make bolognese from when I was tiny, and helped chop stuff up since I could be trusted with a knife. If there’s one thing I can do in a kitchen, it’s chop up vegetables.

After, we headed off to The Penny Dreadfuls, which was an ace show – kind of a cross between The Prisoner and The Bourne Ultimatum, and just generally hilarious and inventive, being performed by only three guys but each one having at least three roles. I could see why Alistair fanboyed them so much. He wants to write a show in a similar style for next year, either set in the 30s film noir-stylee or with pirates. I pointed out he could use both. Gangster pirates!

Then we had a late-night showcase at the SweetHeart venue, basically in a bar in an evening of comedy. I was kinda nervous before, until I saw one of the preceding acts – two women in crazy wigs reading various poems about, well, poo. Seriously. They had about three on the subject. We had no trouble whatsoever following them. It was a pretty good show, though, we had a great time not having to worry about being child friendly – and, as I said at the start, I accidentally punched Gethin in the nads. “That was harsh!” he protested afterwards. “No,” John corrected him, “that was karma.”

Day 6, August 12th

Today was exhausting. Seriously exhausting. We did a practise in the afternoon to bring Katie up to speed in time for her to do a few performances before she had to go home, and that on top of busyness and late nights and early mornings meant I actually dozed off this afternoon for half an hour before the show. Also tonight would be my first night as the villain, and during practise, I didn’t feel like I’d done as well as I could, and the fact John kept calling the practise VaryTales to a halt in order to give feedback rather than letting them end meant I subconsciously started to feel like a failure. In practises before Edinburgh, calling the VaryTale to a halt was a sign of it being badder than bad, though here, it was more for timing reasons. I couldn’t get the subconscious association out of my head though, so yeah.

John noticed my mood had plummeted though, and did his utmost to cheer me up. In the warm-up before the show, he went round saying how great we each were, and particularly loaded me with compliments about how great a performer I was, how I had nothing to worry about, and what generally nice eyes I had. I knew what he was doing, and it was nice, though it must have looked reeeally weird to the others.

Title: The Colander of the Castle
Hero: Alistair, a gravedigger who really really liked chocolate
Villain: Me, erk, as Ursula from The Little Mermaid

Well, it could have gone a whole lot worse. I’m always more critical of the VaryTales I’m in, especially where I’m a central role, and I felt like it went badly, though the others said it was fine, and even Gethin didn’t have many complaints about it. The others took his lack of notes as a good sign. I took it as a sign of mediocrity.

But I called up my parents and they made me feel much better, as they have a knack of doing.

Day 7, August 13th

Today we tried a new approach to flyering – dressing up. We all got into our costumes (which, I realise I haven’t said, are white shirts, black trousers rolled up to the knee, white tights and black plimsolls) and donned various props we also had – I was a duck pirate, Nick a jester, and Gethin was wandering around in my Jayne hat with Matt as a monkey clinging to his side. We certainly got a lot more attention.

After my sad face yesterday, John decided we should go to the Meadows at lunchtime and play some improv games to ‘rediscover the fun’. We were becoming too stressed and concerned with making a coherent plot and were forgetting how improv was supposed to be FUN, he said. And it really, really worked. We started off with some of the more fun warm-ups, and after Alistair picked up Tim under one arm and ran off with him and Gethin with Nick on his back set off in pursuit, we lost all semblance of being organised, and ended up having exuberant piggy-back and wheelbarrow races, much to the amusement of a local school having a picnic nearby.

We packed it in after a game of Stuck-in-the-Mud again devolved into Alistair sprinting off with Gethin in pursuit across the field, and headed off to a bit more flyering and then the show, a bit more tired than usual, but certainly a lot happier. And I like to think it showed in the performance.

Title: Weeeell, it didn’t have a title – we kinda forgot to ask for one – but given that we’d sucked as of late at getting our titles integrally into the plot, it wasn’t a big problem.
Hero: Matt, a dragon who enjoyed cheese-rolling
Villain: Gethin as Shakespeare, who had a very complicated plan involving turning women into books and plagiarising the Tempest.

It was a really good show! We practically sold out, Matt did a great job as the dragon, Katie had a ball as the Road Safety Zebra (definite nominee for the randomest side character in a VaryTale yet) and Shakespeare may just have been the role Gethin was born to play. With the breeches, background knowledge and his ability to recite speeches from Richard III at the drop of a hat (he was in it once), he was just a really good villain. And the climax – where Shakespeare was crushed by a rolling cheese, being played by Rhys rolling across the stage yelling “CHEESE!” – may be my favourite of all time. So, WOO.

Generally, the group was just more cohesive today, and it really helped. Matt got his first Lad Five, and I got a high-five off Rhys, another Lad Five off John, and Gethin, upon protesting again that I was a Lady, gave me a newly-invented Boobs Five. I may have to start keeping the stat about punching him again.

After the show, I did a big wash of all the white shirts and tights, much to the gratitude of the guys, and after getting fish & chips at Grassmarket (or, more accurately, most of the guys had haggis & chips, to varying degrees of success) we went to a comedy showcase at C Soco gardens. It took place outside in the middle of an ‘urban garden’ – a maze constructed out of metal barriers covered in green strips of fabric like vines – and the stage was a giant chessboard. It was pretty surreal, to be honest, especially when all the power went out within the first five minutes. But it was still really good – an all-girl comedy group? It’s more likely than you think – and there was awesome timing, as the hosts launched into a song at the end, and just as they sang about how great Edinburgh was, the Edinburgh Tattoo fireworks went off, and everyone cheered.

It was good to get out of the room, as the guys seem to be getting a little stir-crazy. Banter levels are going through the ROOF.

Day 8, August 14th

Today it was absolutely tipping it down with rain, so we decided to pack in flyering as soon as John found out we’d already sold eighteen tickets. That was plenty for an audience, we reasoned, we’d far rather sit inside in the dry. We retreated into Chocolate Soup again – far more success at finishing my hot chocolate this time, as I was getting used to the OMG RICHNESS – where we discovered, thanks to the Durham newspaper Palatinate, that we were getting in a reviewer the following night. Thiiis was pretty daunting news. I immediately got butterflies all over again – I was already set to perform, since my parents were coming up to watch – John resolved not to tell the others, lest they get nervous as well, and Gethin was thrilled. He’s going to drama school, any reviews he can get are great.

Katie and I also went to see Much Ado About Nothing. We both really liked the play, and we’d seen them do a few showcases on the Mile, where they’d claimed to have the World’s Most Giant Actor, having Don Pedro riding around on Leonato’s shoulders. We disagreed and pointed out Alistair, but also decided we’d go see them, on the strength of their Scrubs reference. And they were pretty good! We were laughing the loudest at the back – when we spoke to them later on the Mile, they said they’d loved us for that – and their Benedick was fantastic.

We then headed off to the show to find out that, in spite of our lacklustre flyering attempts, we’d SOLD OUT, AGAIN. The houseketeers had to sit on the steps, there weren’t any seats left!

Title: The Paper Prince and the Donkey from Shrek
Hero: Me as the aforementioned Paper Prince, a prince made of paper who was passionately in love with fire. Talk about starcrossed.
Villain: John as the Donkey from Shrek, who wanted friends, and so decided to make the whole kingdom deaf so he’d be the only one left audible.

The climax was a bit messy, but I had lots of fun with this one. Every time I touched someone I gave them a papercut, I truly angsted about my love for fire, and Ali had great fun with my lighting – I’d cry, making the light blue, which would make me soggy, so my bodyguard Gethin would call for the sun lamp, so Ali would turn on the spotlight and I’d straighten again. And John as Donkey ended up getting some Lilliputian friends who lived on his back, and I was voicing them from offstage, so when I ended up having a conversation with them onstage in the climax, it was… well, interesting, to say the least.

In the evening, we were all going to go see East, another play from Durham going on at Augustine’s so we could get in for free. But on the way, Tim and I were stopped by a guy from a show called Seven Deadly Sketches, who seemed pretty friendly and enthusiastic as he tried to flyer us for their penultimate show. I was interested even BEFORE he suddenly grabbed me and pulled me out of the way of a police van rocketing up the Mile without its sirens on. “I saved your life!” he said triumphantly, “That means you have to come see my show!”

That seemed like a perfectly valid argument to me, so I took my leave of the others and went to find some dinner at Burger King. And so I found myself on South Bridge with dinner, looking across at Balmoral, Waverley and the wilderness beyond in mild rain, thinking about how my life was pretty sweet right then. And the show itself was actually pretty good! They gave everyone Wotsits halfway through – the front two rows were filled with American students, who were utterly perplexed by them – and they did a Crystal Maze sketch, which, with the original theme music, sent everyone rocketing back into nostalgia. Oh man, I LOVED the Crystal Maze.

I also got called by my friend Dan before the show, who used to go to improv and was actually the one who made me aware of its existence in my first year, and he asked me how it was all going. Fifteen minutes of excited raving later, I think he regretted asking.

Day 9, August 15th

Today my parents came up to see the show, so I pretty much took most of the day off to spend time with them. They were staying in Balmoral – their excuse being, it was the only place with any rooms left in Edinburgh – which was quite peculiar, because I’d been looking at the Balmoral clocktower pretty much every night from our hostel window.

So, tonight we apparently had a reviewer in. Well, there could have been a better night.

Title: The Lamp of Las Vegas
Hero: Gethin, a… pheasant plucker. My MUM suggested that. Yeah. Gethin reacted in horror (“There are KIDS in the audience!”) and Alistair in wonderment (“YOUR MUM IS AMAZING”). Which I think says quite a bit about their respective faith in their own abilities to not be filthy.
Villain: Tim as Henry VIII, who had… a kinda complicated plan which I can’t remember entirely. We all had to go to Las Vegas, I remember that. And there was a lamp. It wasn’t the most plot-coherent VaryTale.

So, yes. The pheasant plucker. We got about as many jokes out of that as you can imagine – Gethin going on about how much he enjoyed plucking pheasants, how much he hated his plucking cousin, and when he finally plucked Tim to death, my remark, “Wow, you plucked him hard and fast there.” “Yeah, it was almost over too quickly.” I myself was two of Henry’s wives – my first one was executed in the very first scene – and also an armless executioner, who killed people elaborately with my feet. It was a little bizarre.

Afterwards, my parents took us all out to the Hard Rock café, where my mum was similarly astounded by Gethin’s appetite. He ate his own (awesome) burger in about two bites, and then finished off her meal as well for good measure, while Alistair finished mine. We also realised just how many people in the group were children of doctors. Generally awesome food and great fun all hanging out.

We went on a mini-adventure after that in an attempt to find a show to watch that night, and ended up going to see Late Night Impro Fight. Basically, the Scat Pack – a London improv group, doing their own show a bit similar to ours called Lights! Camera! Improvise! - chose people from various improv groups in various shows around Edinburgh, and did a show with them, where they were scored on how funny they were. Of course, this scoring was hardly accurate – someone who’d just made an awesome joke could get a ‘1’ added before their score, so it might leap from ‘532’ to ‘1532’, whereas someone who made a terrible pun might just get a minus sign put before it, instantly catapulting them into last place. But the performers they got were all really good (three girls! Woo!) and it was generally a really fun night.

Afterwards, there was an announcement saying that if we stayed in our seats, we could watch the Victorian game show Take the Empire! for free. Now, anyone who has spoken to me at all in the last two weeks will have already heard ALL about this show, but at the time, we were just like, “Eh, free show, don’t have to get up, we’re in.” Turns out? It was AMAZING.

It’s just the very simple but very awesome format of two guys hosting a Victorian game show with contestants from the audience. There were rounds like building a model of Big Ben out of cardboard, eating as many cucumber sandwiches as possible in 30 seconds, ‘Oscar Wilde’s guide to banging strumpets’ (“The woman’s feeble mind has caught up with the conversation and she is becoming hysterical! Do you a) Slap her, b) Slap her or c) Slap her?” “Er… a) Slap her?” “No, the answer is B) Slap her! No-one ever gets that.”) and ‘What part of a wolf am I thinking of?’ The last one is exactly what it sounds – one of the presenters would think of a part of a wolf, and the contestants had to guess which. “Snout?” “No.” “Tail?” “No, that was LAST night.” “Paw?” “Which one?” “… Front left?” “No.” “Back right?” “No, it’s none of the paws.” “Spleen?” “Ooh, moving inside! No.”

It was amazing – the first show we were left in awe of – and we were all, most definitely, going back to watch it again.

Day 10, August 16th

Woke up bright and early(er) and climbed Arthur’s Seat with my dad, which, unfortunately, has absolutely nothing to do with King Arthur. Honestly, there’s only one Arthur worth talking about in the British Isles (sorry, Arthur Dent). It was a hell of a climb, but we made it all the way to the top, where it was reeeeally windy and wet. There a photo of me on the rocky outcrop of the top, smiling happily, but if you look, you can see I’m clinging onto the rocks behind me for dear life so that I’m not blown away. Seriously. I cannot convey how windy it was. My DAD was staggering all over the place. When he raised the camera to take a photo, the increase in surface area for the wind to gust against almost knocked him over.

It started raining on the way back, so I ducked back to Balmoral with him. I was going to meet them at Bella Italia for lunch, but I stopped to watch Frankie and the other girls of In the Pink (the girl version of Out of the Blue) performing on the Royal Mile for the first time.

After lunch, there was epic heavy-duty flyering. The night before we hadn’t sold out, unlike the two nights before, and we found out from the box office that we hadn’t sold any tickets at all yet that day. Having two sell-outs so early in the run really spoiled us, and we wanted that again. Weather was still pretty crap, but we soldiered on.

Title: The Next run by Iguanas
Hero: Matt, a centaur
Villain: Alistair as Darth Vader, which was AMAZING. He came on humming the Imperial March to himself, and the audience all immediately joined in, until Alistair didn’t even need to do it any more – every time he stepped onstage, they’d all go “BOM BOM BOM, BOM BA-BOM, BOM BA-BOM.”

They were both after the One Ring, which turned out to be in a Next run by iguanas, of course. There was also an extremely memorable turn by Max as a grapevine, who had all the information in the forest. Sigh. Our puns really are shameless.

We all went off to Pizza Hut afterwards, which was awesome, because we all seemed to regress into overexcited 5-year-olds, Max in particular, who kept asking about the ice-cream factory. We had a very understanding waiter though, who gave us unlimited trips to the salad bar, so we basically got as much green as we could to tide us through the rest of the trip. Alistair, Matt, Tim and I had a rematch of our epic Game from Frankenstein’s, which really confused Nick at first, because he thought there WERE rules. It didn’t help that Gethin and Rhys were playing games like ‘Who’s Got the Hat?’ at the other end of the table, which do have rules, just really dumb ones you aren’t allowed to tell anyone. Oh, and ‘Name an Animal’. That has no rules, other than whichever animal gets named last is NEVER an animal.

Then we went to the Paradise Green Cast & Crew party over at C Soco gardens. Oh, it was amazing, and such a perfect demonstration of what happens if you get a bunch of improvisers that little bit wasted and leave them in a room together. John claimed to the staff that we shut each other up by stroking each other’s faces, and it immediately became a ‘thing’ for the evening, and we all tried to freak out John by getting right in his personal space, and Ali decided that he was Shakira and his hips also did not lie – and that was just in the bar! Around 3am we were moved up to the dancefloor where, my word, more epic mime and interpretative dance has never before been seen in Edinburgh. There was a dance-off, John got very elaborate and Nick very bouncy and Alistair seemed to have even more limbs than usual, and we just had FUN. We were there till 5am, when it closed, and we made our slow meandering way back to the hostel through the damp slowly-awakening streets of Edinburgh.

Oh, and the Lad Five claimed its first injury. I’m amazed it took this long, to be honest. As Max was leaving, he and John Lad-Fived, and both being a bit drunk and not entirely of control of motor functions, they both REALLY went for it and ended up on the floor clutching their foreheads, yelling in pain. “What – what the hell just happened?” the venue staff asked. “Lad-Five,” Alistair and I shrugged.

Wow. Today was a crazily long day.

Day 11, August 17th

DAY OFF! Slept in till 11 after late night/early morning of mega awesome dancing, and then me and some of the other guys crawled along to Wetherspoons for cheap food of goodness. I borrowed Alistair’s laptop upon our return to check how the internet had been getting along in my absence – so many webcomics to catch up on! – and then headed off to the Royal Mile with the others, because we were doing a mini-showcase on one of the mini-stages.

We’d decided to choose our loudest performers for that one, so Alistair, John, Rhys and Gethin, and then I got to be in it as well, because I’d pointed out we needed five to Alistair, who was organising it, the night before. At the time he’d already been a bit wasted, so he was just like, “Huh. Yeah. OK, you wanna be the fifth?” And it actually went pretty well! We were loud, physical, energetic, Gethin ran around with me on his back for a lot of it, though it did end on the charming moral of ‘incest is best’. That’s what they get for deciding during a Brothers Grimm rendition of Hansel & Gretel (basically, two guys – the Brothers Grimm – stand at the side and can make changes to a scene whenever they like) that what the story needs is MORE LUST. Yeeeahh…

It being our afternoon off, I could FINALLY go see Princess Cabaret, which was… AMAZING. It’s a show done by about eight Australian girls, with songs and scenes basically depicting all the Disney princesses and what might have happened to them after their Happily Ever Afters. It had such wonders as Sebastian asking Ariel, upon her declaration of her desire to be a human, “Is this like last week when you wanted to be a seahorse?”, Sleeping Beauty waking up after 100 years and being COMPLETELY inappropriate because of it (“Gracious, there are a lot of darkies around, aren’t there?”), and Belle - oh man, that may have been my favourite. First scene, she’s reassured by the talking teapot that the Beast only controls them so harshly because he loves them. Second, she’s perfectly happily brainwashed as well, reading and singing about her favourite book in the world, TWILIGHT. Third, the Beast has finally become human – much to Belle’s disappointment, who’s become a Furry. Just – it was amazingly clever, hilarious, the girls were all fantastically talented. Possibly my favourite show of the Fringe, competing only with Take the Empire!

We had dinner at Frankenstein’s again, because if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and this time they were showing Van Helsing on the big screen, leading to a lot of staring in wonderment at what was happening onscreen. “Is that… a machine crossbow??” “Yeah…” We then headed back, fully intending to take advantage of our day off to get an early night.

What ACTUALLY happened was we got talking to the people in our room. Gethin was once again in his element as a bunch of French girls arrived to talk to one of their friends who was in with us, and Max asked Sam, a French-Canadian girl, whether there was also a German-Canadia, immediately elevating the evening to Legendary status. It was just a really great quiet night, chatting and bonding and sharing cultures and all that. Sam was horrified to learn that most of our knowledge of Canada came from watching Due South, though she was vastly cheered up by Gethin’s pronunciation of ‘Mountie’.

Edinburgh! - the Journal, Part 1

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:32:15 GMT

OK, so, I'm in Americaland and it is AMAZING, but before I can post all about that I REALLY need to post the journal I kept of the Edinburgh festival. It doesn't all fit in one entry, so I'm going to split it into three. Here goes:

Day 1

Edinburgh is amazing! This show is going to be so much fun, but alas, how will I ever express my love for John? I fear it will be forever unrequited, and while I’m sure Gethin would be fun for a quick fling, it just wouldn’t be the same, and guys, seriously, stop reading my journal, you fuckwits. I’m not going to be writing anything like that in here, my parents are probably going to read this. You’ll just have to guess amongst yourselves who I have a burning passion for. I’ll take bets till Sunday 24th.

(six pages later)

The REAL Edinburgh Journal!

Before I begin, I feel you should have a brief introduction to the cast of this journal.

John Shafer - Director, Improv veteran, Norse scholar, attempting to develop the hair of Judas the Baptist from Godspell.
John Davis - Producer as well as performer, the one who got us sorry lot together. As we discovered at the C Soco party, can swing widely from hyper-organised taskmaster to Scottish lad proficient in elaborate mime-dancing after just a couple of pints.
Alistair - Friendly giant who is more limbs than man, Penny Dreadfuls fanboy, also fond of yelling “BOOM” and “WEASELS” when the mood takes him.
Matt - Being the youngest of us, and also unfortunately the shortest, and even more unfortunately possessing Doctor Who pyjamas, made him the ‘kid’ of the group. Teasing was always well-meaning with no real malicious intent, but still, I feel a bit bad now.
Gethin - The only Srs Bzns actor amongst us, actually going to drama school in October. Prone to acts of physical violence in his improv (hey, pain is energetic), leaving me with various bruises I’ll have to explain to my parents.
Rhys - Gethin’s Partner in Lad-ness, Master of Banter and games like ‘Name an Animal’. Together, they invented ‘Lad Fives’, a high-five with the hands on the forehead, so basically headbutting with hands in the way. Cheers mate, he’d bloody love a concussion.
Nick - Possessing possibly the friendliest face you will ever see, Nick is just NICE, and also awesome at creating characters and committing to them. Known by the venue staff as ‘Like Gethin, only smaller.’ Also far less violent.
Max - As Nepos described Alcibiades, ‘a contradiction of a man’ – exhibiting childlike joy over such things as the Pizza Hut ice-cream factory and the dinosaur show, which just makes his dirty jokes and depraved comments even more startling. Also asker of such legendary questions as “So, is there a German-Canadia?”
Tim - In a pretty damn nerdy group, Tim possibly took the crown of King Geek. We all became far too acquainted with his pirate metal alarm on his phone.
Katie Evans - The only other girl in the group, who unfortunately developed suspected swine flu about a week before we were due to leave. She made it up for a few days, but most of the time, it was just me and the nine lads. Oo-er.
Ali - our genius techie. We’d never even had a techie before. But he was awesome. Now wary of Norwegians.

Anyway, that’s everyone important. Now, onto the journal!

Day 1, August 7th

Arrived in Edinburgh, slept pretty much the entire train journey up here after not being able to sleep last night. Nerves, excitement, unidentified nausea, I don’t know what it was. First thing we did was go to the park next to the Scott Monument and talk about the game plan for the next two weeks (in short: flyer all day, perform every afternoon, have evening free to see shows and stuff), and also go round in a circle and critique each other as performers, saying stuff we liked and stuff we thought they could improve on. I got,

Gethin: “Well, you’re a girl, and we like that!”
John Shafer: “… I THINK what he means is that you’re not afraid to use your femininity in your comedy, and you’re good at it, so that’s unique to you.”
John Davis: “Yeah… that’s totally what he meant.”

Got lunch from Sainsburys – loads of bread and cheap food – and went to look round. The Royal Mile is… something else. So many people flyering for so many different shows, musicals next to comedy shows next to Shakespeare next to Sweeney Todd next to ‘arty’ and ‘edgy’ shows like Beast, the story of ‘an artist and his whore’, ‘part play part poem’. First one on list of things I will NOT see.

Went to check out the venue, this little theatre called the Vault opposite a bar and, as I later discovered, a brothel. It seats 42 (hee), and the stage is set under a giant arch, which is all kinds of awesome. We set up lighting and stuff with the help of the techie, Jo, and have already won the staff’s loyalty and love by buying them all lots of chocolates.

We did a practise VaryTale. Quick explanation of the format – we do a few short-form sketches, then make up an entire VaryTale (usually 20-25 minutes) based on suggestions of a Hero, a Villain and a title from the audience. The hero, villain and narrator are chosen in advance, and there are three others in each show to play supporting characters.

Title: The Red of October
Hero: Nick, an Elvis impersonator
Villain: Gethin, Dr Broom
The basic (attempt at a) plot was Nick trying to get hold of some blue suede shoes, and Gethin trying to make his daughter (me) happy and feed her enough sweets, the Red of October, to make her into a giant to take over the world. It was… a pretty weird one, but not a complete disaster. We tried another brief one to test out the lighting, and that looked like it was heading in a much better direction, so that was encouraging.

We went and checked into the hostel – we’re on the 4th floor and the lift is rubbish, worse luck – and I’m in a room with six of the guys. Alistair and Ali are in another room, and Gethin, in one of the best displays of karma I’ve ever seen, nobly volunteered to take the lone bed in a 10-person room away from the rest of us… and discovered the other inhabitants were six French girls. Gethin’s just finished a degree in modern languages. They were delighted to discover an English guy (well, Welsh, techically) who spoke French, but not as delighted as him, I don’t think.

There was a comedian, Shed Simove, performing in the hostel. I was looking at the flyers for it, when a guy came up behind me.

Guy: Hey, that’s supposed to be really good.
Me: (not turning round) Really?
Shed Simove: Well, yeah, it’s me.

Oops.

Another cheap-food-split-fest from Sainsbury’s for dinner (tucking lettuce into basics pasties, we’re classy folk) and then some of us listened to John Shafer’s talk on ‘violence-motivated far-travel in Norse mythology’ which he wanted to practise before delivering it at a conference in Sweden which he was leaving us for the next day. Actually pretty interesting.

(I started off this journal keeping certain stats, like in Bridget Jones, like how many flyers I’d been given and how much we spent on food. I soon stopped, because I couldn’t be bothered to work out stuff like the food costs, and trying to keep count of flyers I’d received and given would have been suicidal. I just mention it here because at first I kept a stat entitled ‘Times I Wanted To Punch Gethin in the Face’. I made it up as a joke, but Gethin insisted I keep it for real. So, today, it was about 3.)

Day 2, August 8th

Opening night, first sketch. A mess of stage lights, nerves, excitement, adrenaline, nausea, expectant audience faces and the smell of fresh paint backstage from where they just repainted the floor of the stage for you. Especially in improv, the various directions a scene can go are infinite, and it’s down to you to keep your wits about you and be entertaining. Standing there in the glare of the stage lights and hardly able to see the audience but knowing they can see you all too clearly can be completely overwhelming.

But if you’re really lucky, you’ll have a Gethin onstage with you, who’ll snap you out of it by grabbing you and throwing you to the floor yelling “EAT THE PEAS!!”

I get ahead of myself. Today was our first day flyering, and really, the Royal Mile is amazing, bustling with flyerers and street performers and mini-showcases happening constantly on the three stages dotted up the street and people wandering through it all trying to decide which shows to go see. Some flyerers are really enthusiastic and have great advertising strategies – like A Respectable Wedding, which has four brides leading four grooms around on dog collars and leads – whereas some seem to be lacking that advertising zeal, like a very bored sounding Sweeney Todd flyerer I heard calling, “He will have vengeance, he will have salvation…” like he was announcing cricket results. I also saw a really creepy puppet in a wheelchair and three guys driving a sofa. I already LOVE Edinburgh.

Alistair and I went to this ‘Meet the Media’ event after lunch, where we had the chance to speak to various magazines and newspapers who might come review our show. It was a really hot airless room, and basically involved queueing for ages to speak to journalists for about two minutes each. There was a table of pear cider in the corner, and lots of people were standing around with glasses, and after about an hour it was starting to look REALLY good, even though we guessed it would probably be hideously expensive, given the captive audience. But eventually we gave in, and I went up to see how much it was.

Me: Hey, how much is the pear cider?
Sales girl: Oh, it’s free samples, would you like a glass?
Me: !?!?!?!?!?!? YES.

Alistair: Hey, how much was it?
Me: FREE.
Alistair: WUT?
Me: YEAH.
Cloud of dust where Alistair was standing just a second ago: *swirls*

We were very very happy. That is, until we joined the queue for the Scotsman. The othe journalists – Fringe Review, Hairline, Broadway Baby, the BBC even – we saw all of within about an hour and 20 minutes altogether. The Scotsman? We were queueing for AN HOUR AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. And by the time we reached the front of the line, the event was coming to an end, and we only got to speak to the guy for about a minute, and he wasn’t even listening. He was asking questions about his chair. We would have been far more annoyed, but we were just happy to get out of there and back into fresh air.

We headed straight to meet Alistair’s parents, who were taking everyone out for dinner that night. They took pity on us and bought us Costa drinks and baked goods. TIFFIN YAY. But by the time we went to dinner itself, my appetite evaporated, to be replaced by some of the worst nerves I’ve ever had. I literally couldn’t eat a single bit of pasta without wanting to hurl, even though Gethin seemed to make it his personal mission to make me eat.

“Eat Your Food.”
“You know, my father once taught me something that has always stayed with me – Eat Your Food.”
“And lo, God did speak to his people and give them commandments, the first and foremost of which was Eat Your Food.”
“Hey Rhys, what’s the name of that Russian ballerina? The really good one? I can’t remember her first name, but her surname, what was it, oh yes, Eat Your Food.”

He eventually gave up though, and ate it all himself instead. This would become a common occurrence over the next two weeks.

But the show actually went really well! It was a small audience, and almost entirely comprised of Alistair’s family, but it was nice as a sort of warm-up. As said I said at the start, the most memorable part for me was probably the first sketch, the Half-Life (do a scene in a minute, then repeat it in 30 seconds, then 10) when Gethin threw me to the ground and I hit my head against the stage. There was an audible DONK and the audience all went “Oooh!” in alarm, but I was fine. Didn’t stop the guys watching out for concussion though.

We have about four or five sketches before launching into the VaryTale itself, which tonight was:

Title: The Death of Little Red Riding Hood
Hero: Alistair, a potato masher who enjoyed cleaning up after elephants
Villain: Nick as Jack the Ripper, who was tired of killing and instead wanted to create life – more specifically, a giant multi-limbed prostitute monster.

Yeah. So much for family friendly. Although that had pretty much gone out the window from the game Interrogation, where a guy has committed a crime, only he doesn’t know what, and has to guess from the questions of the interrogators – which, today, thanks to the suggestion of Alistair’s brother, was ‘he raped a pigeon’.

One of the main things we learned in practises was that the villain’s plot needs to affect the hero as soon as possible, so I played Little Red Riding Hood as the hero’s daughter, who also happened to be moonlighting as a prostitute. I was murdered by Nick in the fourth scene, and apparently, the lighting in that scene was epic – as I chatted to Nick as Jack the Ripper, utterly oblivious to who he was, the light on me got slowly redder and redder, intensifying even more as I turned my back on him and monologued about how safe I felt now that the Big Bad Wolf had been defeated. Finally, just as I declared how I felt everything would be all right now, and Nick stepped forward and slashed my throat from behind, the light went all red, and I died. Again, the audience went, “OOOOH.” Major kudos to Ali for that scene. Sure, it wasn’t very ‘comedic’, but it was all fine again by the end, where I was brought back to life by the magical elephant Alistair had met.

(That’s one thing about improv: all these plot developments make perfect sense when the play is being performed. Trying to explain them afterwards? BIZARRE.)

But yeah. I’d been so nervous beforehand. Now? I was BUZZING. We headed back to the hostel, talking it all over, still watching out for concussion. Very little else happened that night, except for Ali being seduced by a Norwegian girl who then stole his hat and disappeared into the night. He was very sad about his hat.

Day 3, August 9th

We woke up this morning to the news that an Australian had peed on Alistair’s bed in the night. Apparently Alistair had woken up around 4am to find a guy standing at the end of his bed, just peeing perfectly calmly. Alistair had stared at him, in utter bafflement, before managing to ask, “What the hell are you doing??”

The Australian, upon noticing Alistair there, just nodded at him and said, “All right?” before returning to the task at hand.

Alistair says his brain shut down at that point, unable to believe that this was really happening and he hadn’t just stumbled into some kind of sitcom or wacky comedy, and he’d lain back down, thinking, “Is this happening? Am I awake? Yes, yes I am, an Australian DID just piss on your bed, WHAT THE HELL.” By the time he sat up again, the Australian had returned to his bed, so Alistair had to get up and wake him up.

“Dude, you just pissed on my bed!”
“Did I?”
“Yes! There’s a puddle!”
“Oh.” *pause* “I don’t normally do that.”

Even better, the next morning, the Australian realised his girlfriend was missing. He’d been pretty wasted the night before and couldn’t remember where she’d gone. She was later discovered in the communal area, where she’d fled in shame to sleep after seeing her boyfriend peeing on a random guy’s bed. Apparently there was a pretty frosty silence between the two of them when they were packing to leave that morning.

Today’s flyering was greatly helped by the fact we’d mixed up our previews discount AND 2-for-1 weekend, so tickets for the show were only £2.50. We had an audience of about 33, which for a second night of a first time show – unreviewed student improv comedy, furthermore – was really good. We also got in quite a few of the venue staff, curious about us, and they all really loved it.

At lunchtime we went to see some friends of Alistair’s, the Bristol improv group ‘Goats in the Shell’, in their show ‘Myth-Illogical Improv’. Like us taking suggestions for hero, villain and title from the audience, they took a universal question (ours was ‘Why does toast always land butter-side down?’) and a setting (the Trojan War) and created a new myth to explain it. They were really good, though their venue was pretty far out, and we all showed up a bit late. “Oh, how embarrassing,” said the compere upon seeing us all sneak in in our VaryTales T-shirts, “you’re all wearing the same outfit!”

After the show I dashed back to the city centre to meet Beccy, who was stopping in Edinburgh for a few hours on her way back to Durham. I was quite a bit more relaxed now, especially since I wasn’t in the show that night, so my appetite returned in full force in time for lunch. I took the afternoon off flyering and went around Edinburgh a bit with her before seeing her off on the train, grabbing some dinner, and heading to the show.

We actually had kids in the audience today, so we were having to be veeery careful. One of the sketches – Correspondence, where a fictional character and a historical character write letters to each other, being created by two guys playing each person saying alternate words – was King Kong and Abraham Lincolm writing to each other. Gethin and Rhys were King Kong and walked a VERY fine line, talking about ‘climbing Lincoln’s tall tower’, which was just made perfect by Lincoln’s response: “Dear King Kong, I think you are trying to make an innuendo, and I disapprove, so please stop.” The only response for which, of course, was Gethin and Rhys’s, “In YOUR endo.”

So, anyway, the VaryTale itself.

Title: The Last Ring of the Castle in the Sky
Hero: Matt, a dentist allergic to toothpaste
Villain: Gethin, Rumplestiltskin, trying to become youthful again by getting the Last Ring of the Castle in the Sky, which he was trying to reach by building a ladder out of children.

The audience loved it, and so did I – some terrible puns, Gethin was on fire, and Alistair and Rhys as the two kids hired by Rumplestiltskin to make the ladder out of kids and being paid with pears were genius. (Again, you had to be there.) Quite a few people we spoke to afterwards praised the physicality of the scene where Tim turned up as an Aussie Wizard (a Wizard of Oz, which the audience loved – Tim didn’t even REALISE the pun, he just wanted to be Australian) and finished the staircase, and Gethin clambered up on Rhys and Alistair’s backs to reach the ceiling. Physicality is where we excel as a group, apparently.

Afterwards we headed out to meet the Bristol group for drinks in the Pleasance dome, who all seemed like really nice guys. I spent a long time talking to one of them, Richard, about such topics as Andrew puppy racism (“God, ONE of us makes it big whoring himself out and you think we all like Andrex! I happen to prefer Charmin! Next you’ll be saying we all look alike!”) and the attempts to find humour in senility. This was also where we first discovered Alistair can be distracted from pretty much anything just by yelling, “BOOM!”

Around 1am we set off back. It was pouring with rain, and at one point, I ended up ducking under the umbrella of a complete and utter stranger, who it turned out spoke a wide variety of languages, but English was not one of them. He seemed to find it hilarious more than annoying, though. When we went our separate ways, Alistair tried to be gallant and give me his raincoat, and ended up holding it as a tent over both me and Matt. Friendly giants are very helpful sometimes.

Day 4, August 10th

A step forward in flyering: people are actually starting to have HEARD of us. Several people today said, “Oh, I’ve heard of you guys!” when offered a flyer. Some even said, “I’ve heard you’re good!” One or two even said, “We’ve already got tickets for you!” which was just AWESOME and made us very happy.

Today was my first go as hero. Unsurprisingly, my nerves came back in full force. However, they did not manifest in making me a nauseous bundle of nerves this time. No, instead I became incredibly cocky. Dangerously cocky, even.

Title: The Hair of Rapunzel
Hero: Me, a butcher who was scared of cotton wool
Villain: John as Dr No, trying to a hospital just for healthy people out of cotton wool.

A side effect of my dangerous levels of cockiness was that I played my butcher as a complete and utter bastard. In my very first scene, I killed a cat. A CAT! Way to make my character sympathetic. But I had a great time. When the time came for my phobia of cotton wool to be explained, I actually stepped forward and yelled “SPOTLIGHT!”, before delivering an angsty soliloquy on a traumatic experience involving a yak. Basically, I’d enjoyed killing animals from a young age (and actually remarked on how some might see that as the warning signs of a serial killer) but had been stopped from killing a yak by choking on cotton wool. In the end, after getting over my phobia of cotton wool long enough to crush Dr No under a pillar of it and finally gaining the yak I’d always dreamed of, the yak ultimately dumped me. It was somehow simultaneously bittersweet and HILARIOUS.

Also, a moment of glory. In our show we have this thing called the VaryTale die – a brightly coloured die with different pictures on each face, which we usually get the audience to roll around the 3rd scene, and gives us something which has to feature in the next scene. One of the faces is ‘Ryme Thyme’, which basically means the entire next scene has to rhyme. Putting that on the die was a VERY dumb idea, because we suck at rhyming, and after abysmal attempts in practises, the very mention of it fills us with dread. It came up just before my scene, but somehow I just got into the zone and stepped out and delivered a full monologue in rhyming couplets on how I felt about the villain’s plan. It was… amazing. I’m just lucky so much stuff rhymes with ‘sheep’.

Katie Evans joined us after the show, having finally been given the all-clear by her doctor, and a bunch of us went to Frankenstein’s for dinner. Oh man, it was amazing. I have so much love for that bar. If you are ever in Edinburgh, go to Frankenstein’s. It’s a bar that also serves really good cheap food – and when we went, it was 2-for-1 on certain meals, though they’re scrapping that offer at the end of August, probably because it is so ridiculously good – and has a generally gothic décor, and a giant screen playing old horror movies. When we went this time, it was showing the original Frankenstein without dialogue, and we had a great time providing our alternate dialogue for certain scenes. We also played an intense game of The Game, which involved moving around various cutlery and condiments on the table in a very deliberate manner, and I eventually won by telepathically summoning the waiter and having him remove half the pieces in play. It was so much fun, especially since we were already a good way through bottles of cider.

Very strange thing: this is all actually starting to become routine. It’s just like, “Ho hum, wake up in a room with six guys, spend all day selling our improvised fairytale comedy to complete strangers, standing amongst people advertising a Vaudeville Jekyll and Hyde and people screaming and dying in the street for ‘Death! The Musical!’, eat the cheapest lunches imaginable, then go make a new story every single night for people who are actually paying to watch us. SAME OLD SAME OLD.” It’s also still somewhat like a dream. It’s bizarre.

BACK FROM EDINBURGH

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:11:37 GMT

Proper Edinburgh blog write-up is coming, I have a whole train journey back to Kent tomorrow to do that. I need to type up the journal I was keeping anyway, some of the guys want a copy (I refused to let them read it while we were there, and faked a front page discussing my undying love for John and simultaneously debating having a fling with Gethin lest one of them picked it up) so I may as well put a 'best of' here.

In short: I won a dance-off with a shrimp, took part in a Victorian game show which involved rounds like 'What part of a wolf am I thinking of?', 'Oscar Wilde's guide to strumpets', and building a model of Big Ben (I also witnessed the same game show with the cast of 'Broken Holmes' - a play about the troubled bromance of Sherlock and Watson - as contestants, in character), got taped under loads of posters to one of the pillars on the Royal Mile, performed to several full houses, played characters ranging from a prince made of paper to Little Red Riding Hood the prostitute to Robin from 'Batman', saw awesome shows like 'Princess Cabaret', the Penny Dreadfuls and 'A Pirate's Life for Me' (A CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-ADVENTURE PIRATE MUSICAL, WHERE YOU VOTED FOR WHAT YOU WANTED TO HAPPEN, OMG), made lots of awesome new friends in other shows, got serenaded by the Shambles, discussed Andrex puppy racism with the Goats in the Shell, met Neil Gaiman, climbed Arthur's Seat, partied till 5am with the venue staff and got offered a job by them, was given a Chick tract by a guy with a Jesus sandwichboard and offered a free personality test by the Church of Scientology, was injured by Gethin on multiple occasions, high-kicked my way up the mile with Alistair yelling 'BOOM' and 'WEASELS' a lot, did several test tube shots in Frankenstein's (THE GREATEST BAR EVER) and got stopped in the street by a little girl and her dad to tell me how much they'd loved the show that day, which just made it all worthwhile.

*breathe*

I have had SUCH AN AWESOME TIME. AND NOW I GET TO GO TO AMERICA. (Speaking of, ibroketuesday, you totally have to meet us for underground glow-in-the-dark miniature pirate golf.)

Edinburghflail

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:24:06 GMT

I'm on the internet quite a bit more because a new feature in my daily routine involves coming to the venue to find out how many tickets we've already sold (only got 15 left today already, OMG) and here I get to use their computers. Sure, they're so slow I actually type too fast for them, and so have to type a sentence and then sit back and wait for it to load on the screen, but I take what I can get.

ANYWAY. Full report on Edinburgh still won't be coming till I get home and have nothing to do for a few days except recover before America, so you're going to have to wait to find out how I won a dance-off with a shrimp and watched Sherlock Holmes and Watson take part in a Victorian Game Show, but one thing I have to flail about right now -

NEIL GAIMAN I MET NEIL GAIMAN AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH.

Also going on right now is the Edinburgh Book Festival, and he was doing a reading of The Graveyard Book and answering questions, and I pretty much booked tickets the red hot second I found about it. I got to sit in the FRONT ROW, and after reading the chapter 'Danse Macabre', he answered my question on whether with stories like American Gods the intended story had shaped his research or his research had influenced the story or a bit of both (answer: most of the stuff on the gods? He'd known already) AND, AND, WHAT I DID NOT KNOW was that there was a book signing afterwards. So, reasonablycrazy, that copy of American Gods you gave me? Now has 'Katie - Believe! Neil Gaiman' written in it. He was very approving of how worn and well-read it was, most people's books were shiny and new.

I then went to a book sale and bought a 1920s properly hardback bound edition of The Three Musketeers, with painted illustrations, for only £7. WIN DAY YESTERDAY.