Second day and the sun is still shining! We had a couple of shows booked today but the first one wasn’t until lunchtime. That’s the thing about the Fringe – nothing much gets going until the afternoon leaving you the mornings free to explore the city.
Having been to Edinburgh on numerious occasions we have done many of the better known tourist spots so we are always on the lookout for new and interesting things to do. So when someone suggested Greyfriars Kirkyard we were up for that. Greyfriars is a churchyard which many elaborate monuments and, apparently, is where JK Rowling got the names for some of the characters in her books. I cannot verify the veracity of this as no Dumbledores, Snapes or Malfoys were found. This was the closest we got.
Having distracted ourselves for a bit amongst the stones we decided it was time for a coffee. We walked right past the place where Rowling wrote some of the first book but made our way to Black Medicine Coffee. If you are in Edinburgh I urge you to go there. It has everything going for it. Good food and drinks, quirky interior and great staff. We stayed there for an hour or so before it was time for the first event of the day – lunchtime jazz at a local hotel. Like most genres of music there are lost of variants and “jazz” doesn’t really tell you what you are going to be getting. In the end what we got was quite melodic and I found myself drifting off so perhaps this would have been better suited to an evening than a lunchtime.
What we actually got in the evening was a quartet of comedians in a car park. The restrictions here in Scotland are slightly more restrictive than in England and, I suspect, because decisions had to be made well in advance, most venues seem to be outside or at least well ventilated. Tonight’s was VERY ventilated as it was literally the open top floor of a car park. It had the most incredile backdrop of the catle looming over – it was a perfect spot.
As with most comedy events of this type it is very much pot luck as to who and what you get. The compare, Fred Mcauley, was excellent but the other three were funny in small parts. It was a good evening still and we came away satisfied and dry which is a win-win as far as I am concered!