Things move on. For years and years I wrote reviews for various newspapers of shows at the Edinburgh Fringe and around about the coming week, it all started to get real. You’d start collecting all your free bar passes and lanyards and gear up to see 60 or 70 shows in August. I got free tickets to everything.
It was an intense, sometimes joyful, often exhausting time which saw us pounding around town from about 5pm to midnight, carrying our own wet bar, absolutely pished. Had some great times. This year we’re giving it a miss, which I’m sad about. We did it last year, not that Edinburgh’s cobbles are easy to get around on in a wheelchair, but itsall gotten so expensive, accommodation especially. It cost us £700 for 3 days in an Air B n B last year. Of course when we lived in Edinburgh that wasn't an issue. We did appreciate how lucky we were at the time.
In 2015 I was on the Comedy Awards Panel and saw 121 shows in 3 weeks. I was all laughed out. My synapses were burnt to a crisp. So I shall miss it but then again, I won’t miss the expense and it's not the same when your mobility is restricted. We had a good run of it -probably 14 or 14 years.The book festival used to be on at the same time and we’d checkout shows there too. Hectic doesn’t do it justice.
It’s hard not to feel you’re missing out but one thing I’ve learned since the stroke is that the way to ease your way through life is to only do things you actually can do. Take it easy on yourself, don’t put yourself in difficult situations.Tickets which used to be a fiver 20 years ago, are now 15 - 20. Everything is too expensive now. Its like that for artists too, even popular people only break even at best. It means its becoming more and more middle class and even within that, only the financially supported. There are parallels there with the increasingly middle class music and acting worlds.
There’s so much to do here anyway. Dawn’s finished the studio now but plans to build a shed and has to plumb the studio in and prepare for the electrician. That’s before planning out the patio and paths around the garden, let alone any planting. We’re waiting for less good weather to do anything in the house. So there’s not really time to go to the festival even if we could afford it.
1 comment
Hi John, as a child of 1962 and spending my youth in the Farmers, Mayfair and City Hall I always look forward to your blogs. I’m glad the move all ended up well and Dawn has ploughed ahead with her studio and now a shed. Your blogs are even more poignant to me as I suffered a spinal cord injury 3 years ago and am now wheelchair based. I must say the 3 months I spent in James Cook spinal centre were unbelievable and what a facility. Someone who was fitish and always gigging or boozing somewhere to suddenly overnight being a paraplegic was a challenge no doubt the same when you suffered your stroke. I do exactly as you say we concentrate on what I can do. Please keep up the blogs they are superb, most of my (your design) tshirts are now grey and need replacing so if there is a possibility of buy back catalogue designs I would be interested as well as looking forward to your new designs.
Thanks again and all our best withes to you and Dawn.
Cheers Gordon & Chris
Whitley Bay.