God damn I am enjoying doing my show. I have been slightly frustrated by lower audiences and a couple of mediocre reviews this week (had a couple of good ones, but will arrogantly assert that I don't think it has yet had the crits that it deserves), but have still been banging out good performances. Tonight there were more in (though still plenty of seats left to sell) and it went down very well. Then I had a late night gig at Spank! I was a little bit drunk and the audience were a little bit distracted to start with, but I took command and had an enormously satisfying gig, made especially enjoyable by the fact that the comics at the back were really enjoying it too. Paul Provenza saw it and was enormously complimentary afterwards, which meant a lot to me. It's a very exciting time for me as a performer and every day I seem to be making hops if not leaps forward. I hope the show gets bigger crowds and better crits, but even if it doesn't it's been such an important year already and after nights like this the job itself is reward enough.
Full of the joys of late summer I went off to get drunk and found myself walking home at 5.30am with the dawn breaking. My senses were heightened by a mixture of boozed and adrenalin and Edinburgh looked so beautiful in the half-light. There were quite a few seagulls flying overhead and standing in the road. They were surprisingly big and foolish looking birds and I enjoyed sharing the world with them. "Ha ha, you used to be dinosaurs and now look at you, you perpetually startled idiots," I failed to shout.
I walked alone and fittingly given the title of my show I have so far spent the Festival in a solitary state (at least romantically, I have had fantastic conversations with so many interesting people). The end of my show is the greatest contraceptive known to man. It pretty much guarantees that no woman with notions of love will even talk to me during the whole Fringe. I like this though. The Richard Herring on stage is ruining it for the real Richard Herring, but the real Richard Herring doesn't actually mind, much to the stage Richard Herring's frustration. No-one has taken me up on my desperate entreaties to offer me three-in-a-bed sex or to come back to my flat and put on a mask of my ex-girlfriend while I use them as a bag to deposit my semen in (who'd have thought that wouldn't be a winning chat up line? Who knew?), which I think is good, because although the stage Richard Herring wants that, the real Richard Herring doesn't. Well not really. Not hardly at all. I am so confused. But happy.
In the back of my mind I knew that the euphoria I was feeling was as stupid and unreal as the couple of nights that I have walked home feeling blue, but obviously it's much nicer to be feeling good about yourself. The world seemed like a magical place and I was some kind of crapulous Harry Potter. It's a rare moment that I walk over the bridge over Waverley station without considering throwing myself over, but today I strode across enjoying the brightening cloud flecked sky and the dark shadowy figure of the Scott Monument.
As I approached home I saw a seagull that had got caught up in a bin bag that was sticking out of the top of a wheelie bin. It was flapping wildly and getting more and more agitated by its entrapment. On a more miserable night I might have walked on by. Or stood and watched laughing. But I felt sorry for the spawn of the hubristic pterodactyl and risked my own safety to try and help the wildly flapping idiotic gull. "It's all right," I told the frightened bird, "Calm down!" I knew the gull could not understand me, but hope it would be charmed by my soft voice. After all, after a night of such magic then surely I could be a gull whisperer too. There was no danger of the bird angrily going for me and pecking me in the face and eye.
I wished I had some scissors. The unfortunate creature was quite caught up, but I figured if I could rip the bag then it would be able to get away and at worst might have a little white plastic bracelet for his gull leg, which might trick some of his gull friends into thinking that he was part of some scientific tagging experiment. The gull is the most gullible of the avian community and also the most easily impressed.
And eventually through a combination of flapping on the bird's part and bin bag wrangling on mine the gull was released and flew off into the beautiful Edinburgh morning. I felt like St Francis of Assissi. No doubt tomorrow depression will find a way to seep its way into my consciousness like some kind of metaphysical Tooms from the X Files, but for the moment my confidence and happiness is soaring like a gull finally released from the binbag that it had greedily been trying to pilfer from. If there is a better metaphor for performing at the Edinburgh Fringe I would like to see it.
Come and see my show. It's really good. Remember if the edfringe site is sold out you can still get tickets from the Underbelly.
