Struttin the red carpet…

Well, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is now in full swing. Highlights have been multitudinous, from chatting with famous comedians in our dressing rooms before our nightly show, to enjoying the company of gorgeous friends from across the sea (lovely Swee Leng arrived today, and Madeleine’s always up for a big night out!) and even performing at the big fringe launch party at trendy bar Cargo tonight. I’ve come to the conclusion that I really only enjoy most festivals as a performer, rather than a punter, and this festival is no exception.

Tonight’s party was waaaaay more fun than I had thought it would be, and the stage we played on was so wonderfully relaxed, and the atmosphere was just fabulous. It was just Hayley and I playing, the rest of the band would have been too much logistically, and we only played for about 15 minutes, but the MC was SOOO sweet at the end, he said “let’s hear it for two of the most unassumingly friendly performers I’ve met yet at the festival!”

Yay for being liked!

Hayley played one of her originals along with two Eva Cassidy arrangements, and she never ceases to amaze me with the beauty of her voice. Just stunning.

I must finish this blog entry before I fall off my chair asleep, but I shall end with two tidbits: first, we engaged in some star-spotting and were delighted to find ourselves drinking beers nearby Adrian Lukis (aka Mr Wickam from the BBC version of Pride and Predjudice). Bless him, I think that Greig was almost as excited about him as we girls were. Have I mentioned that Greig does the most uncanny Mr Collins impersonation?

Second tidbit, though it was sodden from all the rain, Maddy, Swee Leng and I got our chance to strut the red carpet, and we have the photo to prove it!

More Fringe Festival reports as they come in!

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I Love Edinburgh in the August!

So I’m finally catching up on my blogging, and I thought I’d just quickly let y’all know what I’m up to – this month is kee-razy! I’m playing every night of the month in an Edinburgh Fringe Festival show called Songbird – A Tribute to Eva Cassidy. It’s been put together by Hayley Clare, a singer of stunning talent, and is another of my big brother’s hand-me-down gigs. Michael is off in Galway just now directing an Irish Music Extravaganza, and so is unable to perform his usual violinny duties in Hayley’s band, so she’s keeping to the McClintock family, and has asked me to step in.

We had our second show last night, and now that the previews are over, I feel myself settling comfortably into the music. We’re playing at the big fringe festival party tomorrow night, and with Adam Hills in a new pilot show later in the month.

Visitors are blowing in all month from out of town – firstly Swee Leng, a good buddy from my Melbourne Youth Orchestra (MYO) days is arriving tomorrow afternoon. Then Ubiquitous Jess is living up to her name and is bringing along her delightful man Tom, and also our old school chum Saul is trekking up from London that weekend.

The following weekend another MYO mate, Sarah T, is crashing at mine.

I have one blissful weekend off (except of course, for the show) and then my parents are coming to stay!

Once the show’s over, hopefully Greig and I will make it across to Galway to visit my darling big brother before he flits off to the US to take his show on the road.

Oh, the lives of international superstars…

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Cannot play under such condishuns…

Going through old photos again, and I came across this one, which ABSOLUTELY needed captioning – Mushuk was the light of my life in China, and one of his favorite places to curl up when he was a baby was in my violin case.

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Recycle books once you finished reading them – unless they’re utter shite!

I was going through some old photos, and I discovered some that I realised that I’d meant to share with you all several years ago.

Back in 2004/2005, I shared a house with the delightful Kaylene, in the equally delightful town of Bacchus Marsh, Australia. As I was getting ready to leave for Scotland, I had cleaned out my bedroom and discovered an embarrassingly large collection of rather trashy romance novels. They were my secret vice during my university days. Honest, I don’t do them at all these days (except for a VERY select few – ie TWO – authors).

But Kaylene saw the box and asked if she could go through and see whether there was anything that she might enjoy.

“Of course!” said I, for I was going to donate them to the local 2nd hand charity bookstore anyway.

So Kaylene enjoyed several weeks of trawling through my trashy book collection. She mostly enjoyed it, I think, apart from one of the books which I myself wasn’t able to finish when it was in my hands.

The book was called The Hellion Bride by Catherine Coulter, and I can assure you that it was 300 pages of the most unmitigated crap that I’ve ever had the misfortune to have been subjected to. It was absolute rubbish. So much so that Kaylene and I decided that noone should ever be subjected to such rubbish again.

So we decided to destroy the book in the most permanent way possible:

Here is Kaylene, giving us HER opinion of the book:

The book’s final resting place:

Lighting the stake:

Burn baby!

BURN!!!

The demon of atrocious writing is exorcised at last:

And then there was one less piece-of-crap book in the world, thus making it a better place for all who live here. Karmic points all round!

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A weekend jaunt to an English Seaside Village…

Firstly with the normal apologies when it’s been so long since I last posted… As usual, I have no excuse but laziness.

A few weekends ago, Greig and I flew to Bristol and hired a car to go traipsing around the countryside of southern England, covering the counties of Dorset, Somerset and Devon. The excuse for the trip was to visit Greig’s friend Sian (pronounced “Sharn” for all you non -British!) who he’d met during his time backpacking in Australia. Joining us for the weekend were Anne-the-Brit and Peter-the-Irish-Dude.

Sian lives in this charming seaside village called Lyme Regis, which is apparently world renowned for its fossils. You’d never have guessed, with all the fossil shops around. It really was an utterly enchanting village, but would you believe it, I forgot to take ANY photos of it!! *sigh*

But I did take pics of other things, not to worry.

Firstly, Greig and I in Bristol, after having decided that it was not the most exciting town to visit, especially after having just left Edinburgh:

In Bristol we picked up the hire car and went south, exploring as we drove. We passed through historic/sacred Glastonbury (again, no photos, I was driving and there was nowhere to park on these narrow English country roads!), but decided to leave our visit to Cheddar till our return journey. But when we got to the carpark at the Tesco in Taunton, where we were picking up Anne and Peter in our hire car on the way south, we came across this photo-op that was too good to pass up:

I swear, it was hilarious at the time…

We continued our drive south, and arrived in Lyme Regis, quite possibly the quaintest little seaside town you’ve ever seen, complete with beach boardwalk, beachside arcade, and replete with those magnificent british seagulls which are more like the size of albatross. I know I’m supposed to dislike them cause they’re just “rats with wings” but they look and sound so much more majestic than our pissy little Australian seaguls, which just swan around and squawk. British seagulls have cries rather than squawks, and their wingspans are incredible. AND they have better colouring – darker wing feathers and nicer shaped beaks.

But I digress.

Alas, as already mentioned, for some reason I never quite got around to taking pictures of Lyme Regis – it was either raining, or I’d left my camera behind. Take my word for it, it was PRETTY!

Or at least, it was in the rare moments when it stopped raining…

So, after an evening of walking through driving rain and drinking local soidrrs (ie ciders, but with the local accent) we took our sodden selves back to Sian’s pretty little flat just a few steps from the seaside.

Idyllic. Except for that rain.

Aaaanyway, the next day we all piled into the car (we all being me and Greig, along with our delightful hostess Sian, and their other friends from their time backpacking in Oz, Anna and Peter) and set out for Torquay. Greig wanted to go ’cause it’s where Agatha Christie grew up, I wanted to go because it shares the name with one of my favorite towns in Australia and so of course that HAD to have been for a reason! And the others were, I think, just up for a jaunt through the countryside.

Well. Torquay was about the most touristy town I’ve ever visited in Britain, and that includes Edinburgh during the festival. It was HEAVING with folk, out enjoying the sunshine and sea breeze. On reflection I have to admit, on a certain guilty I-shouldn’t-be-enjoying-such-touristyness level, I quite liked Torquay. I liked the little tchotsky shops, I liked the endless beachfront cafes serving Devon Cream Teas (otherwise known as Devonshire Tea in Australia) and all the brits baked to a light bronze in the rare sunshine made me smile fondly. These funny Brits, and their sun-fetish.

I dunno, I guess it was just the VIBE of the thing. But the Devon Cream Teas were veeeery nice!

I don’t think that Greig was impressed by the whole touristy side of things, but fortunately, we found the Agatha Christie exhibition at the museum, along with the busty Agatha herself:

(Busty – Geddit?)

So Greig got his Agatha fix, and I got sunburnt. Just a little.

Here’re my travelling companions by the Quay part of Torquay. Sparkling water, gently bobbing yachts, it actually felt like we’d discovered a rare glimpse of summer at a time when summer seems to have bypassed this damp little island.

L-R: Peter, Anne, Sian & Greig.

I shall hurry ahead now to Greig and my trip to Cheddar, very quickly (for if I don’t finish this blog entry now, I shall never finish it!).

Cheddar Gorge was quite unexpected – there were caves to explore, which while very touristy, were quite stunning. How about just some pictures? (though i’m surprised that they let us take pictures at all, and people were even allowed to touch any of the amazing rock faces, which quite shocked me – the oils from our skin would surely destroy these incredible natural sculptures?)

This beautiful cave was only about 2 metres wide and almost a metre tall, but the water was so glassy!

Further in and further up in one cathedral-like cavern, one of the rock faces sneezed:

And Greig nearly got eaten by the RockSnot monster:

But we escaped, and survived to make it back outside into Cheddar Gorge:

Yep, it was a weekend of much fun and merriment. Unfortunately Greig and I both caught the RockSnot Monster’s cold, and have only just managed to shake it off, 4 weeks later.

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