Entertainment minus the Credit Card

Free Entertainment: The Mendicant Punk Monks

The whole point of project Goodbye Magpie is to get my spending under control.  So, how was I going to fare spending time at the Edinburgh Festival with all it's temptations of food stalls and pre-show/post-show drinkies?

Even with the help of some fab free tickets, thanks to the guys at ticketing website Clicket (dedicated all things Edinburgh, 365 days of the year!), I still knew I was in for a militant few weeks if I wasn't going to blow my budget.

Well the verdict is in and it's: Could Do Better.

 I slipped up on a couple of areas.  Not bringing enough food for JW when he was coming to meet me for a show after work.  This resulted in me buying him a pie (£1.50: bargain), him still being hungry and buying a burger (£5.50, hmmm), then having a few pre-show drinks (almost £10 for two drinks, ouch) and then getting a pizza and chips on the way home, because JW is actually still starving (£10, oh dear).  Neither frugal nor healthy!  But typical behaviour I'm sure.

I also ended up having a couple of sneaky coffees while meeting up with friends, which is against the rules (not the meeting friends bit, the coffees bit).  Although I have to say that the Toffee Cake from the Hula Juice Bar is AMAZING and worth every penny!

We did try a show at the Free Fringe.  Thinking that this would be cheaper than stumping up for more tickets. But, the show was in a pretty yucky nightclub, with sticky floors; you know the type.  And although the comedian was funny, the venue's drinks prices were extortionate. So by the time we had bought a round and put some money in the comedians bucket, we were no better off and would have been as well paying to go to a decent place.

Edinburgh International Book Fest

But when I did get it right it worked really well.  For instance the Unbound Programme at the Edinburgh International Book Festival is all free and really good quality.  No-one hassles you with a bucket at the end.  So it genuinely is free! The drinks are reasonably priced (the G&T is very, very good!) and the atmosphere is really quirky.  No sticky floors here thank you very much. 

I went to see Literary Death Match, which was fast past entertainment with four writers battling it out to become the Literary Death Match Champion.  And I even got a £5 book voucher for the festival book shop for my troubles, sweet!

The Art Fest Telescope

I also scored with the Edinburgh Art Festival which had a highly entertaining opening night with free wine, a live installation complete with working artist (Kevin Harman), and a telescope that looked at painted views, which was kind of cool.

And slopping down The Royal Mile is always fun, you never know what you will come across.  Like the Mendicant Punk Monks (pic at top of page, chanting "Let's Do It Like They Do On The Discovery Channel").

Sticking with the positives, another way I have saved on cost is to bring my lunch along with me and my refillable water bottle.  So on balance, it could have been a whole lot worse!
But it isn't over yet, so I still need to watch my pennies for the next couple of weeks!

Everything Else Happened

I have a real soft spot for Jonathan Safran Foer.  I send him big karma inducing hearts from across the Atlantic and hope that he and his family feel the benefits of them.  I first came across his work through his non-fiction book EatingAnimals.  

As Foer searched the American meat industry for the truth behind his nagging personal hypothesis that Eating Animals is wrong, I willed him on.  I felt his pain at witnessing scenes in abattoirs, smelt the horror that is an industrial hog farm and through Foer, I witnessed the inhumane treatment of farmed animals in all its bleak starkness.  God that book hit the spot, (go on, read it; I dare you...)

So, I was somewhat joyful to see that Everything Else Happened, a show based on the writings of Foer, is being staged as part of the Edinburgh Festival by DreamEpic.  I went along to one of the first shows, and boy, is it beautiful.  

Four actors deliver four separate monologues, which are believable, mixing painful truths with wry laughter.  

The Grandma who offers you cookies, fresh sliced tomatoes, fizzy pop; anything to make you happy.  The middle aged man suffering the pain of mental health problems, which have led him to a dark place of broken hearts and loss.  The old, overlooked and looked-through magician.   

And for me, the most touching of all, Foer himself (played by Actor/Director Adam Lenson), talking about the in-between conversations, the ones we hint towards but never say, the missed opportunities of communication to reach out to our families. The seemingly unstoppable handing on of issues, of sadness, of pain. And the difficulty of saying “I love you” in return.

Big hearts Jonathan, big hearts.

Let the Fringe Fest. Begin

Yesterday saw the beginnings of my desperate attempt to throw off the trappings of domesticity and embrace the theatrical and comedic madness that is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Things didn’t get off to the best start as running late, I attempted to load the guinea pigs in the dishwasher, feed the dirty dishes some breakfast, put my 17 year old No.1 Son out on the washing line and get the laundry out of bed...

Things didn’t improve as I arrived at the venue, somewhat flustered, to find that there had been a mix up and my name wasn’t down, so I wasn’t getting in!  

No.1 Son was now a-grumbling at his lack of breakfast, but my attempted to pacify him by buying two sausage rolls (for the benefit of our southern friends, that’s a sausage in a roll, and not the pastryfied bakery good you may have been thinking of), went pear shaped as I chose the take-away unwisely and the rolls got binned due to in-edibleness.  That didn’t improve the mood, so we headed back home show-less and down £15.00 on bus fares and sausages!  

Thankfully, things did pick up at the Assembly Rooms later that night.  JW and I were booked in to see One Day in the Life of Lloyd Owen Langford.  Having never heard of Lloyd before, I was half expecting the usual “is there anyone in from Cardiff tonight?!” malarkey.  But, joy of joys, Lloyd was actually going to tell us a story, and a rather funny one at that, about a trip to the shops to buy some bread.  Now, that perhaps doesn’t sound like the most inspirational of occurrences, but when I tell you that Lloyd’s landlord is none other than the duvet buying welsh comic Rhodri Gilbert, you might be persuaded to hang around a bit to listen.  

Lloyd’s gentle and humourous storytelling manner means that you would happily listen to escapades involving text messages and dog doings all day.  When we finally got to the point where the bread was at last purchased, the audience were desperate to know more, “what kind of bread was it?” they asked, “did you enjoy it?”, they were clamouring to know.

I’ll never listen to Delilah by Tom Jones in the same light again...  Go see before he sells out!

The Circus is Coming! I Love Edinburgh in August!

I am very excited! It is that time of year again. The time of year when Scotland's capital goes mad and a large assortment of weird and wonderful people descend to cheer the grand old lady that is Edina right up!

The famous Spiegletent Going Up!

I have just come back from a wee trip into town and found lots of workmen making the final preparations for Edinburgh Festival and Fringe (not to mention the Arts Fest., the DanceBase Fest....) and I am now raring to go for the big kick off on Friday! 

And thanks to the 100% lovely folks at Clicket.co.uk (a fab one stop shop for tickets and info about events in Edinburgh), I am going to be out and about, experiencing the festival and reporting right back to you on what I have found.  From dance, to street films, comedy to cabaret; I am up for just about anything.

I totally love the festival madness and think it sums up what life is really about; fun, laughs and being interested in the world.  I can't wait to shake off my usual chores and all that taking care of visiting relatives, and to start to feel like I am 21 again for a whole month!


But all of this joie de vivre needn't come at a high price, I am still going to be thrift conscious and intend to negotiate my way around the festival without breaking the bank.  

The animals of East Linton Farm Park

Just look what I found in St. Andrew's Square in Edinburgh already! I'm looking forward to seeing what else turn's up!

Quite at home in the middle of the city

                                 Who wouldn't smile at that! And it didn't cost me a penny!