Why I Will be a Wreck in August
I am spending three nights (four days) at the Fringe this year. I’ll arrive at about 10.30am on Monday 6th August and will leave at 9pm on Thursday 9th. That is the least time I will ever have spent at the Fringe. Last year it was a full week: in previous years I’ve done ten days to a fortnight. So why the change?
Apart from the fact I’m getting older - this will be my 11th Fringe as a reviewer - we’ve got more reviewers, which means that more reviews have to be edited and put online. Each review needs to be checked for mistakes (in the limited time for writing available, errors can easily creep in), and then dropped into a template page. We put three reviews on a page and, with each new review added, the index must be updated. Pages (including the index and the site’s front page) must then be uploaded as quickly as possible, checked online to make sure that there’s nothing wrong, and then I have to email the various press offices with the URLs of each review so that the companies can be informed.
Last year eleven reviewers produced 245 reviews. Then there were reviews from the International Festival and the Book Festival, together with the inevitable news stories and interviews. So over 90 Edinburgh-related pages went online during the three weeks, in addition to the usual BTG updates.
This year there will be fourteen reviewers, so I decided that I am more needed in the editor’s chair than dashing around Edinburgh.
And to be honest, I found last year very tiring. I’ve got wonderful digs in Edinburgh with a landlady who could not be more helpful. They’re just yards from High Street (for Rebus fans, I could look straight down Fleshmarket Close while having my breakfast!) and within reasonably easy walking distance of most venues. But nonetheless I found it exhausting. I’m the oldest of our Edinburgh reviewers by about twenty years so I decided it is time to take a back seat. Let younger brains - and, more importantly, younger legs - do the work!
I even considered not going at all, but the Fringe is addictive and I knew I would miss it, so my three days enable me to dip my toes in the water and feel part of it. And I would miss meals at Creelers and the Jasmine Chinese restaurant whose monkfish in chilli and honey sauce gives a hint of what heaven must be like!