a day at the festival.

I had the weekend off work, so on Saturday decided to take a trip through to Edinburgh with my parents for the Fringe festival. There's such an amazing carnival-like atmosphere in the city just now (much helped on Saturday by the sun who graced us with her gleaming presence)! 

With all the colour and excitement, it seemed a good excuse to bring out my ‘proper’ camera. I’m still at a loss how to work all the buttons so I have the settings at ‘auto’ most of the time. But the pictures turned out quite good nevertheless so I thought I'd pop a few on here.

We went to see three plays (one: The Seussification of a Midsummer Night’s Dream which was just what it sounds like: Shakespeare as told through Dr. Seuss language. I laughed quite a lot. Two: Starchild: the Little Prince Reborn – an original adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. Also really good, and quite beautiful in parts. It just took a moment to get over my surprise that the story was told via interpretive dance...

And three: The Great Gatsby – it was an impulse decision to go and see this after we were handed a flyer by a girl in 20’s costume who was perched on the shoulders of a guy in a suit. It turned out to be quite spectacular). My favourite parts of the day were probably the in-between bits when we walked around the streets – especially up and down the Royal Mile – seeing and taking pictures of (and with*) the street performers. 

At one point in the afternoon, my mum and I were stopped by a leaflet-hander-outer who tried to encourage us to come along to her 'very funny play about sex-education in schools'. After speaking to us for a moment, she glanced at me, and then leaned closer to my mum to reassure her, 

'It'll be suitable for your daughter. Don't worry.' 

I did feel the need to tell her I am 23 ('actually'). Ha! My shortness and baby-face continually lead to people thinking I'm about 14 years old. It's supposedly a good thing (so people keep telling me. Being on the receiving end of a lot of semi-patronising remarks though, I'm not so sure). 

Later on I decided to embrace my 'youthfulness' and buy a wreath of flowers for my hair from a lady who had loads of them hooped up her arms. Why not, eh? Might as well.

*At another point, this girl (with the gloves) swept past me in the street. Following close behind were seven others laughing and dressed in elegant gowns and suits. Curiosity sparked, I decided to follow them, pushing through the crowd to see what they were advertising. A few moments later, they stopped in the middle of the street to get their picture taken. I still don't know what show they were in (it was their last day anyway, apparently)... but they looked beautiful. And when they said: 'Who wants to come in the picture?' I thought again: 'Hey, why not?' So that's how I ended up photo-bombing their picture.  

Love this. Only in Edinburgh...

Mm, a jolly nice day. For visitors to Scotland, the last few weeks must have been pretty amazing. It’s been wonderfully sunny. And warm – I’ve gone without my coat for almost a full month (currently sitting with a hot water bottle though. The chilliness is back). And so much has been happening: the Fringe, the Edinburgh International Book Festival, and the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow (which I didn’t watch too much of, not being sporty in the least. But the happenings on the streets while I was walking to university were fun to see: magicians, face-painters, swing dancing, jazz bands, etc.). 

Ah, it is a pretty cool place to live. Just a pity that most of the time it’s still represented (and represents itself) as Tartan, Haggis and Bagpipes ‘r’ Us.

♥