Crawl

Sunday's instructions were quite clear. It was either have a rest, or go for a swim. Now I know what you're thinking. You think I plumbed for the rest, don't you? You know nothing about the grit and determination that makes me tick. I did a search on my iPhone, and despite it giving me some duff gen the day before, it came up trumps with the swimming pool - there was one right around the corner from our flat, the Dalry swimming pool. Summer assured me that she had especially chosen the flat with me in mind. I set off, hoping it was a reasonable size - some of the old swimming pools are 20 yards, which irritates me - I always feel that you kick off at one side, and hit your head on the other side, and don't really get any proper exercise done. I was in luck, though, it was a 25 yard pool, which I estimated to be somewhere around 22.5 metres, not too bad. It was a glass-roofed building, which I also rather like, there's something nice about seeing the sunshine and the clouds. (Mainly clouds). One thing that surprised me was a dispenser that appeared to be full of blue plastic bags. I wondered if they were for wet costumes, but ignored them, as I've got through swimming for long enough without taking plastic bags. When I got to the changing area, there was an old lady with a full length duvet-coat, white trainers and blue bags over her shoes. I initially assumed she was out on day-release from a local asylum, before clocking that everyone had plastic bags over their shoes. It seemed rather wasteful to me, and I'm glad I didn't deign to put any on. I'm also not ruling out that the lady WAS on day release, she was still hanging round the lockers looking lost when I finished my swim an hour later.

I'm not very good at maths, or counting, as I think we've established, and I'm also not very good at swimming crawl, which was mainly today's task. But I liked the idea of swimming sets of five, because counting each set means that the odds are at one end and the evens at the other; and furthermore found that if I do a length of breaststroke halfway through, it really kept me on target with the counting. I was fine right up till my 11th set, where I was swimming breaststroke and was so tired, I didn't realise it wasn't crawl (honestly). So I thought I'd finished the set, but I hadn't. Anyway, I kind of made up for it, by getting to set 14 and doing two extra lengths for "cool down". I'm never entirely sure whether this does cool me down, because frankly, by the time I've swam 70 lengths, I'm going pretty slowly anyway, but I do my cooldown breaststroke, which is always a bit slower. I have to say, I was kind of impressed with myself. That's more front crawl than I have ever swam in my life.

Needless to say, the rest of the day got rapidly better. We saw a performance of Macbeth, starring Ashlea's friend Costa as Macduff. It was a brilliant performance all round, with an amazingly small cast, and parts shared out among them, although it was rather speeded up, to get the entire play into one hour and twenty minutes. There was a simple but effective set of weird bronze-like blocks of different heights, and a full moon projected onto a mirror, which had a range of different things appearing on it, including a dead raven in various states of bloodiness. By the end of the play, the blocks had cracks of red lit up as Macbeth became entrenched in his bloody battle for power. Macduff's speech when he found out that Macbeth had killed his wife and children brought a tear to my eye. Magnificent stuff, and I can't wait for it to come to Peterborough Key Theatre this autumn, when it will be full-length.

Later, our paths separated as Summer left us to see Monsters in the Hall, which she greatly enjoyed, and Ashlea and I went to the Bang Bang Circus, who had an amazing selection of wonders for us, including jugglers, bendy ladies, and hula hoop artists, and rather impressively, a man who balanced a full-size shopping trolly, and a bicycle (although not at the same time), on his chin. The whole show was seamlessly held together by Charlie Chaplin, whose silent-mime compering was amazing. It was rather let down by the venue, which made it hard to see some of the acts, but all in all, most enjoyable.

Next up, the main reason I was there - was to see Emma's new baby Dorrie! Well, also, The Magnets, who performed their usual astounding performance of a slick show with amazing singing and a fair bit of eye-candy to boot. I had a new victim, in the form of Ashlea, who enjoyed the show enormously, and excitingly, not one, but two repeat offenders, Summer and Daniel (he of the bicycle), who both seemed to enjoy their Magnets fix as well.  I remain, as an adoring fan, utterly in awe of all six of them. I had a chance to catch up with the boys after the show, as they were buying their flyer-ers a drink, as a gesture of good will. A very smart move on their part, I thought, and also one well-deserved, speaking personally as someone who has tried the task.

As a last ditch attempt to stay out after 10 pm, we went over to Niddry Street and watched some Free Fringe comedy that was called Dave Hoy's Stag Night. Apparently the Stag had been told by his fiancee that he could either do a show at Edinburgh, OR have a stag night, but not both. So his choice was to do a show about having a Stag night. It was quite entertaining, although truthfully, more so once we realised the acts were literally acting being drunk. They did it a bit too well... watching people who are behaving like tits isn't actually that funny, unless you are too. So we had to heckle. The Stag himself was heckled by someone who told him he was a "Poor Man's Milton Jones". He wasn't. He did rely heavily on some rather tired puns, but he had nothing like the comic timing and genius that is Milton Jones, and nor, sorry to say, the character and charm. But it was fun all the same.