often seen in the street without a hat

Jen and I went to the library in Morecambe today after B&Q for the dehumidifier (and a spade for Jen to clear snow and a red flower pot for me to... well, just because I thought it was pretty), and I got two guide books for 75p each in their sale. One is for Bulgaria, which was printed in 2005. The other is for Uganda (which will hopefully be more immediately relevant), but the date was only on the title page which was ripped out for sale. So I was flicking through it, trying to get an idea of when it was published, and saw this:

It is also sensible to take bottles of shampoo or other liquids not in a screw top bottle on as hand baggage on aircraft - as the holds are not always pressurized, and the air in a bottle expands, forcing out the liquid, making a mess.

Not that recently, then.

(Mock the Week - that was the warm-up guy from when we went. Did someone drop out? I ask that only partly because I thought he wasn't great, and also because it seems a bit of a steep curve to go from warming up to being a guest in one week.)

First of all, the queuing at the Pleasance bits was great. There were signs saying where queues started from and what they were for, and I loved them hard. As I was on my own, and for a variety of reasons having a bit of a weird time brain-wise, I found it a bit stressful between shows because there often wasn't somewhere I could just sit and read, and I wasn't coping so well with the crowds so I didn't eat very well, or at all some days, because I couldn't manage buying food, but at least the queuing was good.

Secondly, I was a little bit fuming at one point (while in one of the well-managed queues) because there I was in Edinburgh during the festivals, with lots of really awesome people also there, and I had not seen a single great person even in the distance (though I wasn't wearing my glasses and wouldn't have seen them had they been there), but Neil and Christine Hamilton walked past very close to me TWICE. The bastards. Though then I did see Armando Iannunci watching Stewart Lee's show, and Mel Giedroyc leaving afterwards, so that soothed me somewhat.

Because I am constitutionally incapable of not having a plan and a reasonable expectation that the plan will be workable, I'd mostly booked tickets quite a long time before I got there, and then once I was there and sort of knew what was where I chose various things to fill in the gaps. It was split between individual comedians who I liked, and sort of compilation type things to see what there was other than "people Clare has probably seen on TV".

Individual comedians:

( Jon Richardson )
( Simon Amstell )
( Kirsten O'Brien )
( Laurence Clark )
( Shappi Khorsandi )
( Stewart Lee )
( Russell Howard )
( Wil Hodgson )

Compilation type things where I didn't know who'd be there:

( The Comedy Zone )
( Best of Irish Comedy )
( Big Value Late Show )
( Best of Edinburgh Comedy - The Showcase Show )

And then things that aren't really showcases but had lots of people in them:

( The Book Club )
( Early Edition )
( Matt Forde's On Heat )
( Janey Godley's Chat Show )
( Full Mooners )
I saw ( Shakespeare Bingo. )

I also got to stay with my friend T, whom I haven't seen properly since we finished the MA, and catch up and talk about feminism, mental illness and singing. I'm going up again in October to see her first gig - she's a jazz singer. And during the week I went bookshopping with pisica, who is an excellent guide for this sort of excursion. Well done Edinburgh.