My favourite place

For a very quick 4 weeks in August, the Royal Mile in Edinburgh is transformed into a crazy, chaotic, colourful, exciting, loud and vibrant place...there's nowhere else quite like it (and it's certainly nothing like that for the remaining 11 months of the year).

I've already been up there three days in a row, and plan to be up there again on pretty much a daily basis until the last of the performers crawls back exhaustedly to where they came from. 

But, until then, I'll be soaking up the atmosphere every chance I get.

Cat Women

Had an hour to kill after work yesterday, so snatched a wander up the High Street to see what was going on.

Luckily, this was going on. Dream of Cat is a troupe of all-female percussionists from South Korea, who demonstrated an incredible amount of joyous and infectious energy during their sample of their full show (the tight black outfits helped add a certain je ne sais quois to things as well...)

Booked tickets to see this lot without realising they were Korean (and wearing tight black outfits) - I'm now rather glad I did...

Hopefully I'll get back up the High Street later today - though it's currently pishing with rain, so only if that clears up...

I shouldn't be greedy I suppose...

The festival has started...kind of unofficially - with a lot of preview shows beginning today and this weekend.

The hum of it all is beginning to be audible now in the town and I get the feeling I get every year - that there's stuff happening 'out there' that I'm missing.

I'm not off work until the 10th August, but I wish I was off now...still, I'll take a half-day tomorrow to wander up the High Street (where the performers are already descending); and it's the Festival Cavalcade on Sunday. Then, next week, I've got every lunch blocked out and plan to spend them up the Royal Mile; as well as going to see the Tracey Emin exhibition and a couple of shows I'm doing photography for - not to mention the exhibition one of my own shots is featuring in.

So, I suppose I shouldn't really complain...

But it's happening. Already. Without me.

All that jazz

The festival is almost here (it starts, officially, this weekend).

However, the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival has already started, meaning there's already a festival atmosphere in the city.

Indeed, when I went for a walk after work yesterday, the usual venues are springing up around town; and the usual eager theatre companies are already thrusting flyers into anyone's hands that pass by.

Fantastic.

They're here...

My 50-odd tickets for the (50 odd) shows I'm going to see have finally arrived in the post (all bar 2, though I'm cautiously optimistic), meaning the prospect of standing in a 50 mile queue to collect them is no longer there.

Now, if only the weather would clear up...