Edinburgh Day 6

Visit to M’s parents’ flat to go through stuff.  M finds books and a picture he would like to keep.  I also find some books.  We lug back to flat on the bus.

Lunch at an Italian restaurant on Broughton St – Locanda de Gusti.  We order a mixed platter, and are astonished by a huge number of small dishes, some hot (pepper stuffed with couscous and pesto, grilled vegetables with tapenade, fried sausages and potatoes), some cold (spicy sausage, anchovies, seafood salad, rocket salad).  While we are eating some other people come in and order the day’s special, which seems to be an enormous assortment of crab, crayfish and prawns.  It looks amazing.  Maybe I will have to come back another time.  Having cleaned all our plates, we go on to Italian desserts (I have a cannolo, M has sfogliatella and K has plum and almond cake) and coffee.

Then up to the Spiegeltent in George Square, for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  The company start off as a group of teenagers in detention, forced to read the play by their dynamic teacher, Mr Goodfellow.  But then the scene opens up and we get to Athens.  It’s an excellent production, probably one of the best that I’ve seen (and that includes my visit to The Globe in London).  The text has been expertly cut, including the fairies who are only present as a murmur of sound in the background.  The cast deliver their lines with clarity and understanding.  There’s a lot of physical comedy.  The rustics are funny, Oberon and Titania are sexy.  Thoroughly enjoyable.

Then we have a couple of hours before the Les Clochards in a different tent about 50 yards away.  We sit on a bench in the sunshine and eat spicy bahn mi baguettes.  The Les Clochards are a band dressed as tramps, who perform high energy versions of songs that they complain bitterly were stolen from them.  Standout ones were Like a Virgin, Girls just Wanna have Fun, and Sledgehammer (“Do you know where that Peter Gabriel lives?” they ask plaintively).  For an encore two of them came out wearing only their tattoos and very holey underpants, and sang The Number of the Beast, which was just gob-smacking.

Then off to two less successful performances, the Trojan Women (but not unfortunately the Euripides version), and Tania Edwards, a stand-up comedian. The flyers for her show, Killer Instinct, picture her holding a tabby cat, and the blurb refers to an unhappy ending with a cement mixer.  “I bet the cat gets it” I mutter as we and the other six audience members head into the venue.  And indeed it does.