Thursday 10th of August, 2000
The horror, the horror.
Tooth still hurts - hope the infection matures and buggers off by Sunday.
Dither, e-mail. Finally look at mobile at 12:45 - message from Festival Revue about hole to be plugged left at 11:15. Returned call, hole filled but maybe I'll get on at some other time.
Further dither - I go to gym, but just do a bit of running. MTV is on. Why is it that, given that these places usually don't allow in anyone under the age of 18, they force us to watch TV that is aimed at people with a mental age of 9? Some pointless boy band have done a cover of A-Ha's Take On Me, probably the first time that I have ever thought of A-Ha as worthy of preservation in any way. Horrid horrid. You can feel your IQ sapping away.
On leaving the gym, I discover that there is another mesage from the Festival Revue man. Bum. I call back and have to leave a message. I want nutritious food, and go to the supermarket but discover that when I get inside, there is no signal on my phone. I decide that I don't want the farce of non-communication to continue any longer than it need to, so stay out of the supermarket. I get the call back from him, asking whether I want to do a fifteen-minute spot at 6:15. I say yes.
On the way I try to cut through the back of Prince's Street Gardens, under the castle, and am met by another Officious Gentleman, a representative of Edinburgh's Worshipful Guild of Petty-minded Jobsworths who tells me with some relish that the gates are locked and that I have to go back the way I came and around.
When I get there, I am told that there has been another communication problem, and that they need the time for setting up the Battle of the Bands, so I go home. On the way home, I have one of those epiphanous moments - standing on North Bridge, I see Arthur's Seat, the Castle, the Scott Monument (an astonishing edefice, and probably the original inspiration for Thunderbird 3, only much camper) Calton Hill, and have that moment of realisation of where I am, not just as a geographical fact, but an almost mythical reality. I sometimes get the same feeling crossing Waterloo Bridge at home. Bridges are good for that sort of thing, perhaps one is suspended momentarily outside the city. Or not.
Ahem.
Incidentally, the bridges in Edinburgh don't actually cross a river, or at least not any more. In the 19th century the river and loch were drained to make the railway and Princes Street Gardens respectively. Consequently, if you are crossing North Bridge and look down, you see the roofs of Waverley Station below you. It's the kind of strange substitition that the Surrealists (and Futurists too) would have liked. In fact there is something of the Surrealist city about Edinburgh. On North Bridge there are little signs advertising The Samaritans. Perhaps there should be signs that say - "If you do want to kill yourself, please do not do it by jumping from this bridge, since the panes of glass in the roof below are very expensive and difficult to replace".
By the time I get back home I am ravenous, with little food of my own, so I order a curry from the takeaway downstairs, to eat with some naan bread I have in the cupboard. On finally receiving the curry, find that I have, without actually doing so, ordered more naan bread. Can't be bothered to argue. Eat the curry and go to get the pickup for the spare guitar. On reaching the flat, discover I haven't got the keys, so have to return empty-handed, just in time to leave for the gig.
Gig goes well - we have the Guardian in, apparantly, and Le Monde (!). Afterwards, we have to grab relevant instruments and rush off to a converted restaurant which is being used by Scot FM as a studio to broadcast from the fringe. On the way I find the keys that I had "forgotten" in my jacket pocket. The place is wall-to-wall drunken free-loader, and in the corner of one of the rooms is a table, at which Fat Bob is seated. Fat Bob is our presenter for the evening, and is everything that you would expect from "Fat Bob - Scot FM night-time presenter". On the wall above Fat Bob seated at the microphone is a framed photograph of Fat Bob seated at the microphone.
We drag the electronic piano, the piano stand, my guitar, assorted bags and ourselves through the seething mass of drunken freeloaders. A Large Irish Man is sitting opposite Fat Bob, talking stream-of-consciousness nonsense, which Fat Bob is enjoying immensely. Large Irish Man gets an extra 30 minutes to plug his show, because his stream-of-consciousness nonsense was so good. We have a minute and a half to set up and soundcheck. The entire programme is being routed through one Spririt Folio Light mixer. We are restricted to a space the size of a cupboard (because the rest of the room is needed for drunken freeloaders). None of us can see the other, only I can hear all three elements. We are playing Geoff, which has a number of stops and starts and changes. As the only person who can hear what the hell is going on, I must say we played it impeccably, not even considering that playing it at all was nearly impossible. After that we gather round Fat Bob's table for a "chat".
The horror, the horror.
Phil does not do stream-of-consciousness nonsense.
Fat Bob mentions Chris de Burgh as a point of comparison with Phil's songs. Phil forcibly suggests that this is not the case. Fat Bob then brings up Bob Dylan in a similar context. Phil insults Bob Dylan (a hanging offence round these parts). Phil does not get a chance to plug the show (which is probably a good thing - think of all those Bob Dylan fans with lynching on their mind). The chat is terminated swiftly.
We are relieved.
We drag the electronic piano, the piano stand, my guitar, assorted bags and ourselves through the seething mass of drunken freeloaders to the street and return to the Cafe Royal.
As Phil says, you don't get this at the BBC, darling.
If anyone with responsibility is interested, the entire budget for the programme is being spent on drink, and as a teetotaller, I didn't even benefit from that.