hello and welcome to emails.

this is my newsletter where i infrequently and inelegantly write about passing fancies before gracefully dovetailing into a call to action about a future show or project. im treating this like an introductory email since the numbers suggest at least 20% of you are new. if that's you: thanks hello welcome and thank you.

i'm living with the army. this year im staying in some university of edinburgh student accommodation, the same halls which is being used to put up the US Army Marching band who've been invited to perform at the tattoo. A student village overrun by people in fatigues using words like "Indianapolis". They're practising drills through the concourse outside my window smashing out military paradiddles to accompany bagpipes, flutes and banjos. It's the murderer's soundtrack. It's seeping into my dreams.

day one of the run i was talking to a guy in the PWYW queue who said they lined up on a whim because his flat is directly above the venue. but when it came to start the show i couldn't see him anywhere. an hour later im stepping out onto the street and he's sat on the curb finishing the last cone in a four pack of cornettos. two days later, i bump into him again and ask what happened, how come he never actually made it into the room? he explained that he was actually quite high that evening and just when front of house started letting people in he remembered about cornettos. he saw the show that day; afterwards he shook my hand, told me he loved it and gave me what looked like a tenner but later i discovered it was 10 turkish lira (about 16 pence in gbp). its good to get humbled nice and early. that guy had an aura that could be seen from the oort cloud. do we have any oort cloud fans in?

overall, im having a good fringe. i like my show, i like myself and the muscles in my legs have almost finished adapting to their profound new workload.

in general the response has been as good as i could have imagined. people either are very enthusiastic about it or refuse to meet my eye in the moments directly following the show's conclusion.

im grateful to everyone who's recommended the show so far. it's great when someone says they've been sent to the show by a friend, and honestly im extremely reliant on goodwill and word of mouth. for some reason all of earth's existing sean morley fans booked in for the first half of the fringe so im going to really need to tap into every untapped wellspring of organic hype to avoid a fate worse than death (posting an instagram reel).

my favourite show i've seen thus far has been Twonkey's Soft December Night In Tallahassee to me it's the quintessential fringe experience: beautiful, strange, idiosyncratic and underappreciated. maybe you should go see it also.

But really the best way to get the most of the festival is to go see something for almost no reason. Walk into a random room. Tonight I'm staying up late and going to Anorak Comedy Presents: The Alternative Comedy Nightmare because the flyer looks horrible (an image of a postman and an image of a darts champion overlaid on a picture of some meat).

ok thats it from me just a quick one ok goodbye thanks