acid for paint

Forgetting that Fringe (or Festival) Sunday generally happens on a Sunday I wandered through the Meadows this morning on my way to collect my (now fairly useless and non-waterproof but better than nothing) anorak from the coat-hook in the office to see if the little van selling pasties was in place this year seeing as I missed getting one at Treefest and discovered that those sold in stations are essentially disgusting and flavourless. Apart from a few tents and duck-boards and portaloos there was nothing really there yet apart from a lone entity with an umbrella guarding a fenced-off section of grass on the cricket pitch bit (whilst a tent to his north was left unsecured and fully accessible to any passer-by) though its behaviour wasn't really any stranger nor less likely to bear fruit than that of the traffic wardens seeking illegally-parked cars half-way up an accessible-only-by-stairs close between the High and Jeffrey streets. One day I'll have to do a little composite-blips of traffic wardens doing all the things they do instead of keeping cycle lanes free of parked vans like smoking in the little nook round the corner from Buccleuch Street, smoking just out of sight of Howden Street down Hardwell Close, hiding in the little alcove down Lover's Loan when they should be patrolling Melville Terrace and so on. They really should realise that they'd be a lot more innocuous and less shifty-looking if they removed their fluorescent coats or tabards before attempting to hide in the shadows; occasionally one will remove its hat when peered at as if to indicate that it is off duty or on a break and allowed to lurk wherever it might wish though one never sees the fuzz sneaking down a close for a quick fag though they mostly have cars to lurk in when eating sandwiches. I've seen the Horse Division patrolling about fairly frequently recently and was vaguely tempted to follow them to see what they do with the horse when they have to stop to investigate something or go to the toilet.

There was a little more box-moving today with three more boxes successfully freed and their magazine-contents lugged to the recycling bin. I haven't had to defend my right to keep anything yet though it'll probably come as one of the remaining boxes is one of those ones which contains spare/old computer components and their boxes. Whilst I'm disinclined to throw away or recycle an old 4x CD-ROM drive or 256Mb of PC2100 on the grounds that it works and is therefore potentially useful I may one day have to when the small amount of space saved by they and their brethren becomes significant.

Although the main going-to-festival(plural)-stuff starts on Friday when we each have a week off we popped to see that nice Mr Minchin today seeing as he is alleged to have an "all-new" show. Unfortunately the between-song banter was the same as last year though the songs were new including an excellent nine-minute poemything which exceeded even Mitch Benn's Shakespeare-rap-in-the-style-of-Eminem from 2007. No real problems with the audience although the people in the queue behind us were arsetwats of the first sorting. There were a couple of apparent walkers after the first few anti-religion jokes which is always nice to see seeing as they've already paid for their tickets and are effectively funding the continued mockery of their ill-founded belief without getting to enjoy themselves at the rest of the show though logic is probably not the strong point of anyone offended by such content. Definitely still worth seeing even if you've seen him before though the opening song is a little bit on the loud side.