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A busy day of festival and family stuff.

Excellent lunchtime family show at the Pleasance, Horrible Histories - Barmy Britain, a very slickly-produced show, brilliantly performed by the duo onstage. My children's favourite bit? The song about Burke & Hare to the tune of Postman Pat. Sample lyric - "Burke & Hare, Burke & Hare, killing people everywhere". Very recommended.

Followed by an afternoon picnic and some pond-dipping at Dunsapie Loch and then the first visit to the Commie Pool since it's big re-opening after a multi-million pound facelift. Biggest change as far as I could tell is that they've got a new clock and some digital displays to tell you the water depth. It does admittedly look a lot smarter and I'm sure they spent all that money wisely.

Evening entertainment provided at Teviot by Sean Hughes, a man who I last saw at The Leadmill in Sheffield in 1989 during my student days. He's appealing completely to the 35-45 demographic these days and was disbelieving why anyone under 30 would want to see him talking about "all this middle-aged shit". His scattershot, highly adlibbed set had loads of banter with the front row and plenty of laughs. Plus, he just seems hugely likeable.

Right - music. I mentioned The Leadmill. It was a brilliant live venue back in the late 80s/early 90s when I lived in Sheffield and I saw a whole ton of bands there over the years. First band I ever saw was during Freshers Week in my very first year. Saturday night, I'd left home just a few days previously and there I was, aged 18, down the front seeing The Wedding Present, thinking I'd died and gone to indiepop heaven. But they had a support and I'm about to link to them now, indeed this was the song that they kicked off their set with that night.