Category: expats

Edinburgh Fringe Festival (16 years later)

I was scrolling through photographs earlier today and I came across this:

If I went through the archives there’s possibly a copy of it back at the time it was taken. Although there’s every chance the image has long been gobbled up by the domain transfers and the pixabucket or whatever it was I was using to host photos (it wasn’t flickr because for some reason that was blocked in the UAE at the time, along with skype).

It is taken outside the venue where I performed my show when I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2009. My first solo show, had never even done more than a ten-minute spot before, and I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with it.

WHAT WAS I THINKING.

Well, 2009 was the year after the year when a decade of experiences happened to me in the space of eighteen months and then we moved to Abu Dhabi. It’s no exaggeration to say that I was barely clinging on. So I guess I wasn’t thinking, eh?

In many ways, this show did my head in and when we left I was pretty convinced I’d never be performing again.

I had one reviewer who came, fell asleep, then gave it two and half stars, or maybe it was two stars and I’m just talking myself up 🤣. But mostly, it did my head in, because I left utterly and completely consumed by a belief that I didn’t belong in that world. I knew stand-up wasn’t for me. By then I’d been on enough line-ups and backstage with enough people who said they were nervous, who said they had no self-confidence and yet … out they went and looked like they knew exactly what they were doing. I had no theatre training so it didn’t occur to me that there was any kind of performance that would work for me.

At this stage the only person I’d seen who was doing what I could see myself doing was TJ Dawe. But he was a trained actor, and I was really wary of stepping into that world.

I still couldn’t see anyone doing the kind of performance that I wanted to do, which wasn’t standup and wasn’t acting. Edinburgh also made me think that the fringe circuit isn’t just brutal…it’s a blood sport. I just couldn’t see how someone who was quiet and wrote quiet shows could possibly find their way through it all.

Looking at that show now from the distance of sixteen years, I can, however, see that I was working my way towards the work I would be able to do. This show in Edinburgh was was on the way to where I wanted to be. A draft. A draft that probably shouldn’t have been shared publicly, but that’s what you get at an open access festival I guess. So this show is full of my early stand-up work, but is also clearly the foundation script for what would become An Evening With the Vegetarian Librarian.

It has taken me a long, long time to find my way through to the writing I want to write and the performing I want to perform. I mean, so many of my friends are talking about their plans for retirement (not immediately but coming up), where I’m thinking, ‘But I’ve only just worked out what I’m supposed to be doing!’

But Edinburgh wasn’t only about the performing and the show and what it taught me about being an artist. It was hard and it did my head in, but as part of my parenting life, this moment here is one of the absolute favourite times of my life. It was magic.

Mwa ha ha ha ha

Last year when the note came around I said to the lads and the mister, ‘No, no we will not be part of the Halloween trick or treating the Norte Americanos are organising in our apartment complex’. I was all American Imperialism this and culturally inappropriate that*, but in the end, they joined the rounds because it’s pretty hard not to let your kids be part of a candy-fest when they can see it all happening outside their window, and not to mention the other parents sort of insisted that our children joined in and I ended up feeling bad because we were all take-take-take and nothing to give.

So when the mister went off to the do the shopping on Friday, I said, ‘Can you get some boxes of sultanas and some muesli bars that we can give out for trick or treating?’ and the lads are like, ‘What? Sultanas?’ and I was like, ‘You’re always saying, “Why can’t we have the little boxes of sultanas, why do we always have to buy the big bags?”‘ and they were like, ‘Yeah, but it’s supposed to be candy,’ and I was like, ‘Last year, you came back with FIVE KILOGRAMS** of compressed sugar between you, so this year I am saying you can go trick or treating, but I am giving out sultanas,’ and they were like, ‘mutter, mutter, mutter,’ but what can they do because me and the mister were agreed and you don’t want to argue too much with Mum when she gets like this because who knows what she’ll say next and obvs they aren’t going to be spending their allowance on candy that they have to give away and anyway they aren’t allowed to spend their allowance on candy.

Then we’re sitting at tea last night, and I said, ‘Can’t wait til trick or treating tomorrow night when we give out all those boxes of sultanas,’ and the lads said, ‘Muuu-uuum’ (except youngest lad had a bit more of the Mom to it, and in that explanation I was going to write Moooo-ooom except it made it look like he was imitating a cow, which he wasn’t) and I said, ‘Do you know the best thing about giving out sultanas? The best thing is that everyone is going to say to you, “Your Mom is hopeless and she only gives out sultanas” and I am not going to care because I am 41 years old and no longer care what others think about me, whereas you are 8 and 9 years old so you still care a lot about what your friends think.’ I sounded a lot like my own mother when I said that.

There was a tiny moment of silence and they looked at me with the look I particularly love which is all ‘fark, she really knows her shit’, and then they laughed as much as the mister and I were laughing, and one of them (but I don’t remember who) said, ‘Mum, you’re hilarious.’

And sometimes, not often, but every now and then, I’m exactly the mother I wanted to be.

*I just want to qualify, that I’ve been to Halloween parties in Australia and even organised one myself when I was young, and I’m not really into the ‘we’ll all be rooned’ carry on about whether or not we should have it in Australia, because why not, it’s just that it felt a bit wrong doing it here…I know, consistency, I’m totally on top of it
**yes, I weighed it, which just goes to show that sometimes instead of being the mother I wanted to be I’m just the mother I was always destined to be.