This time last week it was chucking it down with rain and had been doing so for, I don’t know – a hundred years?  This time this week the sun is shining.  This time last week it was my Birthday and I had aged a  whole year overnight.  The years all came down on me in one dark rainfall.  I guess this is just a pseudo-poetic way of saying that for goodness sake – a birthday is much easier to contemplate in the sunshine!  Apparently, Edinburgh had its August quota of rain last weekend.  My favorite boots – which had seen me through two English winters dissolved.  I wish this were a metaphor.

Time is moving oddly here, and we feel to be on a unpredictable  funfair ride, depending on how many people come to the show, whether we a get a review, whether my boots are dissolving or how much coffee is slooshing through our veins.  Yesterday, there were 21 people in the audience (the biggest we’ve had here), and it’s the first time since Martin did the show before a home crowd that there were ‘whoops’ at the end.  The responsiveness  of the audience depends on how many people there are in it, it seems. There is more awkwardness with fewer people; they seem too uncomfortable to laugh out loud at the funny bits of the show. We have had three four star reviews so far.  All the reviewers have mentioned the ‘laughter among the tears’.  I hope that today’s audience will take this as permission to laugh, otherwise it feels as if we are putting them through 55 minutes of  torture.

Right I need a coffee to go with the sunshine.  That should do it.