In the Blue Peter Garden

So we're half way through the festival and we're still using the same pitta bread as a prop. It's going wonderfully well, despite the persistant showers. Our audiences love the show, even the one audience member who thought she was coming to see a cooking demonstration. (There are two cakes on our poster but she definitely inferred a tremendous amount of incorrect information from that). Today we had a spurter (lady on the front row took a drink just as she snorted with laughter and nearly choked), yesterday we had two snorters and the day before that we had a hen party who were laughing so much they passed around hankies to mop up the laughter tears. Today's spurter understood more Irish Gaelic than your average punter, so had a special little joke all to herself.

 

Us Domestic Goddi are creatures of habit. After our lunchtime show in the only cool (the temperature cool, not the other cool) venue on the Fringe we gather in the Blue Peter garden, which Peter Duncan has arranged in the Pleasance Courtyard, and nibble away at our foil-wrapped butties, chatting with Peter. I've taken to carrying round my roll of double-sided sticky tape, just in case I'm called on to construct a small venue out of a cereal box and two empty washing up bottles. Yes, I know the Pleasance has got that covered but just in case. I had completely forgotten about Peter's role in Flash Gordon until I saw his show. Him and Timothy Dalton in green tights – how could I have forgotten?

 

Last night we became tourists and joined a spooky midnight ghost tour of Edinburgh's nooks and crannies. It was really interesting to observe and experience the art of whipping up a mob into a state of terror. We were led into the damp, dark vaults beneath the South Bridge which were uncovered by drunk students some time in the seventies. Imagine how cool it would be to discover a village of vaults behind the wall of your storage room? They had been built as storage facilities for merchants but were so damp that all their goods got destroyed. So the only thing they were then deemed fit for was...poor people, naturally. Now the spirits of cholera-stricken, ricketts-riddled children haunt these vaults....well...probably. But the fear and awe was quickly stifled as we were led from the vaults straight into a dirty, dodgy club for our free vodka. The ladies toilets had a pebble dash floor. Unusual. And the door to them was hung upside down. That what spirits'll do to you.