Friday: Latitude Lost

Paloma Faith sounds good across the meadow. It’s hot. I tried some networking in the press tent. I linger in the film shed, before doing exactly what any good West Coast critic would do given access to the world of music. I work out a trail that allows me to catch all the Scottish bands, in rotation. Phantom Band, Admiral Fallow, KT Tunstall, Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan.

But I am not here for the music, unlike the teenagers who have just finished their exams. The mission is to find those performance acts who will be coming to Edinburgh this August, and get a jump on the reviewing. I am sure I am only the only Scottish critic here. I win.

Up in the Hidden Forest, I catch up with the National Theatre of Scotland. Although the details of our contact have been labelled confidential until a later date, we chat about the folk traditions of Scotland and England, the difference between pubs and fields, the politics of drama and how I am starting to like David Greig’s plays. Since they are here to do his Prudentia Hart, that is fortunate.

As a tip of the hat to my mother, I stroll down to see Richard Dedomenici. He’s the Live Art Lecture guy who almost got arrested for asking whether the cannon in Edinburgh Castle could take out the Parliament. He’s suggesting that the Olympics ought to be celebrated by a campaign to encourage dogging. Then he sings his own version of the theme tune to Cagney and Lacey.

Dedominici is an intelligent and accessible performer – rarely for Live Artists, he is interested in expanding his audience, and uses broad humour to make nuanced points about the absurdity of official versions. He does struggle in the Cabaret Tent – even The NToS will have problems with sound bleed – but his work does require more attention than a festival crowd has. I know he can be a brilliant success: he was the man who convinced my mother that there might be something in this weird experimental art I love so much, but his Latitude set is serviceable.

The evening shift forces me to make a choice between three events. Since I might later pretend to have seen all three, I’ll not say where I ended up. I did manage to glad-handle Tam Dean Burn, one of Scotland’s most interesting actors, who was innocently watching Prudentia Hart, as well as bag something for the Edinburgh festival review list. It was somewhere around there that I spotted a rival Glasgow critic, and realised that I needed to get my scoop in quickly.

So I went round the back of the Disco Shed and drunk the dregs of other people’s wine bottles.