LIVE from Stockbridge, yeah?

Blog by Rosie Davies | 22 Aug 2009

I started working for The Arches at the end of July. I cycled to work through the city - through Kelvingrove park, down Sauchiehall Street - before being sucked in to the sour darkness beneath Central Station which so defines Glasgow. It was all very Glaswegian.

The Fringe started about a week later. Suddenly, Glasgow, and any sense of meaning or importance attached to it, had been obliterated.

It's weird, though, because when I moved here five years ago, any curiosity I'd expressed towards Edinburgh was firmly stamped out, in the way you might hurriedly extinguish a passing inclination towards the BNP from a set of increasingly conservative grandparents. I can't count the amount of times I've been told that Edinburgh 'just doesn't have the same atmosphere' as Glasgow. It was forever whispered about - an austere, joyless older brother, desperate to join in, but just too uncool to ever manage it.

Armed with a memorised list of late train times and a sense of trepidation, my first venture into the Fringe was a pleasant surprise. Sifting through the satisfyingly heavy brochure, marking down yes, nos and maybes, and tripping down cobbled lanes and winding staircases under a medieval moon...I'm not one to romanticise things (I'm a Mancunian living in Glasgow - I'd just sound stupid) but I did, I romanticised.

Working at it isn't quite the same. Not because of a lack of atmosphere. It's more that any sense of romanticism has been buried under a growing mound of unmet demands, panic and general cynicism, from under which my body twitches sporadically and somewhere, someone close by, or perhaps it's far away, wonders: "CLIPBOARDS. Have we got any clipboards? Do we have enough clipboards?"

It's also fairly frustrating when my attempts at self-navigation are met with looks of concern or, worse, disgust. "You mean, you've not been to The Botanics?" I'd like to continue that mock-conversation but such is my lack of Edinburgh-based knowledge that I struggle even to reference two landmarks.

HOWEVER. You'll be happy to know that it has got much better. We have established that not only do we have clipboards, we have enough of them. Which is, quite frankly, a miracle of initiative and foresight considering the surrounding area is pretty much useless for any practical shopping needs, unless you're after a vintage picnic hamper, or enough beige chinos to clothe an entire family.

I am currently spending most of my time in the lovely little cafe, which is, luckily, one of my favourite pastimes. My only problem is that I am surrounded by talented people. Even worse, their talent is displayed on the walls in the form of clever little sketches of shows, cartoon strips, knitting, etc etc. While most would embrace this whole-heartedly, I have to admit to an innate sense of northern bitterness at anyone more artistically talented than me, which I have come to realise comprises a lot of people.

HOWEVER. Had I not come to the decision that although tapping away at a laptop didn't necessarily constitute an artistic craft, I would set up shop anyway (I can't even handle knitting, it's pathetic), I would not have stumbled across what can only be seen as an artistic calling: to steadily devour and rate each flavour of the organic, locally produced home-made chocolate on offer. Every cloud, and all that.

What began as a treat between performances has become a work-in-progress, for which I may have sacrificed my teeth and my figure (watch this space). So far: dark chocolate with sea salt and caramel = dubious; white chocolate with forest fruits = ate the entire bar within an hour, meaning the long train ride home was punctuated by fiercely punitive waves of nausea.