Previewing

Tonight we tramped through the sodden, frazzled night for the sake of a puffy-haired comedian and his grand piano at the Pleasance. Edinburgh had an atmosphere of getting on with things under the turn-off of drizzle: the spotlights from the Spiegel Garden and the Udderbelly smashed into the night’s vague mist, white, green and blue. Odd jazz notes burbled into the night and mingled with the crowd’s clamour. Everywhere people, strolling, laughing, shrugging, hands-in-pockets-ing, their shoes flinging out little spits of puddle-water with every step.

The Pleasance Courtyard was its usual mad bustle, strung about with lights and strewn with stalls, wet and packed. The cobbles shone the night’s human yellow back from the rainwater. Everyone wore dark, soaked trouser-bottoms halfway up their calves. Flyerers dashed in and out, steaming; I caught the under-the-eyebrows, end-of-his-tether look of one, hands hard and disgusted around his bundle of leaflets now a soggy pulp.

After the show, we danced home, sucking up the life that sang in the air. Behind us, the castle stuttered out its colossal thunder of fireworks, lighting up the clouds with magic colours.