Edinburgh To-Do No.456: Be in a good mood.

There was a flurry of Music Box social activity before leaving London. On Friday night I found myself at a BBQ where everyone there was about to be in a show before Edinburgh. Everything was noticeably “before Edinburgh” over the weekend. I’m eating a burger, before Edinburgh. I’m sitting on the tube, before Edinburgh. This is the last time I’ll be in Morden, before Edinburgh. Morden, I’ll miss you.

We also did our last pre-Edinburgh show, at London Zoo, which went down really well and so put us all in great spirits. This was followed by our last pre-Edinburgh rehearsal at The Miller, where everyone had the same idea and brought along loads of cookies, cake and sweets. This also went really well so morale is at a high at just the right time, which makes me feel really happy.

I also got to the point on Sunday where I’d finally done all the pre-Edinburgh admin I could possibly do, and was staring at a ticked to-do list for once in my life.

My first thought was, what shall I do now? The answer I decided was to chill out, and have fun. Whatever the aims of the show are, the best thing to do right now is to chill out and have fun. Afterall there’s nothing worse than being in a comedy group that’s getting stressed and staring at each other wide eyed saying “WE HAVE TO MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH, NOW!”

Similarly nobody wants to be flyered by someone who looks sick and stressed. It’s not the face of someone who is going to make you laugh and feel good about life.

So whatever I do now, being in good spirits is the main priority. I’ve been diligently organizing myself into a good mood. First step was a run in the park. When I’m running I always pretend I’m an escaped prisoner of war and I’m running away from Nazis. It makes it more exciting. I haven’t admitted that to anyone before! I’m 32.

This good mood was rapidly escalated by finally getting the train to Edinburgh this morning. That’s right, I’m in Edinburgh now! The whole of Twitter is overflowing with people tweeting “I’m in Edinburgh, woooooo!” and I’m one of them. That’s right, I’m a massive Edinburgh cliché, and I’m proud of it!

I arrived off the train and immediately walked into C Venues to meet everyone. Was amazed how professional and friendly and efficient everyone was. Amazing stuff, I feel really confident in the venue team. This was rapidly followed by a similar series of really helpful and friendly meetings at Fringe Central Office. I had probably the most productive day I’ve had all year and things that I thought would take all day just took a couple of hours.

Which left me the rest of the day to hang out with Becca, our director, and be really silly. We spent the evening walking up to the top of Carlton Hill where we occupied ourselves by singing random songs about the Edinburgh view below while eating Muller Rice. These included a punk number along the lines of “Pleasance Courtyard, didn’t want us, we don’t care” and dirty little number about a phallic shaped Chinese lantern falling from the sky. It was incredibly childish, and did wonders for chilling us out.

So I might have remembered, just in the nick of time, that if you’re doing comedy you can’t take things too seriously. Edinburgh, wooooooo!

- by Steve Roe, blogging for WhatsOnStage.com