Good Fish 'N Chips, Average Comedy, Bad Movie

G'Day All,

It's been a great weekend. We've finished work and it's now only two days until we jet off to Dublin. Edinburgh has really come alive in the last few days due to the Fringe Festival starting. The streets are saturated with performers and people peddling flyers for comedy, music and theatre acts. They can get pretty annoying, there are only so many times that you can say "no thanks" to a painted weirdo before you want to start punching them.










Laura took us for a drive through Fife on Saturday. She had been talking up the "Best Fish & Chips In Scotland" in Anstruther for some time. So she put her money where her mouth is and took us to Anstruther for lunch. I have to say it was some pretty damn good fish and chips.

The boot of Laura's car was malfunctioning causing the boot alarm to constantly stay on. Not exactly being too keen on listening to the high pitched whine for the entire day we all vowed to try and talk continuously throughout the whole trip. It worked pretty well, it was only towards the end of the day that the alarm really started to grate.










We did a bit of sightseeing and lots of photo taking around Anstruther. We also dropped in to Kingbarns Beach where there were some brave families having barbeques while storm fronts constantly loomed on the horizon.

I found a dead lobster on the beach. Cool. (See picture above).

We then drove up to St Andrews. The last time Mel and I went to St Andrews we didn't quite catch everything that we wanted to, so it was good to re-visit. We were drawn to a graveyard yet again. You all must be thinking that we have a morbid obsession with cemeteries but these visits are not planned. This cemetery was at the old St Andrews Cathedral ruins, great spot for some photos and snooping around.

Once we got back to Edinburgh we met up with Rich and the four of us went out for Japanese. I had Octopus dumplings which were pretty tasty. We were going to try to catch a Fringe event after dinner but it had been a big day and we pretty much hit the wall and decided to head home.

Yesterday Mel and I were keen to catch a couple of free Fringe shows. Top of my list was the Bad Movie Club Bargain Bin Challenge. We got to the Mercat Bar early expecting the show to start at 2.30pm only to find that the programme we'd used was wrong. Instead an Irish comedy quartet called Two Chicks, A Gay And A Fat Dude was on. It was free and we were up for a show anyway. One chick and the fat dude weren't all that great but the other chick and the gay were fairly amusing. He made gay jokes and she made crude vagina jokes so I guess that appealed to my high brow taste.

The Irish accent made one of her punchlines sound like "tree holes" instead of "three holes". I laughed because everyone else did, then I realised what she actually said and laughed again well after everyone else had stopped. I felt better when Mel told me she thought the exact same thing.

After that show the Bad Movie Club guys showed up. They weren't doing a show but were just setting up and testing their equipment. They had an ancient projector which was must have had a couple of hamsters on treadmills inside it providing power. They started playing Jaws 4 in order to test the setup, an hour and a half and many jokes at Michael Caine's expense later and we'd gotten our Bad Movie Club experience. I had completely forgotten that the shark exploded on impact when they drive the boat into it. The entire crowd had a "what the fuck?!?" moment when that happened. Great fun.









We then wandered back to the Grassmarket to meet some friends from work at the Oz Bar for farewell drinks. We told everybody 7pm. By 8pm we were about to leave because nobody had shown up. At the last minute people started arriving and I ended up drinking way too much Tennants. We played some pool and had a chat. I finally caught a bloody football game too, it was a "who gives a shit" game because it was Sydney versus Adelaide but I was grateful to see a football match.

Today I'm catching up on blogging (no shit), and uploading photos and stuff. Tonight we're going to see Stephen K Amos (comedian) with Rich and Laura, should be a laugh.

It's almost time to say goodbye to Edinburgh, I'll make one more post before we leave. Black shit and a fat gut here I come, because I'm heading to the Guinness Brewery!

Take it easy everyone.

Justin.