I went to the Edinburgh festival this year buoyant with good intentions to post here every day with little reflections on what I was seeing: Mission Drift, Audience, The Table, I Hope My Heart Goes First, Your Last Breath, Future Proof, Alma Mater, Steal Compass, 2401 Objects... And of course it didn't happen; why did I even think it would? The one piece I started trying to write – about The Frequency D'Ici's Free Time Radical, a show so gentle I didn't register its impact until several hours later, when I was suddenly engulfed by sorrow for the two male characters – refused to formulate itself, and after that I became too caught up in the excitement of haring about town and the guilt of spending hardly any time with the family. And then there was holiday and then a lengthy visit from my mum and suddenly I have a glut of deadlines and not enough hours in the day to write the real work, let alone effervesce about Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Tezuka or the new Baxter Dury album or the new Jens Lekman EP or Kneehigh's The Wild Bride. I've only managed to write this because I sat down to transcribe an interview I'd done with Simon Stephens (oh I do adore him), but discovered that I'd plugged the phone cord into the earphone socket of the recorder, rather than the microphone, so all I could hear of him was a ghostly murmur. That's kind of how life is at the moment. On the plus side, I spent a large chunk of Saturday re-creating a white chocolate cheesecake and raspberry tart from Ottolenghi, with which I'm somewhat unhealthily obsessed, and baking vegan baklava, both of which went a bit too well, recipes to come if I ever get any time. And I'm having a melty teenage moment with Caged Animals, particularly their song Teflon Heart, whose chorus makes my veins itch and will not budge from my head. So here it is...
