Edinburgh Fringe Day 11 part two. Honing, honing, honing

Day 11 was a Sunday. I was planning to go into town and see a show but the remains of Hurricane

The view over our front gate.

Bertha meant torrential rain which was a tad offputting. If I'd been 100% I'd have gone but it's wise still to rest with the possible homeopathic flare-up in my neck.

Lion of course has had gales down on Dartmoor; that makes me slightly homesick—I've come to love the roaring winds we get at home. Here's a picture of home BTW. Not so different from the moors on the hills outside Edinburgh.

So instead, I've been working on improving the set. It was beginning to feel stale the last few nights.

That's one of the best things about having comedy notebooks and comedy files on the computer. Whenever I think I need to improve, I have piles of ideas to go back to. Not that new ideas don't come out of the blue either ... and not that I don't collaborate with others. Today for example, I had a wonderful Facebook chat with Deb Rowley in New Zealand who came up with the ideas that made up two terrific new and current jokes that I could drop into the act apropos of nothing at all.

And some lines from previous sets jumped out at me as being better for the kind of audiences that I've been getting than the newer ones I'd been using. So it was mix and match, re-order and start again.

So, what with oceans of lemon and ginger tea for my sore throat, I was feeling pretty chipper when I took the bus into town. The Tickled Pigs had a reasonably good turnout and were very happy. And when I started, I had one.

Incidentally, I don't use the phrase 'just one.' What's just about it? When I had supper at a local restaurant the other night, the waiter said, 'just one?' I replied 'entirely one,' which was probably somewhat too smart-alecky for him but it's a valid point. I spent many years travelling the world by myself and I was never 'just one.' It's a bit of a patronising saying isn't it?

Tonight, he was the sort of One who wanted to sit in the front row and engage and, to be honest, that is exactly what you need if you are trying out some new/old-new stuff,  you have a sore throat and aren't feeling 100%.

Even better, he chuckled. He chuckled all the way through ... and he asked questions when he didn't quite get it which will help me hone again. His name was Jez and he'd spent the day tidying up his flat before his wife came home so that there was no evidence that he'd had any parties whatsoever ... and he enjoyed it so much that he came along and joined my Maggy Whitehouse Spirited page on Facebook later that night.

Turns out he's a direct descendent of R. D. Blackmore, author of Lorna Doone and countless other novels.

Later in the show another seven people turned up (although, according to George who followed me another woman stood listening in the doorway for a while and then marched off exclaiming "outrageous!" Could be my first offended customer? Hooray! So there were eight or nine. A bit strange for a rural vicar to be so outnumbered on a Sunday!

It must have been fairly good because the couple who arrived 20 minutes before the end asked me if I could start over and do it again (no...not without seriously inconveniencing George) and a fine time was had by one and all.

I'm so happy that I'm sanguine about not having huge audiences. There's no point in fussing; the right people are coming; I'm having fabulous conversations with the folks who do come and it's still early days anyway. Most of all, I'm loving every second of it. And how does it get any better than that?