Festival time!

Rain-swollen gutters, chewing gum and broken glass, drookit beggars by the cash machines, buses washing pavements at the pothole puddles, small herds of tourists in polyethene ponchos, a dripping mass of humanity drenched in rain of West Coast luxuriance; junkie-thin young Londoners in pork-pie hats or sandals, puffy with sleep-deprivation and sallow with booze; peeling comedy posters, collapsing masonry, a wonder the whole city does not dissolve in this rain... such is the now traditional wet first week of August and the spectacle granted to the citizens and festival-goers of Edinburgh.

Given the weather, what better way to while away the time than being holed up indoors and led away into a fantasy land of theatre and comedy? It's Laughing Horse @ the Phoenix Bar on Broughton St for me today to see Bratchpiece and Smith...