Fringed

What is the point of mobile broadband? In five year's time will we laugh at them as much as minidisc recorders? On the thick stones of Edinburgh the little beggar has given up, which is why i'm typing gamely away in a cafe/laptop farm full of fierce-faced people stabbing self-importantly away.

I am very happy, however. To write Harry Potter, JK Rowling booked the penthouse of Edinburgh's finest hotel. I am penning my latest book in an apartment above a gay sauna. It's as lovely as can be - although the air does whiff of chlorine and farts.

In between flailing away at my wordcount, I am seeing STUFF. Mostly wonderful stuff. I am not trying too hard. This morning I walked past some student actors in Elizabethan skirts bouncing up and down singing a warm-up song about bananas. I checked the crowd to see if there were any pretty boys. There were not - just a slightly flushed, overweight boy surrounded by a lot of girls with pinched faces and the make-up of 50 year-olds screaming "Banana! This is how we peel the banana!". So I decided it was safe to hate them and move on.

I've deliberately avoided seeing any Token Gay Plays, but did go and see a comic called Jimmy McGhie on the basis that he looked pretty in the flyer. He told nice jokes and his shirt kept riding up, which made up for the fact that Future Husband Rhod Gilbert was sold out. There was also a suicidal Welsh transvestite sing-a-long called Sue which was brilliant. There we are.

Apart from theatre and comedy there's also the joy of trying to use the Fringe Website which has the kind of woeful search engine you hope St Peter will use when it comes to judgment day ("Well, I'm typing in 'sodomy' and all it's offering me are tickets to a short film...").

At night (which in Edinburgh appears to start at about 1 am) I am finding the gay scene oddly flat. I'm either blaming the smoking ban or my indigestion, but it's peculiarly lifeless. There's a new barclubbar called "GHQ" which looks a little too imposing to even try and drink in. CeCeBlooms still has checkerboard tiles on which florid women are whirled around to Kylie by whip-thin dancing boys. As I'm getting older I'm noticing I'm edging further and further away from the dry ice and towards the slot machines and the scowling pensioners who sit there letting off 2a.m. farts.

Other than that, I dunno. It's kind of brilliant, really. I've also been watching Quatermass 2 again. It's a gift that keeps on giving, especially at scrapy-o-clock when you're utterly, utterly smashed and really just need to hear a women with plums rammed between all of her cheeks crisple enunciate "Johnny! Johnny! What's Happened To You! Is it the Amonids? Johnny?" Bliss.

Ida Barr's Christmas Show

I've always loved the rapping pensioner. I've seen her in dingy pubs, in community theatres, in a tent, and now she's at the Barbican, bless 'er. This was originally going to be "Ida Barr's Christmas Bingo" (probably using Ida's fiendishly complicated calling system - "No better than what she oughta, my care assistant's daughter - only 13"), but she's gone one better and manages a whole 90 minute show of her rapping, singing, and rambling on in her decrepit way. Her waspish tongue proves that octogenarians can get away with murder ("My dear old mother used to say 'Be a can, don't be a can't.'").

There's a game of musical chairs. And it ends with the audience doing the Hokey Cokey. Blissy.

Blowing Whistles

When will I learn my lesson about Token Gay Plays? Blowing Whistles was two hours of gays screaming at each other, with the odd brilliant one-liner. At times it wanted to be The Doll's House. At times it wanted to be Pinter/Orton/Victoria Wood. But mostly it just settled for tackling serious gay issues while ensuring the blonde one took his top off.

Despite international acclaim, Tim and I hated it. So, we decided to shove its message about the true meaning of Gay Pride and instead go for a sneering drink in 79 CXR. If you've never been, imagine the Queen Vic after a gaypocalypse. This is where the zombies would drink. It was dark, two old skinheads snogged up against the fire escape, and the toilets offended every law of hygiene and morality. People are either looking for a late drink or late sex. "This is the true meaning of Gay Pride," said Tim, and we clinked our glasses.

And then I started to laugh. When I was 21 my heart was broken by a model (It's an epic saga involving murder, drugs and the yellow trousers of the Junior Dean of Manchester College Oxford). Anyway, he was beautiful, he was nasty, and he never stopped with the impression that he was too good for me (his nicknames for me were "baldy", "fatty" and "pencil dick" - grrrr). He was the boyfriend who taught me that men aren't actually that good for you.

And there he was. After all these years. Standing in a dark corner of 79 CXR, between the fruit machine and a man with piercings and a comb-over. He's aged - well - but he's aged. He was wearing a jumper with a knitted snowflake pattern. And he was there!

Tim and I raised our glasses and smiled over at him. There we were, having an ironic late drink in the worst place we could find. And there he was. This was the best he could manage for his evening. Unsuccessfully cruising for sex in the last, last, last chance saloon. The man who'd been in magazines and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson's sister. Who'd been flown across the world by rich young record executives. And now he was having to shuffle aside so that a drunk lumberjack could spill his pint over the slot machine.

Sometimes, revenge may take a decade. But it comes. Of course, Lee will just say this proves that my taste in men has always been rubbish. And I'll agree. But I'll argue my timing has never been better.