Come on a Scottish adventure with me in your Heyday Friday newsletter
Join me for a memorable trip to the Edinburgh Festival and my debut appearance as a performer in this week's unusual newsletter.
Hello!
I’m just back from Edinburgh and in spite of my best intentions, my plan of writing a blog about my wonderfully memorable, hugely enjoyable, completely knackering 36 hours at the Festival, and our, if I do say so myself, fantastic Rock Choir performance, has (predictably I suppose) gone completely to pot.
I had hoped/planned to use the nearly-five-hour train journey back today to compose both the blog and this newsletter, but the hopeless train wifi simply wasn’t having any of it. Which meant that by the time I got back to my desk, and my ‘proper’ (aka usable) wifi, I’d run out of enough hours to write all that before this had to be winging its way to your email inbox, unless I was prepared to stay up all night, and in all honesty, I don’t love you all enough to do that. Nearly, but not quite.
So I’ve tried something else instead. I’ve edited a reel on Instagram documenting my whistle-stop trip, which I’m sharing with you by way of a visual vlog in the place of a written blog and which I hope will give you a flavour of the last ridiculously hectic two days. Some of the captions have frustratingly slipped off the bottom of the screen (lesson learnt about the positioning of them for future reference), and it’s got the all the Instagram screen furniture on it, so apologies for both those things.
In it you’ll see snippets of the beautiful stretch of coast alongside the line as the train heads over the border, get a flavour of the festival streets of the Scottish capital, see my remarkably spacious student digs accommodation (the benefit of having been allocated an accessible room for some reason. Maybe I sound a lot older on the phone…), the gorgeous interior of the Victorian Baroque Cafe Royal, and equally stunning internal atrium of the Museum of Edinburgh, some eye-catchingly colourful contemporary jewellery, and get a flavour of all the shows I managed to cram into my brief stay, including one with a very special performer in it.
And, of course, you’ll see something of me with my Rock Choir mates.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!
What you will have noticed you haven’t seen is anything of us actually singing. That’s because, of course, we weren’t allowed to take phones or cameras into the performance itself.
Fortunately, my brother was in the audience (it’s because of his wife, my very lovely sister-in-law, Mel, that I joined Rock Choir in the first place. I watched her in a performance and thought it looked like fun, and eight years of membership alongside her later I can confirm that it definitely is!) and he videoed some of the songs in the set. So I thought you might like to see a couple. Mel, by the way, is the one in the glasses who he zooms in on as well.
This one is the grand-girl gang’s current favourite
And this one is mine. It’s a beautiful arrangement and gorgeous to sing
And this one is always a crowd-pleaser
Over my years singing with Rock Choir I’ve been lucky enough to do some really unforgettable performances - laying down two tracks at Abbey Road Studios, singing on the red carpet at the world premiere of Renee Zeilweiger’s film Judy, lifting the spirits of thousands of runners at various amazing marathons, being just some - and my one-night-only appearance at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe is certainly up there with the most memorable of them.
It goes to show that however old you are, there are always wonderful new adventures and experiences to be had, doesn’t it? I’d love to know what your most recent adventure has been. Let me know in the comments.
Hoping you’ll feel this rather different newsletter is deserving of a ‘like’ click. Not sure I’ll have anything quite as tuneful to report next week, but I look forward to seeing you then.
Brilliant 🤩
Thoroughly enjoyed watching those video clips!
Looks like a fantastic experience.
I really love that Keane song. It would be my favourite to sing as well 😊