Neil Gaiman at Usher Hall

I found out a month or so ago, that Neil Gaiman was coming to Edinburgh, to read a story, and I knew I would regret it if I didn't go. See Neil Gaiman came to the Edinburgh Fringe two years ago, and I didn't go, because no one I knew over here knew who he was and they didn't want to spend that kind of money on someone they didn't know.  I should have gone by myself, but I am a bit of a shitebag, and didn't, so this time around, I asked Dixon. I know still a shitebag, I probably could have gone alone, but he was really nice  and agreed to go with me.

It was one of the best things I have ever been too, he not only read the short story without a break but performed two songs in which he sang and read two other short stories. Both of which are brilliant, one for the amazing Ray Bradbury, The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury, and the other for the series of short stories he did monthly, and this was Octobers. you can download a pdf of them from here. And the amazing FourPlay String Quartet played throughout, with the fantastic illustraions from Eddie Campbell shown on the big screen for The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, which were perfect for the tone.

And it was such a nice warm night when it was over as well, Dixon and I walked home! It was a brilliant day all around.

I was a little bit proud of how my hair came out.

The beautiful Usher Hall

And the beautiful walk home.

So if this ever makes it to Neil Gaiman, I want to say thank you for an amazing night and thank you for all of your stories.

Teenage Bottlerocket

So I was going to try to keep things more chronological, but I had too much fun at the Teenage Bottlerocket gig so I am going to talk about that instead!
 

I was able to get the afternoon off from work so that I could go to Glasgow for this, cause a lot of times bands just don't play Edinburgh, in the end at least they were playing Scotland! So after Dixon was done work we had to head really quickly down to the Haymarket station and get the train. Where we were just a wee bit too early for an off-peak return which cuts the ticket price in half, if only the gig started half an hour later!
 

Although at first I didn't want to take the train through cause it would mean missing some bands and having to pay for the cloakroom or keep your jacket on you, we actually had a really good time taking the train together. Dixon and I don't get to spend enough time with Darren.
 

The gig was pretty brilliant once we got there, we had missed the first band, but by all accounts from our pals who were there, we didn't miss much anyway. So that was excellent, we got our t shirts and stuff and were just on time for the start.

 

I can't remember if I mentioned before but our pal broke his ankle last week, all three bone snapped like spaghetti! So he had wanted to come out to the gig but was now unable, he didn't even get out of the hospital until the day of the gig and that was about a week after he broke it. So we got him a tshirt! Hopefully he likes it! It is a bit tongue-in-cheek as it says skate or die and that's how he broke his ankle! I am hoping he will appreciate the humour!
 

Teenage Bottlerocket were brilliant! We even met the singer later!
 

 

This new plan I seem to have of staying up after I make Dixon's sandwiches and stuff in the morning for his work, and then blogging really seems to help the amount of posts I do, hopefully I will stick with this early morning blogging trend!