'I love autumn, right after the Fringe ends' – comedian Laura Davis on Edinburgh’s other 11 months of the year
For Edinburgh-based Australian comedian Laura Davis, Auld Reekie isn’t just for Fringe time, it’s for life
My name is Laura Davis, I’m a stand-up comedian from Australia but I live in Edinburgh all year long.
My favourite season is autumn, right after the Fringe ends. Partly because it’s the most amount of time I have in between festivals to write a new hour of comedy, and partly because I grew up in a place where we don’t really have autumn and I think it is incredible. I love watching the squirrels get increasingly businesslike, and when you see someone taking a brand-new coat for a tentative outing. I like walking along the Water of Leith handwriting some drafts and looking for the herons and otters. Although a heron nearly pooed on me once and I don’t think that’s something I would be able to recover from. Sometimes it does really pay to look up.
People really tried to scare me about winter in Edinburgh before I moved here, and now I can definitely see why. Well, maybe ‘seeing’ is the wrong way to put it, since Edinburgh in winter is essentially a sensory deprivation experience. It is my second favourite season. I love the dark, quiet, lamplit nebulous hours where I can get lost in the city for hours? Days? Weeks? Months? As I write out the new show.
Sure, it’s dark and freezing but I’d say you’re only constrained by the strength of your imagination. You learn to make your own fun. I like to walk around listening to Gregorian Chanting and pretend I am a tenth century monk toiling in the gloom for a few hours until I’m really deeply immersed in the illusion, then I walk into the big Asda and let it absolutely knock me senseless.
In Spring the days are exactly the right length to get up early and go to the bakery and get a still warm croissant. This is something I used to do more often back when I worked at a bakery, but as someone who works late now, a sunrise is a special treat. I go sit in the graveyard on the way home because I’m a big fan of juxtaposition and you’ll never feel more alive than eating a still-warm croissant in a cold dark graveyard, watching the daffodils make a fist of it in the retreating shadows.
Every year it feels as though the cold weather will never end and then suddenly we’re back to summer. The grass is long and green and lumped with people who really should be using more sunscreen. The nettles are growing menacingly close to the cycle paths. Fledgling seagulls are learning how to murder fledgling pigeons along the Union Canal in a devastating example of nature’s cold indifference to cruelty.
The Fringe begins to trickle through in late July. You might not even notice it. An extra magician here. A unicyclist there. Until somehow, almost before you can register, the city is absorbed into the Fringe bubble of shows and street theatre and fireworks and food trucks and a thousand dropped kebabs.
I’ve been spending August at the Monkey Barrel. I really recommend heading to Blair Street and letting yourself ping-pong between the different venues for a while. Tadiwa Mahlunge, Ed Night and Alison Spittle are some of the names that I’m excited to see. My show is called DESPAIR IS BENEATH US (spelled in all caps, pronounced shouted) because the world is on fire and we no longer have time for subtext. It’s about toothaches, phone sex, lions, pebbles, owls, witches, clowns, parties, graveyards, croissants, heartbreak, swimming, and losing your cool in the post office. It’s about ABBA and fascism, The Art of War, nightmares and what happened on my 7th Birthday.
I’ve been really excited to make the most of this August, taking in all the vibrant explosion of it before the leaves start to turn again and I’m back pacing around the hills, waiting for it all to start again.
Laura Davis: DESPAIR IS BENEATH US, Monkey Barrel,5.45pm until 24 August
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