It seemed so long ago in late 2017 when I first thought of making 2018 the first year I make it to the Fringe. Looking at accommodation prices around then scared me off a bit. £1000 for a week? I could fly abroad for that!
Curiosity killed the cat as the saying goes and I returned to look at accommodation pricing again in January. Out of pure luck, I managed to find a single room in a hotel near Waverly station for under the budget I set myself. Bingo! This wasn’t including the fairly lucrative cashback deal I got which should mean a little bit of money after the trip to keep the bank happy. It was now or never and I decided to press that buy button. It was done. I was going to Edinburgh Fringe 2018.
Since then I’m been keeping an eye on the Fringe website, keeping in the loop with new show announcements and using Twitter to my advantage. However, it wasn’t until the full season launch when I thought what have I let myself in for? A 452-page programme slipped through my letterbox, there was no going back now.
When I opened the programme I was taken back to being a kid at Christmas ploughing through the Argos catalogue but how on earth was I going to cut this down? I read through it for the first time and then a second time with the dreaded red pen to get rid of the shows that were not showing during the time I was there.
I knew from the getgo that I didn’t want some sort of military precision timetable of events for the week but I did want a handful of shows on my definite list. I went through the programme a third time to start making decisions on events that not only stood out but also making a list of the weird and wacky. It would be so easy to see similar shows all revolved around the same theme but instead, I put shows head to head against each other until I had a sort of short list.
There was no going back now. My first batch of tickets was booked. Heading to the fringe in the latter stages has the advantages of seeing what other people make of different shows and so while I have a pencilled in a list of shows to potentially see each day, I still keep a very close watch on the media and social media to look out for productions that slipped my radar.
It’s quite a challenge for me to go on Holiday and not quite know what I’ll be up to but I’m very much looking forward to exploring #IntoTheUnknown.
Look out for regular updates while I am at the fringe! Hopefully my insight as a first time fringe goer will entertain and perhaps those who have never been before.
The Theatre Twittic 
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