Before we get going, the internet connection in this flat makes the old dial-up speeds look like Usain Bolt. Hopefully when we get to Loch Ness it will be quicker as there are lots of photos I could add and it just keeps crashing.
Anyway, the person who coined the phrase "It's as different as chalk and cheese" clearly hadn't sampled Lidl's mild cheddar (Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week). But it has definitely been a "Chalk and Cheese" day.
My body clock refused to switch to holiday mode and there I was, 7:00am, wide awake, while everyone else was piling up the Z's. Another trip to the ScotMid (Co-Op) topped up on the provisions and I then discovered that there was actually nowhere to sit in the apartment. Anna and Izzy were on the sofa beds and, not wanting to wake them, I stayed in the kitchen drinking tea and reading the paper until they surfaced about 10:00am.
Dawn was brought up in Edinburgh but for me and the other kids it was our first taste of The Fringe. It doesn't start properly until tomorrow but there were a lot of preview shows on and the place was generally pretty darn busy. I also dicovered what a stunningly beautiful city Edinburgh is.
A cursory look through the Fringe brochure saw us find a show we wanted to go to, "AAA batteries required" at 2:05pm in The Meadow Bar in Buccleuch Street (the pronunciation of which made me sound as though I had something stuck in my throat). We didn't have that much time to get into town but we made it (via checking out a three piece band, The Dark Jokes who were excellent) and it was mainly a hit. The compere/MC picked on Mads pretty much straight away and was much funnier than the two main acts to be honest, so they were a bit chalk and cheese.
From there it was a mad panic to get to a show Dawn had blagged some free tickets for, Four Screws Loose in #screwtheworld at the Bosco theatre in the Assembly, George Square. That was another chalk and cheese show, with some very, very funny laugh out loud stuff to some really random "not sure what that was all about" sketches.
Fast food was grabbed by the Assembly in the food huts and then we attempted to take the kids to a nice restaurant, The Sept, which was probably a mistake. For some reason the prospect of decent, properly prepared food doesn't flick their switches and they generally misbehave. They weren't too bad to be fair, but by this time we had had quite a lot of chalk and cheese behaviour which is just so darn tiring. One of them had to be banished outside to calm down during the meal.
The tension between them got more and more evident as the day progressed and several strops were thrown. It was all probably a combination of attention seeking, over sensitivity, bullying and just basic sibling rivalry but it got very stressful, so much so that they will be given an ultimatum tomorrow that any such behaviour repeated will result in a quick cab ride to Granny's where they can stay for the day.
The strops even put the final event of the day - the Underground City of the Dead tour - in doubt as it got to a point where we just threatened to go home. But they wanted to do it and it did have the effect of frighenting the hell out of them which automatically had a calming effect. Unfortunately, poor Dawn went flying on a slippery paving slab on the way to the underground vaults grazing her arm and knee.
Tomorrow we will go back to the Fringe to catch some more shows before heading up to Loch Ness on Saturday where the hunt for Nessie will begin!
A threat to stay at grandma's thats just cruel
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