2005-08-22 - 2:53 p.m.

Heading up to Edinburgh for the festival tomorrow, so of course the weather has turned and like last year, we�ll probably have to use hollowed-out logs to sail between venues. We�ll mostly be hitting the stand-up comedy shows, but this being the Edinburgh Festival, you can see pretty much anything and anywhere with a roof is considered a venue, though even this isn�t really a pre-requisite. Hamlet on stilts? Singin� in the Rain reworked with traditional Kurdish dancing? A troupe of dyslexic midgets from Laos telling bible stories via the medium of nose flute? These are just some of the shows that probably don�t exist, but you get the drift.

Apparently even the big name comics, and there aren�t even too many of them, fail to make money on their shows, and as anyone can just turn up, book a venue and get on up and do their funky thing, I�m imagining money is being lost optimistic hand over artistically challenging fist. When the punters all hotfoot it out of town leaving the performers to tidy away their ill-advisedly expensive sets, the town must have the biggest collection of in-debt entertainers since Moses sacked the all-Egypt Pharaoh Footlights Happy Hieroglyph Players.

Anyway, hopefully it won�t slash down all week � last year�s sogginess did tend to get a bit wearisome after about four solid days.

With one eye on sunnier climes, my Floridian road trip is taking shape nicely, if by �taking shape� you mean �expanding to include a worrying amount of actual driving�. In ten days from the 1st September, then: Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Everglades City, Venice, Charlotte Harbour, Punta Gorda, Sarasota, Wicki Wachee (sp? All I know is they have a live mermaid show�), Orlando (well, �Gator World�), Miami. Yeah, you can laugh. You don�t have to navigate.

If anyone knows anything about any of these places, such as where you queue up to get carjacked, or the best places to careen off the road in a flaming car-ball and spend eighteen hours in a ditch waiting for the emergency services, then I�d really love to hear from you.