Buxton Fringe

Location: Buxton

This weekend I'm in Derbyshire with character comedian Ed Eales-White to tech his show 'Champions' on the Buxton Fringe. John and Kirsty at OutFox kindly agreed to me having 4 days off from stage managing Spring Awakening so I could honour this previous arrangement.

We travelled up by car on Friday. The weather driving up was ridiculous. Horrific rain the whole journey, to which Mr Eales-White remarked "The last time my car broke down it was in a massive puddle. It doesn't really handle puddles." Cut to 30mins later our horror as a massive road-spanning lake loomed out of the mist. But the car survived and we eventually arrived (a little later than anticipated) in Buxton.

Audience numbers have been a little disappointing but those who have tuned up have been very receptive. I love Ed's show and I'm still laughing every time I tech it.

Staff at the Underground Venue are lovely, the managers, Yaz and Tom, have kindly put us up during our stay. The initial plan was to camp, but due to the COMPLETE WASH OUT we've managed to kind some sofa space.

Buxton is really pretty. It's nice being out of London for a while. There's green everywhere and things are just calmer. I'm happy to be in the North (actually Midlands but Londoners just don't know better) for a while. The locals are friendly (friendlier) and its somewhat comforting to hear the accent again. People pronounce 'bath' 'dance' and 'cast' the same way as I do here!

Last show tonight, crossing fingers for a bigger audience, then Ed's dropping me off at the station before he drives home to London. I've got a day off from the show so I'm popping to Sheffield for a bit. Then it's the last week of Spring Awakening. It's gone rather quickly.