With just three weeks to go you still have time to leave town - Vladimir McTavish

Overflowing bins on Edinburgh's Royal Mile during the final week of the Festival Fringe in 2022. Picture: Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNSOverflowing bins on Edinburgh's Royal Mile during the final week of the Festival Fringe in 2022. Picture: Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS
Overflowing bins on Edinburgh's Royal Mile during the final week of the Festival Fringe in 2022. Picture: Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS
Talking of the Fringe, it’s only three weeks until the first weekend of Edinburgh’s annual arts jamboree. In a little over a fortnight, church halls, hotel function rooms and basements of pubs will be kitted-out as venues.

The performers will have started drifting into the city and posters will be popping up in every available place.

The pavement railings on The Mound will become a rogue’s gallery of mugshots of TV personalities. Soon the public won’t be able to walk down the High Street without having flyers thrust into their hand or being musically assaulted by theatre school brats from the Home Counties. If all this sounds too much, you still have time to leave town. There’s still three weeks to go.

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Venues are recruiting front-of-house staff, technicians, stage managers, street leafletting teams and extra bar workers. If you’re looking for a job in August, there are still vacancies out there. It’s not too late. There’s still three weeks to go. If you’re a comedian or an actor whose previews have not gone well, don’t worry. There’s time to get it right. There’s still three weeks to go.

If your show doesn’t have an ending, don’t worry. It’s not too late to write one. There’s still three weeks to go. Depressingly, there’s only three weeks until the Silent Disco returns to Edinburgh, leading throngs of tone-deaf morons through the Old Town like a pied piper of halfwits.

But that may not be the only rubbish on our streets this August. There is a genuine threat of another bin strike in the capital next month, unless a deal can be done in time. Do we really want to see a repeat of two years ago? Surely not.

I’m sure everyone remembers the 2022 Fringe for all the wrong reasons. The piles of discarded flyers on pavements, the mountains of take-away food containers piled up top of overflowing bins. The huge piles of crap shovelled up into even bigger piles of crap by TV film crews so that the whole situation looked even worse on the news.

Come on, Edinburgh City Council. It’s not too late to put a decent pay offer to the city’s refuse workers. There’s still time to find the money. There’s still three weeks to go.

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