Brown toast traffic lights

Half-way through the long haul, I am writing this at my "alternative" breakfast cafe. My "regular" haunt is closed (why? it's Tuesday), but it hardly matters. Still I can't find any brown bread anywhere! I ask for "brown toast" and either they say they don't do it or they bring me white bread toasted so that it is burnt brown... Does no one eat brown bread in Scotland? I must have put on a stone since I got here. I bought a new suit for my standup set at Pleasance One, but I can barely get into it. (On Sunday I thought I had lost it. Then I discovered one of the Latvian contortionists I share my dressing room with was using the trousers to polish her euphonium. Ah, the joys of the Fringe...)

Actually there is only one thing I am finding really difficult here - and that's crossing the road. The timing of the traffic lights is simply incomprehensible. I stand pathetically on the corner waiting for the wretched things to turn green in my favour. They don't. They just don't. You simply have to take your life in your hands and cross when you can.

Highlights of the past 72 hours: handing a Fringe First to my friend Mandi Symonds for her play "Real Babies Don't Cry" at the Gilded Balloon; watching Michael Maloney and Flora Spencer-Longhurst in my play "Wonderland" at the Assembly Rooms in George Street for the first time (they are just amazing); taking tea with Ronnie Corbett with a teapot that dribbled: "This teapot needs a prostate specialist" said Ronnie; playing Just a Minute on the Royal Mile with Stephen K Amos (he's a natural for it); knowing that Sue Perkins is in town... (I had a thing for Patricia Cornwell once too. The years I've wasted ...)

Off in search of cappuccino now, then on to Just a Minute with John Bishop. Then it's my show at Pleasance One at 4.30. I think Michelle McManus is coming today. (Oh yes, I am getting to meet them all. I am having a drink with Piff the Magic Dragon later. And then supper with Nicholas Parsons. And, if I play my cards right, I might get a nightcap with a Latvian contortionist. Or Sue Perkins. We can all dream...)

What are the three most important words in the lexicon of Fringe survival? "Don't dabble, focus". As long as the show works, who needs brown toast?