{"id":388557,"date":"2025-09-01T04:29:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T04:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/388557\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T04:29:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T04:29:13","slug":"wildfire-cheese-and-buses-robin-inces-edinburgh-fringe-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/388557\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildfire, cheese and buses: Robin Ince’s Edinburgh Fringe 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the evening, I would sit on the bus, hatching plans with Jo who would patiently sit throughout my show before unleashing some surprise tap-dancing. It was a small room and I chose to have the shutters and window open which helped elevate the sense of informality, while\u00a0not removing the intensity of certain moments.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Fifteen minutes before the end of the show, the audience would start to hear a rhythm. Could this be heckling in Morse code? As I continued, blithely ignoring the noise, it built and it built, until Jo paraded to the front in a full American tap mode. It delighted me every evening. Then, we would perform percussive poems together. As I would sometimes tell the audience, \u201cI am so sorry, but I still treat The Fringe as if it were a fringe.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

The buses, the politeness of the queuing, the necessity of saying \u201cthank you, driver\u201d. Such things too reminded me of why I love Scotland. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Here is a poem for Margaret Thatcher<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n

You might say that only losers take the bus\u00a0<\/p>\n

Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n

But if you are one of us \u00a0<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll know we are victorious \u00a0<\/p>\n

Because we are courteous \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, driver\u201d is a little sign \u00a0<\/p>\n

Of how we must ensure \u00a0<\/p>\n

That we are kind \u00a0<\/p>\n

Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n

Smile at shop assistants, open doors. \u00a0<\/p>\n

So, Margaret, we might not have a car\u00a0<\/p>\n

But we have something far, far better.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlike you, Nigel, Kemi, Keir \u00a0<\/p>\n

Our \u201cland of strangers\u201d sits side by side \u00a0<\/p>\n

May even chat to each other on our ride \u00a0<\/p>\n

Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n

We are bus sister and bus brother \u00a0<\/p>\n

Though there may be a family dispute \u00a0<\/p>\n

When it becomes a night bus route.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Robin Ince is a comedian, poet and broadcaster.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ice Cream for a Broken Tooth: Poems about life, death, and the odd bits in between<\/strong><\/a> by Robin Ince is out now (Flapjack Press, \u00a312).<\/strong> You can buy it from the\u00a0<\/strong>Big Issue shop<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this?\u00a0Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n

It\u2019s helping people with disabilities.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s creating safer living conditions for renters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s getting answers for the most vulnerable.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Big Issue brings you trustworthy journalism that drives real change.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

If this article gave you something to think about,\u00a0help us keep doing this work from \u00a35 a month<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Read more: In the evening, I would sit on the bus, hatching plans with Jo who would patiently…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,2197,1102,56777,7056,4884,31103,52184,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-388557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-comedy","10":"tag-edinburgh","11":"tag-edinburgh-fringe","12":"tag-from-the-magazine","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-poetry","15":"tag-robin-ince","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115127161628381902","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}