To hate living in Edinburgh during the festival?

[auldfuckingspinster]

Trying to go about your usual way of life is a nightmare. Buses are packed and take twice as long to get anywhere as tourists try to pay their fares with £20 notes not to mention using the drivers as mobile tour guides. Shows cost a fortune so it's hard to go to more than a handful of them. Worst of all is hearing comics refer to your city as something that pops up for 3 weeks of the year then disappears for the other 49.

Have to agree about the old days, I could go up town with £10 and see a couple of shows and there were plenty of tickets and it was easy to get a bus home.

I feel your pain. I live in Reading and we are just now getting the annual influx of wellie-wearing teenagers. They are fucking EVERYWHERE!
I can't use my local supermarket for the duration as it's rammed with festival goers. They do their shopping and then hang around for hours. Why spend hundreds of pounds on a festival ticket and then spend the duration hanging out at Tesco?

I used to love it when I was a teenager and could blag free tickets and walk home for a kip and a shower but now I am old and have an actual life to be getting on with it's just frustrating!

It is massive this year. But I still think yabu. Buy a bike

" Buy a bike"

Have you tried cycling in town during the festival, I'd say it's the worst of all options as the drivers (bus and taxis especially) are grumpy and stressed by the number of tourists (who have a tendency to just saunter in the roads around my bit!) and the pedestrians are suicidal!

Yes I do it all the time, with my big bell dinging!

My most curmudgeonly thought is my resentment at how 'family friendly' it all is now. I tried. To have a nice a nice drink in George square last weekend and a million ghastly children sat next to us banging metal plates and generally being arseholes

Edinburgh is a terrible city for cycling - very hilly with roads full of potholes and rammed with traffic.

On the upside i am going to see Rob Newman at the fringe tonight and Paul Mason at the book fest on Sunday.

Can't wait for the fireworks and the aeroplane fly passes for the tattoo to be over. Every single night I am nearly asleep when it kicks off. I should have learnt by now!

I cycle through the middle of town most days, it's fine. You just need to keep your wits about you.

I miss Edinburgh so much it's painful. Born there. Left 27yrs ago. Live south of the border in a provincial boring uncultured non-cafe culture inbred town with delusions due to bring rezoned as a city a few years ago. I'd love to have the festival for a few weeks a year.

Yoksha what a shame, you don't sound very happy with where you live! You will have to console yourself with the lovely house I hope you have, that you could never afford up here! It has all gone downhill since you left anyway

Come back to Edinburgh Yoshka, it's funkier and more cosmopolitan than ever these days. This year's festival has been awesome. I totally disagree with the op, it's an honour to be a resident of this amazing city every day of the year.

YANBU I used to live in Old Town and am a far more calm individual now I'm on the outskirts. Trying to get anywhere on foot in central Edinburgh during August is just a nightmare.

Iggi999 & Captain,

Thanks for your sentiments. It's not finances that's the issue. We still own a house in Edinburgh . Our grandchildren were born here, & their mum, our daughter has severe grand mal epilepsy who is deteriorating with each seizure. My Dh just doesn't want to move again. 14 houses in 9yrs due to his job during the mid eighties to mid nineties.

He knows I'm hurting. It's real physical pain in my chest at times. I browse the property for sale weekly. Yesterday there was a gorgeous 3 bedroom flat in Polworth Crescent for sale. I had my furniture placed inside it & imagined my life back home in Edinburgh.

I need to get a grip in reality. Hoik up my big girl's pants & stop this. Now it's actually down anonymously, I might stop this self-indulgent behaviour.

I do visit siblings, but I don't want to leave.

Oh Yoksha that sounds very difficult for you. Could you still use the house, maybe for the school holidays to bring the dgcs up for a long visit? Spend summer up here and winter in England with better weather? When your dh retires maybe he could face one more move.

And I'm very sorry about your daughter's illness

Yoksha, I feel like you. I'm at uni in Edinburgh currently and I only have 1 year left. I dread ever having to leave! I hope things work out and you can return to this lovely (if busy) city.

Although I agree about all the kids everywhere, going near any venue in the day time sets my teeth on edge with them running into you all the time...

"My most curmudgeonly thought is my resentment at how 'family friendly' it all is now. I tried. To have a nice a nice drink in George square last weekend and a million ghastly children sat next to us banging metal plates and generally being arsehole"

Ok thought it was just me who was thinking that. After a month of not seeing each other me and DP sent DSD to my parents (who live 45min from Edinburgh) and spent some days in Edinburgh. I went to uni in Edinburgh so we met up with uni friends and there just seemed to be kids everywhere. I am sure the festival never used to be this child friendly? Or know I am in my 30's I am just experiencing a different festival to when I was in my late teens early 20's.

It's all different now. I grew up in Edinburgh, went away for Uni and then came home. I don't recognise the city as it was now.

Edinburgh is my favorite city in the world (not that I have been to all of them, of course). I would love to live there again, including during the festival.

"Family friendly" has infiltrated most events up and down the UK. It's arsey parents that are the problem. They're under the illusion that others will find their socially inept kids are as endearing to those present as they are to them. Go to events/restaurants in France or Italy & you'll see a different "family friendly" spin.

God I miss Edinburgh...

Once had to explain to an American couple that the buses had set routes, and that no, this one wouldn't take them to (random destination) but they could take a taxi, or God forbid, walk it.

I hear you, Yoksha... I miss it loads :(

,

in true Scottish style, I raise a glass to all like-minded Edinburghers.

I live in Edinburgh too. I like the festival. I haven't had a chance to really see anything as I've recently had a baby. I don't mind, it's mainly big groups that peeve me off. The ones who decide to stand in the middle of a busy pavement. Why? Move to the side!

I can't wait until the tourists go home. Where I work in the Old Town, drunk men piss up against the door, there's so much it seeps under the door and I have to step over puddles of their stinky piss while I go about my work. The number of alcohol related incidents towards police and ambulance staff is unbelievable. Sometimes it's hard to believe this isn't a Festival of Drinking but an arts festival.