Three years, it's been. Three years since we last did this properly, back in 2019. In 2020, none of us got up to Edinburgh at all, and The Belated Birthday Girl and I spent a whole week watching shows online. In 2021, the two of us went up there for half a week without the rest of the Pals, spent the other half of the week back in London watching more shows online, and at some point during all that we caught Covid. (I know last year I was suggesting we were infected during our LNER train home, but having just seen this episode of No More Jockeys - recorded the day after the live NMJ we saw at Monkey Barrel - I'm now toying with the idea that we caught it off Little Alex Horne. He doesn't look well, does he?)
And now it's 2022. Could we expect something like a normal Edinburgh Festival this year? We've got all the Festivals back and operating in the real world: International, Fringe, Book, and even Film's returned to its natural place in the August line-up. We've got accommodation booked for the week (we originally booked it in 2020, but they've been very understanding). We've got a whole bunch of Spank's Pals joining us again. All we need to do is get the train up to Edinburgh and oh shit.