Lost (Presumably Stolen): Two Penguin Suits

So yesterday may have been the angriest day of the Fringe for the boys from Team Penguin. We came in refreshed after our day off on Monday and discovered that both of our penguin suits had been nicked from the venue dressing room. The even sadder bit is that it's yet another problem caused by the utter incompetence of some of our venue's staff.

You see, Sweet Entertainments are rather obsessed with turning our venue (The Sweet Heart) into a new Fringe Club where performers from all over come along and muse over the spirit of the Fringe (or something like that). As such, even though there's only one performance space, there are TWO bars in the venue, one of which is located right next to the performance space. Unfortunately, on Sunday night, one of our local bright sparks failed to lock the performance space which resulted in any drunk from the bar downstairs being able to wander in and rob or vandalise the props of any one of the six productions running there. Yes, this is a professional venue with seven years experience on the Fringe.

Even more fun is that fact that we've since heard that that night one of the barmen found one of the suits on the ground while cleaning the bar (our thief must have decided that he had no use for two penguins suits and discarded one on the dance floor) but our clever barman decided to leave it where it lay "in case it was meant to be there for a show or something". Yes, we are paying to perform in a venue run by these people.

Needless to say, the Edinburgh Police and my insurance company are far from interested in helping us out given that the theft was caused by venue negligence. We bought a new suit but it's a bit shit and I keep feeling like we're slightly short-changing people. It's all a bit gay right now and the venue have done more washing their hands of the issue than actually helping.

However, you know what they say about clouds and silver linings? Well, only a few hours later, we discovered this review online. It's a great review from a pretty important publication and it's full of incredibly quotable lines. Quite a joyous experience for all of us here.

As for sales and all that, we've had quieter days that we've become used to but still had well over 40 in both today and yesterday so as long as we hit the flyering hard tomorrow and the weekend goes as expected, we should have another week of selling over 80% of tickets for every show, which is pretty cool.

In a health update, I think we're all dying. One Ms. Emma Keaveney started displaying fluey symptoms while here last week and I believe she may have infected us all. I'm just about over my bout of Keaveney flu but messrs Smyth and Clifford are definitely suffering while incidents of sniffles are becoming more and more prevalent in 30 Polwarth Gardens. No one has yet been quarantined but that situation may not last.

In other Edinburgh news, the sun made a rare reappearance today. That was nice. I think it was just doing a showcase slot though as it now appears to be backstage getting high or something.

I promise the five person readership of this that there'll be more soon.