The Badger Bar and the Grey Lady

Arriving back in misty Cumbria after a whirlwind fortnight in Edinburgh is a shock to the system, albeit one softened by climbing Arthur's Seat yesterday afternoon. Arthur's Seat gives a fantastic vantage point from which to map the city - sea to the East, industrial fringes to the West, blackened spires and the walls of the Castle marking a bullseye in the centre. If I were to chart my own map of Edinburgh city centre, the focal points would be The Banshee Labyrinth, a series of sofas where friends were kind enough to let me crash and many (too many) pubs. There'd also be a set of more abstract peaks and troughs sketched in to reflect how mixed our performances of 'A Pint..' were. Last week, British Theatre Review gave the one-woman version of the piece a pleasing 3 stars, though they would have preferred a little more theatricality. By far the best accolade as far as I'm concerned, however, is making it into a Top 5 Shows To Get You Tipsy. Couldn't ask for better than that...

Back in Grasmere, I'm already being assailed by ghostly tales. In the taxi on my way back from the station, we passed the Badger Bar, a mere five minutes from my house towards Rydal. The driver, who had previously been regailing me with stories about horse dressage, suddenly became animated. He began to tell me about a time some twenty years ago when he'd been working in the pub, putting emulsion on some panels in the dining room, when he glimpsed the ghost of an elusive 'grey lady'.

As he painted, he became aware of a sudden chill in the room that seemed to gather and pool around him, almost like a blanket. Looking behind him, he glimpsed a woman's head and shoulders through the glass doors to the room beyond. At first, he assumed it was one of the girls who worked in the pub - "simple lasses, good for pot washing but not much else. I went to tell her off for being where she shouldn't be..." - but as he made towards the door, the figure vanished as soon as it had appeared. Had it been one of the 'pot washers', they would have had to go through the external door, but the figure's disappearence was soundless. He switched all the heaters on in the room and consigned the vision to a 'daft moment'. In fact, he didn't think of it again until years later, when guests in the bar also reported seeing a stately female figure in the very same spot...

I didn't have much time to dwell on his story, because he was off again: "See that there hedge? I planted that in 1976...". I might have to pay a visit to the Badger Bar before too long. Purely in the name of research, of course. I'll report on any spirits who try to steal mine.

Being honest

I've long been interested in the idea of what 'honesty' really means in the creative arts, and whether Rita Ann Higgins was right when she said that the poetic truth necessarily involves lying. Earlier this year, Horizon Review published an article of mine on the subject of Craig Raine's approach to truth, which you can read here. Given my preoccupation with white lies, I was immediately drawn to the title of D.C. Moore's play, 'Honest', which is being performed at The Fringe between now and 23rd August. Having settled  in a side room of Milne's bar, Hanover Street, the audience is abruptly addressed by Dave (Trystan Gravelle), a disenfranchised city worker, clutching a bottle of Budweiser, with the memorable opening : 'I think I might be a bit of a cunt'. The monologue that follows is by turns witty and almost heartbreaking, an understated, frank account of what it means to see the world you're used to as if through the side of a glass tank. 'Honest' is made more powerful by its forthright delivery, and the audience are entirely drawn in. D.C. Moore's play has been well-received in the press and deservedly so - it was so excellent I went to see it twice in one afternoon. Interestingly, one reviewer likens the writing to Conor Macpherson, my favourite playwright and the inspiration behind some of 'A Pint for the Ghost'. Certainly, there was something of Macpherson's unflinching portrayal of lives without purpose in the writing, though I felt this was a subtly different brand of dark comedy. The premise that the whole play is in fact part of a bar room conversation is certainly something reminiscent of 'The Weir', and reflects Dave's character: part-outsider, part confidente. A must-see event for anyone in Edinburgh, without doubt.

Of course, when it comes to honesty, one man's truth is another man's bias. It was with mixed feelings that I read The Scotsman's lukewarm review of 'A Pint for the Ghost' last week. The review highlights some of the problems of our setup (a noisy bar, hardly suited to ephemeral metaphors) but largely focuses on the show's 'insubstantial' nature and lack of focus which is, in a sense, rather the point: 'A Pint for the Ghost' was conceived as a conversation, a set of exchanges in a lonely pub after hours, not a play with a clear narrative arc. The reviewer appears to have approached the piece as standard theatre (even curiously referring to 'male and female leads') rather than a poetry and storytelling event, intended to create an atmosphere in which the audience realises that our stories and lives seldom have a clear resolution, a neat narrative. Ghosts, after all, are a symbol of unfinished business. I'll leave judgement on whether or not the show has been effective in evoking that to our audiences. They don't have long - I'm fast approaching the last two night's of the show at the Edinburgh festival and what has been a fantastic learning curve. The Fringe is a merrygoround and I'm certainly feeling mildly sick and dizzy, though whether that's the Fringe's fault or the result of discovering Jaegerbombs, I wouldn't like to say... Watch this space for news of what we're planning for 'A Pint..' post-Scotland; there's talk of haunted venues in Leeds, Hull and beyond!

Auld Reekie

Down a dark, dark street, in a dark, dark pub, there's an even darker basement where Scottish ghosts go to drink the night away. If you're brave enough to venture down there between the 12th and 17th of August, you'll find myself and Simon Perkins, clutching whisky glasses and telling far-fetched tales of steel city spirits, tap room poltergeists and murdered widows.

I arrived at the Edinburgh Fringe on Friday afternoon and was immediately chucked headlong into the festival maelstrom, with performers flyering every street corner and large swathes of the city centre turned into beer tents for the month (oh, what a drag). As a Fringe virgin, everything seems rather bewhildering at first, but I'm fast learning that it's an advantage not to have a clue what's going on around you: the scale of the festival is frankly mind-blowing otherwise.

'A Pint for the Ghost' is here as part of the PBH Free Fringe, founded by Peter Buckley Hill in 1996. The Free Fringe has a fantastically supportive atmosphere, with performers watching each others' shows, helping with set up and even partially staffing the door – I'm immensely grateful to the stars and behind-the-scenes staff of 'The Head Girl, the Gap Year and Sue Ellen' who have always been on hand to help me lug chairs and tables around and dish out flyers.

Our venue is the brilliantly spooky Banqueting Hall, downstairs in the Banshee Labyrinth on Niddry Street, a stone's throw from The Royal Mile. Inside, the Labyrinth is a maze of eerie corridors and, as 'Scotland's most haunted pub', hosts ghost tours several times a day. For the next 4 weeks, comedians, storytellers, cabaret performers and spoken word artists are taking over the pub's many rooms to host free performances. The verdict? So far so good: we've had pretty much full houses most nights and, apart from the odd glitch with the CD player or an over-enthusiastic smoke machine (which gave particular resonance to the line in my opening poem that mentions 'pubs still cast in smoke so thick you barely see your hand before your face'), our first three shows in particular went swimmingly.

Edinburgh seems like the natural home for 'A Pint...' after all. The city's winding, cobbled streets and dark gothic buildings are crawling with ghosts. Even in the daytime, as crowds surge over North Bridge and shoppers crowd Princes Street, there are still corners where you can feel a distinct chill in the air. Nowhere more so than the Banqueting Hall in darkness. Last night, the performance was interrupted by repeated banging sounds and, as we cleared up, we were accosted by a less-than-sober contortionist, who told us that the ceiling had partly collapsed on him as he performed in the space last year...and he was definitely blaming ghouls instead of faulty architecture.

As befits the festival, I've managed to sustain a few monumental hangovers, ably assisted by the mind-altering properties of Tennent's lager. I've also taken in a range of other spoken-word shows, loosely connected by the theme of death: Literary Death Match, Tim Clare's Death Drive, Molly Naylor's 'Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You' and the fantastic Dead Poets. All highly recommended to anyone who is in town for the Fringe. There's also been plenty of whisky window shopping, running up hills and more pints of Brewdog's aptly named 'Trashy Blonde' than I care to recall. Amongst all that, I also found time to walk into a lampost in true, slapstick style, whilst reading a map. Living proof that, whatever audacious claims my show might make, I'm definitely not a ghost: ghosts don't bounce.

The Somnambulist

I've often thought that the hills are a good hideout for ghosts - by night, the peaks behind Dove Cottage seem to guard their own secrets. One of the paintings in the Wordsworth Trust's current exhibition, 'Savage Grandeur and Noblest Thoughts' depicts a passage through Langdale; glowering mountains on either side, a woman riding alone through the desolate landscape... walking alone in the hills towards nightfall isn't for the faint hearted, particularly if you're partial to a supernatural tale.

It's no surprise that the Lake District, with its sombre peaks and deceptive, tranquil waters, is home to some legends similar to the ghost stories from my native Peak District: there are tales of phantom armies marching over Hellvellyn, a drowned village at Thirlmere much like the one at Derwent reservoirs in Derbyshire, and countless tales of miners run amok. In Whitehaven, the Revd Sabine Baring-Gould was moved to report in the 1800s:

"I know a man who is haunted by two spectres. He has shaking fits, during which his eyes wander around the room; then he sees the ghosts. He was a miner, and is said to have half cut through the rope when some men against whom he bore a grudge were going down the pit; the rope broke and they were dashed to pieces. Their ghosts haunt him night and day, and he can never remain long in one house, or endure to be alone night or day."

Neither is it surprising that some of these legends stirred Wordsworth's poetic imagination. Wordsworth is credited with inventing the fateful tale of Emma and Sir Eglamour at Aira Force, near Ullswater, detailed in his piece 'The Somnambulist'. Emma was the promised bride of a knight, Sir Eglamour, who sailed abroad and was gone for months without any word. Half mad with worry, Emma would sleepwalk every night, down to a bower beside the waterfall of Aira Force (part of Aira Beck) where she had last seen her lover. She never met a soul in her sleep and would return to bed.

One night, however, Sir Eglamour returned and, passing through the ravine, saw his bride's white-robed figure in the moonlight there. He rushed towards her on the precarious ridge where she stood. His touch woke her immediately and in her terror she tumbled into the torrent and was swept onto the rocks below. The finale to this tale of lost love is predictably bleak, with Emma's body retrieved, and a whispered 'assurance of love and fidelity' to Sir Eglamour before she died in his arms and he in turn died in mourning.

Though the story is reputed to be one of Wordsworth's own rather than a tale inspired by legend, there have been various reports in the years that followed of visitors becoming lost of trapped in the rocks and chasms around Aira Force, only to be led back towards the light by a white-robed figure. It seems ghosts who die for love are usually not malevolent...

Banshees, of course, are not reputed for their good tempers, and next week sees 'A Pint For The Ghost' heading to the terrifyingly-named Banshee Labyrinth in Edinburgh to perform at the Free Fringe. The show will run between Saturday 7th and Tuesday 17th August, with a night off on the 11th. Do come and have a pint if you're in town for the festival....