‘Home Alone 7: All my friends are artists’

I’ve been home alone for the last week and a half. Not in the Macaulay Culkin sense, although I have stocked up on tiny toy cars and practiced some wisecracks in case burglars show up. I shouldn’t even joke about being burgled. It’s my number one fear. I was worried that potential home invaders would spot how little recycling I put out and deduce that I was on my own, and so this week I’ve made a special effort to drink enough Red Stripe for 4 people. You can’t be too careful when it comes to home security.

While Macaulay’s parents were looking for him frantically in Paris, my housemates are doing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. The problem with being friends almost exclusively with artists and performers, other than the constant fire hazard posed by untamed beard hair and scrunched up poems about Autumn, is that they have a tendency to decamp north of the border en masse in August. This can make for a very lonely month if you’re unfortunate enough to work in, say, a large city centre Post Office. The Fringe is a nationwide reunion for misfits and I’m sad to be missing it. It’s like not being invited to a school disco that was created especially for people who weren’t invited to the school disco.

I guess I should be glad that I’m the only comedian left in town. I’ve climbed several rungs in the city’s comedy pecking order and all I had to do was forget to book time off work. If there’s a comedy emergency this month they’ll have to call me. If the mayor needs a few zingers for his next speech I am ready and willing to step up to the plate. I’ve got some killer stuff about bus lanes. 

Aside from burglaries, my main concern is that I’m going slowly mad on my own. The other day I woke up to discover that the washing machine was on. Either I’ve been doing domestic chores in my sleep or I’ve got a very helpful poltergeist on my hands. A poltergeist who cares enough about the environment to wash tea towels at 30 degrees, which is very forward-thinking for someone who has presumably been dead for quite some time. The ghost’s helpfulness didn’t extend as far as hanging up the washing but that is understandable- hanging up white sheets must be the ghost equivalent of having an out of body experience and I wouldn’t wish that on my new house guest.

It’s strange that a ghost is being so kind to me during the Edinburgh Fringe because, last time I was there, I was exceptionally unkind to a ghost. An employee of the Edinburgh Ghost Tours company informed me that I was flyering on her pitch and I bluntly refused to move. I felt immediately remorseful. Her clothing suggested that she’d died in some sort of Victorian chimney sweeping accident and come back as a ghost, only to be roped into flyering work; the only job in the world less rewarding than the one that originally killed her. Clearly she had enough problems without me being difficult. I apologised for my rudeness and allowed her to return to her pitch, which might explain why I haven’t been blacklisted by the ghost community.

Along with ghosthunting, I’ve been spending the solitary hours trying to convince a neighbourhood cat to be my friend. It’s very willing to sleep in my garden but runs away the second I try to invite it in. I like to think that maybe all of its friends have also gone to the Edinburgh Fringe. Perhaps they’re in that musical. I forget what it’s called. The one about the cats.

We acquired my childhood cat by gradually stealing it from our neighbours over the course of several years, and so I called my Mum for catnapping advice. “Put some nice tuna out for it”, she advised, implying that some types of tuna wouldn’t be good enough for the stray cat that sleeps on the broken fridge in my yard.

This time next year I’ll probably be in Edinburgh, fighting my way down the Royal Mile in the pouring rain, wishing that I could be home alone with a mountain of Red Stripe cans and an indifferent cat. (Or, more likely, I’ll be waiting in the non-EU queue at Scottish customs with dozens of other English comedians begging to be let in.) For now though, I’ll content myself with reading the reviews and wishing my friends who are up there all the success they deserve.

Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off to buy some luxury tuna to impress a stray cat and some normal tuna to eat for dinner. At least I’ll have two extra things to put in the recycling bin this week.

Note:

*I wrote this a couple of weeks ago but didn’t publish it at the time as it seemed foolish to advertise the fact that I was alone in the house. My housemates are back now and they all know karate. 

Martin Pilgrim works at the Post Office in the Galleries by day, and as a stand-up comedian by night.

Read more: My Bristol favourites: Martin Pilgrim