Sunday. The sabbath. The day of rest. When God tells me to have a lie-in, who am I, a mere mortal, to refuse?

Sleep banked, I headed to the Pleasance Courtyard to see Phillipa and Will Are Now In a Relationship, a short, funny play told entirely through a Facebook wall-to-wall. It’s very well observed and performed and although there are one or two occasions where the drama requires conversations that are unlikely to have taken place online, the play acknowledges this and turns it into a laugh. The conceit could easily outstay its welcome but at half an hour, the show is just the right length.

That sounds a bit like a review. I need to keep reminding myself not to review things.

After the play, I went next door to the Pleasance Gym for a run, giving my sore thigh and its large, multicoloured bruise a bit of a workout. Most importantly, I burnt off a few hundred calories and therefore was allowed to have a massive roast dinner. If God didn’t mean us to stuff our faces with tasty, tasty meat on a Sunday, why did he invent Yorkshire pudding?

I had an evening nap and then took myself off to see Dan’s “main” show, Lifestyles of the Weird and Aimless. That was a fun hour, although not for the first time I embarrassed myself by laughing too loudly at a joke – on this occasion, a lovely two-liner by Laurence Tuck.

LOTWAA is a free show and I’ve started to worry (it’s a social situation – I worry) about free show donation etiquette. If you’re doing a free show, as we are, then at mates’ free shows, it feels a bit odd contributing to the bucket collection at the end. You end up recycling your own takings; if the same comics then come to your show and donate they’re just handing the money back; and it’s a bit weird (and feels almost patronising) chucking a few quid at someone you’re friends with. But equally, I feel miserly walking past a collection bucket and not putting something in; I don’t want to set an example to other audience members that they don’t need to contribute; and you can never be sure whether not donating will be read as being tight-fisted or, worse, disliking the show.

Basically, it’s a minefield of potential faux pas and someone should come up with a clear rule so we all know where we are. But then all social situations would be better with a rule book. Or, even better, a script.

What I learnt today: My laugh is too loud.

Recommended show: Phillipa and Will Are Now In a Relationship

Obligatory plug: I’m in Three Man Roast, 2.35pm weekdays and Saturday 20th at Finnegan’s Wake on Victoria Street – free entry. Also at the Amused Moose Comedy Awards Showcase at the Pleasance Dome, 4pm on August 17th (book online).

Day 8 was not one of the best.

For the first time, our gig was a bit flat and I wasn’t sure why. I moved a couple of jokes earlier in my set to try something out but it was hard to judge from the quiet crowd whether that was an improvement or not. And just to add further confusion, one line we’d talked about rewriting suddenly got a good laugh. We consoled ourselves that one slightly weaker gig out of five so far is an all right hit-rate.

I went to the gym to blow the cobwebs away a bit and ended up with blisters on my toes and lost a button from my cardigan.

It rained and rained and rained.

On the positive side, I went along to see my mate James W Smith in his first solo show, Living in Syntax. The audience there clearly enjoyed it and it deserves more of them, as befits any show that features Latin poetry and a game of Boggle. 6.10pm daily at the Royal Mile Tavern, and it’s free.

Last stop of the day was to see Michael Legge‘s Curse Sir Walter Raleigh, which was the best stand-up show I’ve seen here so far. Michael spends an hour with no microphone shouting funny things from his mournful teddy bear face on the subject of good and bad manners. It’s hilarious and also features a Doctor Who joke, which is always a bonus, but there’s is only one more show remaining.

And outside, it continued to rain.

Got back to my room with a stinking headache which I realised was my own fault for not rehydrating properly after the gym. Made an emergency trip through the lakes on South Bridge to Tesco and then popped a couple of Nurofen and went to bed.

Sleep. Blessed, endangered sleep.

What I learnt today: It is important to drink water when exercising, you idiot.

Recommended shows: Michael Legge: Curse Sir Walter Raleigh

Obligatory plug: I’m in Three Man Roast, 2.35pm weekdays and Saturday 20th at Finnegan’s Wake on Victoria Street – free entry. Also at the Amused Moose Comedy Awards Showcase at the Pleasance Dome, 4pm on August 17th (book online).

I trudged through the pretty incessant rain yesterday to register for the gym but their computer was down so I went away again and had a nap.

But then I went back later and registered. Take that, expectations.

The Pleasance gym is, it turns out, pretty nice. On the youthspeak spectrum that runs from “gay” to “sick”, it is definitely sick. Which means good. While gay, entirely erroneously and with more than a whiff of homophobia, means bad. I don’t make the rulez.

A gym man took me on a tour. He showed to the CV area (where I would late resume my exercise – geddit?) and then led me to a room full of giant barbells and giant men.

“I don’t know if you’re interested in these sorts of weights…?”

“Yeah, well, er, y’know… No, no. Just the little ones.”

I did 3.5 miles on the treadmill, accompanied by one of the special running playlists I’ve set up on my iPod. Nerdcore hip hop for the win.

Dashed off to see a show, had a big dinner (the gym had left me on negative calories for the day – I’m counting) and then came back to my room to do some writing.

I’d been pondering a stand-up idea that, if I could pull it off, would be the most awesome piece of stand-up comedy ever written. I may be underselling it. I imagined it would take at least the rest of my time up here, absorb my every waking thought and slowly drive me insane. I pictured Mozart at the end of Amadeus, frantically scribbling to complete my magnum opus, Salieri looking on jealously, wishing he was as funny, but he isn’t because he’s a composer so he should stick to what he knows and butt out.

Finished the first draft in a couple of hours. I should’ve been pleased but I was slightly disappointed. It was too easy to be awesome. It wasn’t even that funny, although that can be an overrated way of measuring comedy. It was just some words, albeit in a spreadsheet. You know you’ve written a complicated script when you had to do it in Excel.

Still, it did mean that I’d got that displacement activity out of the way (hello, blog) and I could get back to the writing I’m supposed to be doing up here.

So I popped out for a drink at midnight and got to bed at 4. Welcome to Edinburgh.

What I learnt today: The most important item I packed was my umbrella. Ella. Ella. Eh. Eh. Eh.

Recommended show: Dan Antopolski, Tom Craine & Nat Luurtsema: Jigsaw

Obligatory plug: I’m in Three Man Roast, 2.35pm weekdays and Saturday 20th at Finnegan’s Wake on Victoria Street – free entry. Also at the Amused Moose Comedy Awards Showcase at the Pleasance Dome, 4pm on August 17th (book online).