Comedy Gala and rivers

Having a great week this week as I'm not in work! Woohoo! No work, nilch, nada. Wake up, when I wake up, get up, when I get up, do whatever, when I decide what whatever happens to be at the time.
Yesterday included going out for brunch at the local and then heading into the country's capital to check out some of the Fringe and head for the Comedy Gala 2008 in aid of Waverly Care. This was a night in the city's Festival Theatre on Edinburgh's South Bridge Street. A great night of at least twenty comedians getting up on stage and giving either a taste of their own fringe show or just a general outburst of their usual stand up banter for approximately ten minutes each. Each with their own styles, outlooks and moralistic approaches to life the variety of talent made it top class entertainment from the likes of Michael McIntyre, Mark Watson, Jim Jeffries and so many others. McIntyre was the host for the first half of the night and possibly, for me, one of the most entertaining comedians of the lot. Sean Grant and Stephen K Amos were also a great hoot. Definately worth looking out for in the future if not tomorrow when we head back in to Edinburgh for more Fringe fun including an appointment with Joan Rivers at quarter to midnight. hey, the woman might be seventy odd but is still hilairious, or f***ing hilairious as I'm sure she'd put it (followed by a walking stick pulling her off the set of 'Loose Women' by the neck). Looking to head in around five for something else to take us up to the 'witching' hour though and hopefully it will not be p*ssing down with rain tomorrow.
Just before settling down to watch the stupid and fun Kung Fu Panda there we fought our way back to East Kilbride through torrential rain on roads that could be easily mistaken for rivers - and Ka was driving?! Sure, she's a skilled driver now (thanks largely to my Master like teaching) but I do not think she'd expected to be driving a glorified river rapid vehicle before she passed her test. The wee clio seemed to transform into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the back roads from Hamilton, swimming through the roads rather than driving. Unfortunately my hands were too busy gripping the side dash to be waving cheerily as any passers by. Unsurprisingly there were few passers by except in other struggling vehicles. The expressway was jam packed, probably due to flooding, so I instructed Ka to take the back road route from Hamilton over the small stoney bridge round the back of St Leonards. Unfortunately this is where the trouble began as each of the roads up to the bridge was a flow of gushing, swirling, flooding water as if ever river and stream surrounding EK had simultaneously burst its banks like some bad Pierce Brosnan disaster movie. However, just like some bad Pierce Brosnan disaster movie, we pressed on against all odds and survived finding the deepest water of all more or less on our doorstep, outside our street on Maxwellton Road. So deep infact the Clio managed to gain another wheel from somewhere as a wheel trim managed to get lodged in our underside. This created a worrying, grating noise, the origins of which of course, we did not know about at the time and made me wonder whether the Clios exhaust had left us and spun off down the Maxwellton river. When we finally came to a stop, with smoke drifting up from under the Clio's bonnet, I did manage to free the newly acquired wheel trim as water dribbled down onto me from the pipes and, (thankfully still attached) exhaust. A journey we hope not to repeat in any way going to and from Edinburgh after going to see a woman called Rivers!