Edinburgh in August is quite different from Edinburgh normally. There are people everywhere, shows everywhere and posters for shows absolutely everywhere.

Some of them are quite strange.

I realised afterwards that most of the photos I’d taken during the day were actually of posters I’d seen. They were on the streets, in windows and even behind the counter in shops. Some of them aren’t really the sort of thing you expect to see advertised when you’re walking around normally, which is probably why I found them funny enough to photograph.

But that’s also one of the best things about going to Edinburgh during the festivals. There are all these people and all these shows that you would never normally go out of your way to see, but for a few weeks they’re right on your doorstep.

We decided to see three very different ones in a day.

Hostile – something completely different

Our first show was Hostile at the Edinburgh International Festival.

I didn’t really know what I was going to see beforehand. It turned out to be a one-man show with no talking, telling a Western story using sound, lighting and what felt like about 20 billion props.

A lot of it was built around a wooden table. Pieces of wood became different things during the story, including people and even parts of a horse. There were wanted posters and different characters and lots of things appearing from inside the table.

The part that has stayed in my head was near the end. There was a big fight scene with the lights on the performer and wooden figures representing the other people. Gunshots were going off and he moved between the figures, breaking them apart as they were shot.

I’d never really seen anything like it.

Before we went, this was the show I expected to enjoy least. It ended up being my second favourite.

I probably wouldn’t go and see this type of show every time I went to the theatre, but that’s also why I’m glad we saw it. It’s the kind of thing you go to because it increases your horizons and lets you experience something completely different.

Sherlock Holmes – except nobody knew the story

Next we went to Just the Tonic at The Caves for The Adventures of the Improvised Sherlock Holmes.

This was the show I was most looking forward to.

We’d allowed plenty of time to find the venue after Hostile and arrived early, which meant we ended up right at the front of the queue. While we waited, the queue grew all the way along the alleyway and around the corner.

The seating wasn’t allocated, so being at the front meant we got seats in the front row, only a few feet from the actors.

Before the show, everyone could invent the title of a Sherlock Holmes story and put it into a hat. We submitted:

Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Unicycling Dragon

Sadly, ours didn’t get picked.

A couple of the suggestions were used for a short scene at the beginning and then another was drawn to create the main mystery. The one we watched was based on a suggestion about “Lee’s Stag Do”, and from there the three actors had to make up an entire Sherlock Holmes story.

They ended up playing about seven or eight different characters between them.

What made it funny was that almost anything could become part of the show.

At one point there was a problem with part of a costume not fitting properly. Instead of trying to hide it, they improvised around it and got the audience laughing about it. At another point a baby started crying in the audience, completely unrelated to the performance, and they managed to use that as well.

You could tell they really were making it up because one actor would suddenly introduce something and the others would have to work out what to do with it. Even mistakes became part of the comedy.

At the end they made the point that if you enjoyed the show you could come back the next day and see a completely different mystery. And if you didn’t enjoy it, you could come back the next day and see a completely different mystery anyway.

I’d go back.

It was the funniest show of the day and my favourite of the three.

A comedian in a hotel conference room

Our final show was Ignacio Lopez: The Four Of Us Are Dying Up Here at the Apex Hotel in the Grassmarket.

We were meeting friends for this one, including a Spanish family, which was one reason we’d picked a Spanish comedian.

The venue was quite funny in itself because it basically felt like a corporate conference room in a hotel. Ignacio seemed to think so too and joked about it during the show.

He explained that the show was partly experimental rather than being a completely finished version of something he was taking on tour. It also happened to be his 40th birthday and there were friends and family there, including his 12-year-old niece, who came on stage for a few jokes.

The show got funnier as it went along.

He told stories about his life, including a very elaborate plan for proposing to his fiancée in Venice. But my favourite part came at the end when he brought out a guitar.

He built it up as though he was going to start properly singing, but instead performed familiar songs with his own ridiculous lyrics. One was based on Teenage Dirtbag but from the point of view of a baby in the womb.

That was probably the funniest part for me.

Nine people looking for dinner in Edinburgh

After three shows, we needed food.

There were nine of us by then and we thought finding a table at short notice on a Saturday evening during the Edinburgh festivals might be impossible. Somehow we managed to get one at Café Andaluz, which also fitted quite well after seeing a Spanish comedian.

It was a good way to finish the day before getting the train back towards Glasgow.

How many shows should you see in a day?

You do have to think about things like trains if you’re trying to fit three or four shows into a day. We considered another show after dinner, but there wasn’t really anything that worked without causing problems getting home.

I think three or four shows in a day is about right.

But I wouldn’t choose three or four versions of the same thing.

My rule would be a maximum of two comedy shows, or two improv shows, and then make the others something you haven’t seen before.

That is probably the point.

If we’d just chosen the things I already expected to like, I might not have seen Hostile at all.

Things you don’t normally see

Around Edinburgh there were also magicians, street performers, people challenging you to hang from a bar for 100 seconds to win £100, and huge numbers of people handing out flyers and trying to persuade you that their show was the one you should see.

Everyone seemed pretty happy and the whole city felt busy.

For me, that’s the best thing about the Edinburgh festivals.

All these people and all these shows that you would never normally go out of your way to see are suddenly right on your doorstep, so you can just go and see something.

And sometimes the thing you don’t expect to like turns out to be one of the best parts of the day.