GREETINGS from the PBH Free Fringe in Edinburgh, where I’m currently into the sixth day of a fortnight long run (Bannerman’s Bar — 4pm, apart from Saturdays when it’s 1.30pm) doing a different performance at each show.

It’s a marathon which starts with me unravelling a set list on stage which would probably get in the Guinness Book of Records and by the time it finishes a week tomorrow I’ll have performed a total of 14 hours of material. Quite literally the performance of a lifetime, chronicling the last 43 years in poem and song.

I’ve already sung the praises of Peter Buckley Hill’s wonderful cultural uprising which is subverting the overpriced mainstream Fringe with free admission shows where the audience pays what they want, or nothing, at the end. So just to say that readers of this newspaper are especially welcome.

What a difference a few days make: a horrible, horrible experience for so many last weekend, a brilliant response last Wednesday.

Before Edinburgh I was in Blackpool, playing the Rebellion punk festival, when the news came in last Saturday that one of the far-right gatherings (I won’t dignify them with the word “protests”) was happening on the seafront. Some of us left the festival to do a counter protest — well done all those who did, and a special big up to Bar Stool Preachers, Slalom D and any other bands in attendance.

It seems scarcely believable given the size of the venue and the 5,000 punks inside but after their ghastly gathering had ended a small group of the far right attempted to attack the Winter Gardens throwing bottles. A bunch of punks scattered them — and then swept the square outside clean. Blackpool people love the punk festival: now they love us a bit more.

That incident aside, it was a wonderful weekend for us, but it was a horrible one for so many elsewhere, which made Wednesday’s massive show of national anti-racist unity very special. And I was especially proud of my home city of Brighton. An absolutely huge show of peaceful opposition to bigotry, so big a bus was trapped in the middle. Well done everyone.

Solidarity with you all from Edinburgh. No divisive nonsense here. Happy to be an ancestral Greenock Baine even though my paternal great grandad left for London in about 1840. (And no, I am not going to Morton on this trip. Steve has got me in to Hibs-Celtic tomorrow.)

Meanwhile the non-dom owners of the Mail/Express/Sun etc who have been printing endless “immigrant” stories and stirring up hostility and division for decades are absolute hypocrites. Crying crocodile tears, penning editorials decrying rioting mobs — one look in the comments section below their articles shows the long-term effect of all those years fuelling hatred. Dump the whole lot in the dustbin of history for inciting violence.

Now I’ve got myself settled in (and my Early Music show rehearsed with Calum Baird — that one is 2pm next Friday at St. Cecilia’s Hall) I’m going to check out some shows here in Edinburgh and will be reviewing them in my next column. And I will make a couple of recommendations: fantastic performance poet Luke Wright at the Pleasance at 2.55, and the aforementioned Calum, a wonderful political songwriter, at Carbon at 9.45.

Love and peace to all.