Yak Yak Yak: Now is the month of Maying…

When merry lads are playing, fa la la la la… well you probably know the rest. The truth is that May is my busiest month of the year, the month that you are most likely to see me out on the town and at the end of the month you can even catch me on the Live Food stage at the Brighton and Hove Food and Drink Festival.
The first part though is filled with the excitement of the Brighton Festival and of course the Brighton Fringe. This year is not only the 50th anniversary but also my 30th festival. If you start looking at the numbers you will see that I have, over the years, seen a huge number of shows. Many of them memorable and of course a few memorable for all the wrong reasons.
I never underestimate the fact that as a reviewer I am very lucky to be able to see so much of the festival, concerts, theatre, arts of all kinds and these are the things that I love to do. Even if I did not write reviews I would be a theatre goer and arts lover, although with a small budget I would probably have to cherry pick the things I see, choosing events that I already have knowledge of or those for which I have read reviews. This of course informs the way I review, knowing that readers may well make a decision about what they choose to pay to see based on what I say.
As a reviewer I try not to cherry pick things that I expect I will like. I enjoy seeing a wide range of events and performances and I always hope that I will enjoy them, but know that sometimes I will be disappointed or in extreme cases even leave angry.
Seeing the bad informs my opinion of what is good. Everything lies on a scale and my job is to give a personal but informed opinion of where something sits on that scale. Of course taste plays a part, but taste must always be tempered by honesty, honestly!