It has started

I'm hopelessly confused about when the various varieties of Edinburgh Festival officially start, but that's an academic point. When you cross the High Street and see it blocked by the great horde of luvvies and their followers, you know that it has all kicked off. High Street is now off-limits for a month, unless you want to be endlessly detained by jugglers, mime artists, rickshaws, leafleters (is that a word?), and people advertising their one-person show about Mao Tse-Tung.