Lucy Mangan: I'm in Edinburgh and I want to kick something to death

I have just come back from four days at the Edinburgh Festival . I don't know why I went. Well, I do know why I went – I was invited to chair a panel discussing Jonathan Swift and satire, and I thought "Ooh, that sounds interesting! I'd like to know about that." It didn't occur to me until I was the far side of Carlisle on the Caledonian sleeper that this is the kind of response that should lead you firmly to a seat in the audience and not to any kind of prominent role in front of them. Like orgies, festivals of any kind require a certain temperament and certain attributes: an openness of mind, a creative and inquiring spirit, and an above-average tolerance for the human effluvia that inevitably accretes by the end of a long evening. I've always had the sense to stay away from orgies (and yes, actually, I was once invited to one, but I think it was to hold the coats), but it has taken me longer to learn about the other. The first time I went to Edinburgh, it wasn't too bad. I was 20 and supposed to be dishing out flyers for a friend's show. It would take me all morning and a month's worth of courage to hand out three of the buggers to complete strangers on the street, and then I would disappear into a far-flung tearoom with a pile of books for the afternoon and carefully return to our shared flat once her show had started and everyone had gone. There I would gingerly unfurl my sanitised plastic sheeting, lay it over several newspapers and lie down to cry-sleep until the next sunrise let me know that I was another day nearer home. When it all got too unbearable, I would hop on the train to Glasgow to visit my uncle Dan. On one of our afternoons together, he took me to visit Stirling Castle and – no more the man to shy away from the opportunity to confirm a national stereotype than he is to keep the car's engine running when there's enough of a slope to coast down and save thruppence-ha'penny on fuel – managed to get me in as an under-14 for half price, a triumph about which he still reminisces happily to this day. The next few visits to Edinburgh and elsewhere were less and less successful. This time, I almost gave up and came home early. I was barrelling through the streets in an absolute frothing fury. All these people! All this energy! All the frigging creativity round the place! I did experience one brief moment of levity when I watched someone dressed as Manuel from Fawlty Towers hold up a burger on a stick outside various restaurant windows while a man dressed as Basil bore down on him, but then I ran into a Japanese mime artist warming up in the side street by a theatre and was right back to wanting to kick something to death. So it's no good. I concede defeat to my own nature. You happy, smiling, positive, generous-spirited, thoughtful, flexible people out there, go forth and have wonderful summers. You deserve it. I'll just stay here, and hold your coats.