This is your maddest move yet,” my friend Hayley messaged me when I told her I was planning to go to the Edinburgh Fringe festival in disguise to avoid my exes.
“What do you mean?” I frowned, studying the photo I’d just sent her of me with a baseball cap pulled down low over my eyes, a pair of fake, black-rimmed glasses, and a gilet (because anyone who knows me knows I would never wear a gilet). I was still considering a wig – or maybe just a fringe wig, but wasn’t sure I could find one that looked realistic enough. I’d ruled out shaving my head, at least, or bleaching my black hair blonde – there simply wasn’t time.
The disguise was crucial, though – it had to work.
“Why are you going to Edinburgh?” and “I can’t believe you’re actually going” were just some of the reactions when I confessed I’d booked a spontaneous weekend away, having never visited the city – or the Fringe festival – before, except for a fleeting trip up to Scotland on a university open day in 1998.
To be honest, I couldn’t believe I was going, either, when you consider the people I was itching to avoid.
The main offender in my self-imposed exclusion zone was an ex I’d found out was living a double life with a long-term girlfriend he’d only pretended he’d broken up with (and the girlfriend and I look identical. I wonder if she would ever wear a gilet?).
This ex was loosely connected to the Fringe, so had the highest chance of being in the area at the exact same time I was. I was absolutely dreading running into him, flyering or working the coatroom for some new show, play, or sketch, and did not know what I would do if I did – run away screaming?
Faint, right there on the doorstep to Alan Davies’s Think Ahead – the comedian’s first stand-up show in a decade? Spontaneously throw up in the middle of Fuselage, Annie Lareau’s hard-hitting and acclaimed play, rooted in her own experience of the Pan Am flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie? That would be a disaster.
It wasn’t just my dreadful ex I was avoiding, either – but his friends, many of whom would be performing and filling the bars and theatres along the main “strip” along the Royal Mile. I was also nervous about running into the person I’d recently been dating, who was coming to Edinburgh the very same weekend, on a date with someone else. Plus, the tricky friendship I’d ended months before with a comedian who performs there every year.
But I wanted to go to the Fringe! My kids were away and I had the option of going with a good friend – and a cool experience I’d never had before! Why shouldn’t I go? I had to try another tactic.
Which is where the idea of dressing in sports gear or “athleisure”, rather than my usual vintage aesthetic, suddenly became incredibly appealing… though I’ll admit: I’m not used to being a sartorial shrinking violet.
Baseball caps and Lycra are a massive “no” – give me a bright red 1970s dress with batwing sleeves, any day. Black velvet Victorian housecoat with gold brocade for the school run? Vintage silk kimono to pop into Tesco Express? Yes, please. Once, a woman came up to me in the local park, handed me a bin bag and said: “My aunt died and we found these old clothes in her attic. Someone told me you’d like them” (and she was right – I did like them).
Only this time, I had no choice.
The real question, then, was: could I get away with a teal padded gilet and a beige bucket hat if I teamed them with my (fake) glasses? I tried it out by sending the photo to a friend: “You are in absolutely no way disguised,” she dryly replied. “You’re not Superman,” said another. “I hate to break it to you, but you still have the same face.”
How about a shiny blue shell-suit? After all, Oasis were playing in Edinburgh the same weekend – I’d be bound to blend in! Or a cowboy hat, if I could find one? What if I went local and got a Glengarry?
I did wonder, while navigating my arrival in Scotland and donning my disguise, whether I was alone in going to such extraordinary efforts to avoid an ex.
But then I thought of all the times I’ve been party to mad behaviour from my friends: I’ve been asked to answer tortured calls from ex-boyfriends on their behalf; I’ve pretended to be a PA and told pining lovers that “she’s not available to speak to you”.
I even helped one of my mates set up a fake Instagram account to stalk her ex-husband because she was so convinced he was having an affair: the preparation took months. She had to pepper it with photos of brand-new running shoes, even though she never ran further than to the local shop (it worked, and he was).
So, I did it. I got gloriously unhinged. I hid round corners, wore sunglasses, and held big bags in front of my face at pavement cafes. I waited right until the end of ticket sales for big-name shows so I wouldn’t be too early and risk people passing me in the queue.
I avoided the really big showstoppers and missed out on the “best of the fest” at midnight, for fear that’s where they’d all find me – but I managed, more or less, to stay out of sight.
In the end, of course, what I discovered from my attempts to skulk around the city for two days completely avoiding my exes – as well as staring at the floor to bypass the gaze of everyone I was passing in the street, just in case – is that I’d make a terrible spy, but also that the whole process is exhausting.
I felt like I’d entered a state of increased hyper-vigilance; my body in a strange, liminal state of fight or flight. I also realised that if I was this terrified of bumping into these people IRL, then it probably meant I had to work on my conflict avoidance. And that the “worst case scenarios” I’d imagined (screaming in the street, feeling heartbroken, someone ending up in hospital) weren’t actually very likely.
That, really, the worst that would realistically happen would be an awkward “hello” or nod, or we’d ignore each other altogether, as we Brits are best at.
The denouement to this sorry tale, predictably and ironically, is yes: I did see one of the people I was avoiding, as I rushed to the train station for my journey home.
I was late after watching a show (hunched down in my seat in my cursed gilet) and running wildly as a result. I had only seven minutes to make it to the platform. Not ideal, in other words, for someone who is trying not to attract attention.
When I spotted them walking on the other side of the road near Princes Street, I instinctively ducked down to crouch behind a bin. Hilariously and thankfully, I still don’t know if they saw me.
But it’s fine, I survived — and phew: in this get-up, I doubt they would have even recognised me.
