Ben Pope’s Guide to Everyday Magic
Fringe Magic
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Fringe Magic 〰️
Image: Mark Jones
It’s time for Edinburgh Fringe 2025, and with it, our annual feature series! This year, we’re celebrating the special, unique Fringe moments — the ones that feel like pure MAGIC…
By Ben Pope
It’s the Fringe again and, while it’s easy to get bogged down in anxieties about tickets, costs, show option paralysis and Scottish weather, it’s good to remember that, as the saying goes, there are cathedrals everywhere for those with eyes to see them (and literal cathedrals for architecture fans). There is always some poetry in the mundane!
So here below is my Guide to Everyday Magic. As Oscar Wilde said, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are having a good rummage around and actually I found a fully uneaten Twix in there! That’s free!
Everyday Magic Example #1: latte art
Consider for a moment, if you will, the insane series of historical coincidences that led you to be able to get a little heart on your coffee. An ancient Ethiopian goat herd happened upon the coffee bean in 800 AD. By some inconceivable Mousetrap-esque accident, they roasted, ground and boiled it. A series of wars and invasions brings it on horseback and boat to Central Europe. The Europeans, obsessed with both cow breast milk and industrialised heating, fill the drink with hot milk, frothed to the consistency of a cloud. And then someone, around 2007 probably, and almost certainly with a pony tail, out of boredom and inspiration, doodles the caffeinated spume into a shape. Miraculously, this becomes the societal norm for a posh coffee - that the person making it will sign it with a symbol like they are Prince - with the full knowledge that their art will be, in two seconds, the first thing dumped into your waiting throat. Is that not special? Each flat white is history and expression! Art for art’s sake! A deep-time object and also as ephemeral as the stroke of a butterfly’s wing! Savour it! We are so lucky!
Everyday Magic Example #2: the spork
Cutlery’s mermaid! Though it is definitely a dorky utensil, forever associated with camping, I am in love with the spork. It’s hybrid and mythical, like a centaur or a Toyota Prius. A fork that is also a spoon that is also a miracle. It really is the Swiss Army knife of knives.
Everyday Magic Example #3: a train with working wifi
Do you, nor I, nor anyone know what the actual fuck wifi is? Air that gives you access to emails? A vibrational airborne soup that laptops think tastes the same as YouTube? I am not a scientist, but from painful experience, I know that it should be impossible for train wifi to work. Trains ‘have’ wifi in the same way TV personality Richard Madeley ‘is’ a personality: in name only. Whenever I board a train and once again fail to rouse the Great Western Railway sign-in portal from its eternal slumber, I remember that it’s silly to expect wifi on a vehicle moving at 150mph. The wifi is probably being blown right off the top of the roof, like candles on a birthday cake. Either that, or it’s flapping madly behind the caboose like a broken parachute. So when a train’s wifi does click into place… Hooray! Magic! We are truly blessed! This Tin Man really does have a brain!
Everyday Magic Example #4: seeing a fly on an aeroplane
A perfect example of a bit of lifesaving everyday magic. I was once hungover on a Ryanair flight to Madrid, feeling truly as if I was going to die. But then I spotted, zooming around the headrests, a bluebottle fly. Immediately the rest of the flight was made liveable, sitting there imagining the life of this little shit-eating stowaway. A fly on a flight! Bolshily going up to every passenger and yelling in their ear: ‘You see all of this? All of this is named after me!’ And then his confusion when we landed, and came out with us to discover he was in Spain. Does the poo taste different on the continent? Would he still rub his hands together in glee? How would he get home? And when did, would he tell his fly friends? ‘I once flew to Spain you know’, strategically leaving out the detail that he’d done most of it in Economy Plus.
Everyday Magic Example #5: books
Pretty self-explanatory this one. If you’ve not come across a book before: it’s a podcast you can touch. An iPad you can burn. A dead tree with a long, pretentious tattoo. The Argos catalogue for the alphabet. Poetic loo roll. A paperweight made of paper. The funding strategy for Dan Brown’s third infinity pool. An IKEA manual for your personality. A paper cut carousel. A gift receipt for human life. A book is the virgin snow in which humanity leaves its footprints. It’s a fat Tweet. I’m biased because I run a bookshop, but there’s no doubting it: books are magic. Go read one now and tell me I’m wrong.
Ben Pope: The Cut is running at Assembly Box 5.05pm from July 30th-Aug 24th. Tickets here
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