Somhairle Kelly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mirrorshard) wrote2005-01-09 01:38 am
mirrorshard) wrote2005-01-09 01:38 am
Entry tags:
Festival of Hope
Notes from today, now that I've slept the sleep of the overworked dead.
8.30: Arrive. It's incredibly windy, and I'm quickly regretting not bringing a hat - I'm still not used to having hair long enough to whip around and get in my eyes. It doesn't take a great deal of work to persuade Dorian (my father, who's organized the day) that no, we can't put gazebos up in this wind. We stand around like lemons for awhile, till more people and Stuff turn up to be put to use.
9ish: A couple of teenage girls I've never seen in my life before wander in and ask if there's anything they can do to help. I beam at them and say, Yes please! In an hour or so we'll give you buckets to rattle. Until then, er, probably not. Realise I can acquire a reasonably good hat quite cheaply at the Chinese import shop.
9.23: Fail to acquire hat as the Chinese import shop doesn't open till 9.30. Wander over to Culver Square with two heavy reels of cable, punched-card organ, power to, for the purposes of, only to find that in an uncharacteristic burst of niceness, the Culver Square techs have provided a power cable for the organ, which is tootling and parping away happily.
10ish: Acquire a Hat. It is a dark blue baseball cap with golden Chinese dragons across the front and the word 'Dragon' on the peak, in order to really ram the idea home. It works quite well. As I'm returning to the green room (in the coffee room of the Baptist Church), I spot the first bucket rattlers rolling out of the gates. Peter Fox, he of the vast collection of extremely silly hats, is costumed as a Fairy Godplumber. Fail to acquire tea. Start running cable out of an upstairs window, along a side passage, past a pile of wood (the remains of a full-size Nativity diorama), and to the FACETS van so that our paramedic volunteers can have warmth, light, and TEA. As I'm wandering along stringing out this cable, I bump into Ian Hull, a stilt-walking friend, who is preparing to stilt-walk with a collecting bucket, which has blown away in the wind. Chat for a moment, enquire after his wife, retrieve the bucket for him, and neatly pull down the double-length orange velvet trousers over his stilts.
10.22: Attempt to find singer-songwriter Maria Eraculous in order to give her cable and power. Spend five minutes trying to find out which shop Dorian negotiated with to get power from - the radios aren't working too well today. Take a quick sit-down break, fail to acquire tea, but get handed a banana from a bunch that the fruiterer across the road has donated to our volunteers. Fail to find gaffer tape for the securing-down of cable. In fairness, I wasn't looking all that hard.
10.41: FACETS complain (nicely) that the cable I strung for them ain't working. I go and prod it a bit and conclude that it's probably the RCD acting up, so I string them another one, and that works. Manage to avoid wandering across town to collect a Punch & Judy crew and all their (heavy, bulky) equipment. Fail to acquire tea. Spend fifteen minutes babysitting an unused PA while watching a Salvation Army silver band warming up. Apparently, nobody's collecting in Trinity Street. Morris dancers are starting to arrive, dressed in particoloured face makeup and tatters, with tall pheasant-feather hats.
10.50: Knock off for a phone call from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
icedsilk and a cup of tea. (Finally.) It starts raining, and I dash out to waterproof a cable junction, but it turns out someone else got there first.
11.15: The Sally Army are going full blast.
11.23: Angela Dennis, the Human Jukebox, needs a new spot, someone is still occupying the one she was assigned.
12.03: Maria E. throws a small strop, though in fairness there's no real need for her amps to get rained on, even what little there was, and moves thirty feet to under some cover. Delay while the nice shopping centre people find her another power socket to use. A conversation with Chris Rawlinson, who's the Town Centre Manager most days. (At this point there's a cryptic and semi-illegible note that looks like 'Warden' but could be 'Wander'. I have no idea what it refers to.) I go over to Culver Square and watch the punched-card organ for awhile, looking around for our people working the crowd. Bit sparse, but they're there. A large inflatable man wanders past. More Morris dancers stand around not Morris dancing. I acquire food and consume it. Fail to acquire tea. People have started bringing buckets back for emptying, and some of our volunteers are counting up. We've misplaced a couple of teenagers, but they're keen and enthuiastic ones, so they're probably off doing something sensible, or at least profitable.
12.29: A rock band composed of local reenactors take the stage and their groupies turn up. My god the sheer number of Morris dancers. The reenactors sing 'Love Potion Number Nine'. Failed to acquire tea.
12.34: The Morris dancers are rocking out hard. A small child accompanies the reenactor band on a drum as large as he is. Jimmo the clown is working the crowd with a donation bucket.
12.40: The Morris dancers finally begin Morris dancing. Got to tell Bob Russell MP where to go (over there, collect from this crowd). He's apparently a total Morris dancing groupie.
12.47: Chatting with a Ken Dodd impersonator who has been invited for the purpose of having his photograph taken with people. "It's not a job I get much work from."
13.09: Jason Cattrell and his crew arrive, hand out some fliers for his new biodiesel business, collect a bucket (between four of them) and head off to perform guerrilla Shakespeare around the town. People are starting to hand back their buckets and knock off for the day, we're getting a bit worried, but we do have a lot upstairs on a tea break. Kevin Bentley, Conservative local councillor and ace fundraiser through charity auctions and great-and-good events, comes back and hands over his bucket. It's not all that impressive.
13.14: Astral Circus wander in and leave to busk. DJ organises all the collectors with a pink clipboard. More bucker-rattling volunteers arrive.
13.52: Retrieve a comedy unicyclist named variously Rupert or Justo from the wrong car park & steer him to the right one. Make tea, but only for someone else.
14.23: Rig lights in Lion Walk Square, since bands will be playing till about 17.30. Plug the lights into a handy tree. Run back for some LX. "That bicycle really suits you." "Everything suits me." Need to round up collectors for a pair of Scots pipers, or at least Scots-ish pipers. Everyone's looking for Justin & Rupert (Justin is a comedy unicyclist, Rupert is a magician).
14.28: Justo the comedy unicyclist is reunited with his parents.
14.31: Alana & Zoe, two more random teenagers, arrive & volunteer to rattle buckets for us.
14.59: A six-piece swing band in custard-yellow suits start up (the Jive Aces, Britain's number one swing and jump-jive band). Teenagers dancing in the street.
15.04: My god it's cold. They're still rocking out.
15.11: A quick head count makes 150 people, on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of January. It must be those suits. John Row, the storyteller, dancing with Jimmo the clown. Professor Vincent 'Fish Fingers' Halley plays Bach on the keyboard with his elbow.
15.57: One of our collectors gets a phone call. A friend of her daughter's, who has been in Sri Lanka, has found & identified the bodies of her family, who had flown out for Christmas. I'm told about this by another volunteer, a tough, weatherbeaten woman with a crazy sense of humour, an iridescent gecko painted on her cheek, and tears in her eyes. "And I just gave her a hug, led her in here, made her tea, because that's all you can do, there aren't any bloody words. Now I'm going to go get tea for myself, and not talk about it, because if I do I'll cry."
15.58: Two teenage security people wheel two thousand pounds of donations off to Debenhams', who have offered us the use of their night safe, in a green plastic wheelie bin.
16.07: Collectors are still rolling in from the cold, handing over their buckets for emptying, volunteering to go out again.
16.14: "This is the important lesson - if you meet a man in a long black coat, who hangs around with a clown, don't play him at cards. He cheats." (Rupert the magician demonstrates his best card trick to a pretty Italian volunteer.)
16.32: Running total £3,419. We've reached and exceeded our target.
16.35: We send the kids off with another £1100 in the wheelie bin.
16.38: One of our security guys has feuded with his erstwhile partner, who has been giving out details of a bogus Festival Committee meeting.
17.10: Three teenage girls take it on themselves to go collecting in pubs. Our artistes are leaving, and most of them thank us for letting them perform for no fee. Rupert the magician apologises profusely for being useless, since his fingers are awful in the cold.
17.53: The final total from the day is £4,478.02.
18.00ish: The rest of the getout is pretty much a blur. Shambling around in the dark and cold hefting things and working out what has to go where for whom to look after. Pick up sausage & chips on the way home, and they somehow vanish in a few minutes, before I fall into bed and asleep for five hours.
8.30: Arrive. It's incredibly windy, and I'm quickly regretting not bringing a hat - I'm still not used to having hair long enough to whip around and get in my eyes. It doesn't take a great deal of work to persuade Dorian (my father, who's organized the day) that no, we can't put gazebos up in this wind. We stand around like lemons for awhile, till more people and Stuff turn up to be put to use.
9ish: A couple of teenage girls I've never seen in my life before wander in and ask if there's anything they can do to help. I beam at them and say, Yes please! In an hour or so we'll give you buckets to rattle. Until then, er, probably not. Realise I can acquire a reasonably good hat quite cheaply at the Chinese import shop.
9.23: Fail to acquire hat as the Chinese import shop doesn't open till 9.30. Wander over to Culver Square with two heavy reels of cable, punched-card organ, power to, for the purposes of, only to find that in an uncharacteristic burst of niceness, the Culver Square techs have provided a power cable for the organ, which is tootling and parping away happily.
10ish: Acquire a Hat. It is a dark blue baseball cap with golden Chinese dragons across the front and the word 'Dragon' on the peak, in order to really ram the idea home. It works quite well. As I'm returning to the green room (in the coffee room of the Baptist Church), I spot the first bucket rattlers rolling out of the gates. Peter Fox, he of the vast collection of extremely silly hats, is costumed as a Fairy Godplumber. Fail to acquire tea. Start running cable out of an upstairs window, along a side passage, past a pile of wood (the remains of a full-size Nativity diorama), and to the FACETS van so that our paramedic volunteers can have warmth, light, and TEA. As I'm wandering along stringing out this cable, I bump into Ian Hull, a stilt-walking friend, who is preparing to stilt-walk with a collecting bucket, which has blown away in the wind. Chat for a moment, enquire after his wife, retrieve the bucket for him, and neatly pull down the double-length orange velvet trousers over his stilts.
10.22: Attempt to find singer-songwriter Maria Eraculous in order to give her cable and power. Spend five minutes trying to find out which shop Dorian negotiated with to get power from - the radios aren't working too well today. Take a quick sit-down break, fail to acquire tea, but get handed a banana from a bunch that the fruiterer across the road has donated to our volunteers. Fail to find gaffer tape for the securing-down of cable. In fairness, I wasn't looking all that hard.
10.41: FACETS complain (nicely) that the cable I strung for them ain't working. I go and prod it a bit and conclude that it's probably the RCD acting up, so I string them another one, and that works. Manage to avoid wandering across town to collect a Punch & Judy crew and all their (heavy, bulky) equipment. Fail to acquire tea. Spend fifteen minutes babysitting an unused PA while watching a Salvation Army silver band warming up. Apparently, nobody's collecting in Trinity Street. Morris dancers are starting to arrive, dressed in particoloured face makeup and tatters, with tall pheasant-feather hats.
10.50: Knock off for a phone call from
icedsilk and a cup of tea. (Finally.) It starts raining, and I dash out to waterproof a cable junction, but it turns out someone else got there first. 11.15: The Sally Army are going full blast.
11.23: Angela Dennis, the Human Jukebox, needs a new spot, someone is still occupying the one she was assigned.
12.03: Maria E. throws a small strop, though in fairness there's no real need for her amps to get rained on, even what little there was, and moves thirty feet to under some cover. Delay while the nice shopping centre people find her another power socket to use. A conversation with Chris Rawlinson, who's the Town Centre Manager most days. (At this point there's a cryptic and semi-illegible note that looks like 'Warden' but could be 'Wander'. I have no idea what it refers to.) I go over to Culver Square and watch the punched-card organ for awhile, looking around for our people working the crowd. Bit sparse, but they're there. A large inflatable man wanders past. More Morris dancers stand around not Morris dancing. I acquire food and consume it. Fail to acquire tea. People have started bringing buckets back for emptying, and some of our volunteers are counting up. We've misplaced a couple of teenagers, but they're keen and enthuiastic ones, so they're probably off doing something sensible, or at least profitable.
12.29: A rock band composed of local reenactors take the stage and their groupies turn up. My god the sheer number of Morris dancers. The reenactors sing 'Love Potion Number Nine'. Failed to acquire tea.
12.34: The Morris dancers are rocking out hard. A small child accompanies the reenactor band on a drum as large as he is. Jimmo the clown is working the crowd with a donation bucket.
12.40: The Morris dancers finally begin Morris dancing. Got to tell Bob Russell MP where to go (over there, collect from this crowd). He's apparently a total Morris dancing groupie.
12.47: Chatting with a Ken Dodd impersonator who has been invited for the purpose of having his photograph taken with people. "It's not a job I get much work from."
13.09: Jason Cattrell and his crew arrive, hand out some fliers for his new biodiesel business, collect a bucket (between four of them) and head off to perform guerrilla Shakespeare around the town. People are starting to hand back their buckets and knock off for the day, we're getting a bit worried, but we do have a lot upstairs on a tea break. Kevin Bentley, Conservative local councillor and ace fundraiser through charity auctions and great-and-good events, comes back and hands over his bucket. It's not all that impressive.
13.14: Astral Circus wander in and leave to busk. DJ organises all the collectors with a pink clipboard. More bucker-rattling volunteers arrive.
13.52: Retrieve a comedy unicyclist named variously Rupert or Justo from the wrong car park & steer him to the right one. Make tea, but only for someone else.
14.23: Rig lights in Lion Walk Square, since bands will be playing till about 17.30. Plug the lights into a handy tree. Run back for some LX. "That bicycle really suits you." "Everything suits me." Need to round up collectors for a pair of Scots pipers, or at least Scots-ish pipers. Everyone's looking for Justin & Rupert (Justin is a comedy unicyclist, Rupert is a magician).
14.28: Justo the comedy unicyclist is reunited with his parents.
14.31: Alana & Zoe, two more random teenagers, arrive & volunteer to rattle buckets for us.
14.59: A six-piece swing band in custard-yellow suits start up (the Jive Aces, Britain's number one swing and jump-jive band). Teenagers dancing in the street.
15.04: My god it's cold. They're still rocking out.
15.11: A quick head count makes 150 people, on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of January. It must be those suits. John Row, the storyteller, dancing with Jimmo the clown. Professor Vincent 'Fish Fingers' Halley plays Bach on the keyboard with his elbow.
15.57: One of our collectors gets a phone call. A friend of her daughter's, who has been in Sri Lanka, has found & identified the bodies of her family, who had flown out for Christmas. I'm told about this by another volunteer, a tough, weatherbeaten woman with a crazy sense of humour, an iridescent gecko painted on her cheek, and tears in her eyes. "And I just gave her a hug, led her in here, made her tea, because that's all you can do, there aren't any bloody words. Now I'm going to go get tea for myself, and not talk about it, because if I do I'll cry."
15.58: Two teenage security people wheel two thousand pounds of donations off to Debenhams', who have offered us the use of their night safe, in a green plastic wheelie bin.
16.07: Collectors are still rolling in from the cold, handing over their buckets for emptying, volunteering to go out again.
16.14: "This is the important lesson - if you meet a man in a long black coat, who hangs around with a clown, don't play him at cards. He cheats." (Rupert the magician demonstrates his best card trick to a pretty Italian volunteer.)
16.32: Running total £3,419. We've reached and exceeded our target.
16.35: We send the kids off with another £1100 in the wheelie bin.
16.38: One of our security guys has feuded with his erstwhile partner, who has been giving out details of a bogus Festival Committee meeting.
17.10: Three teenage girls take it on themselves to go collecting in pubs. Our artistes are leaving, and most of them thank us for letting them perform for no fee. Rupert the magician apologises profusely for being useless, since his fingers are awful in the cold.
17.53: The final total from the day is £4,478.02.
18.00ish: The rest of the getout is pretty much a blur. Shambling around in the dark and cold hefting things and working out what has to go where for whom to look after. Pick up sausage & chips on the way home, and they somehow vanish in a few minutes, before I fall into bed and asleep for five hours.