Saturday 6th October
The central heating has been turned on, signalling that it is now officially The Autumn. This is no bad thing as far as I'm concerned, as the arrival of The Autumn means I now have licence to eat great heaps of big fat brown food with total impunity. I was in the middle of making myself such a big fat heap of food last night, when out of nowhere there appeared not one but two gigantic wasps. I've never worked out where these mysterious Winter Wasps come from - my nearest guess is that, like Sleepers planted in Britain by foreign intelligence services, these wasps infiltrate our houses during the summer and lie in wait, appearing and unleashing their stripey evil just when we least expect it. Well, the first wasp, having played North By Northwest with me around the whole of the downstairs of the house, was eventually hastened to its grave with a rolled up magazine, whereupon the second - stricken with grief or following instructions from its masters not to be taken alive, I'll never know - performed a bizarre suicide by landing on the top of the gas cooker, dragging itself to the edge of the ventilation hole and hurling itself over the edge into the grillpan below, where it met a swift and firey end amidst the sausage fat.
And so to today: Up at 5am and out of the door at 6, into a shiny new Vauxhall Vectra to take Beefy and Lamby to the East Midlands Food and Drink Festival. To explain, one of my various irregular jobs involves road managing for the company who make those big foam rubber cartoon character outfits you see at events having their pictures taken with terrified children. The costumes - known in the industry as 'Skins' tend to be filled by out of work actors and my job as Roady is to take them to the gig, dress the character and act as their minder whilst they're out in front of the public. Venues and events are many and varied - from trudging round an empty shopping centre for a day to running amuck in the gardens of Buckingham Palace on the Queen's birthday. So this morning it was down to Wimbledon to collect my artistes and the costumes then up the M1 to Melton Mowbray, the spiritual home of the Pork Pie, where the grounds of a stately home were playing host to several marquees full of fantastic foodstuffs. Things didn't begin well, as not one of the Hi-Viz vested yokels posted along the track knew anything about us or our contact, mysteriously named on the jobsheet only as Brian, and in brackets, (Mr Barbecue). Eventually having been passed around five different people, none of whom had a clue who we were or what we were doing there, we were shown to a luxurious room in the Hall itself, replete with tea and posh biscuits. Trouble was, it was a good ten minute walk from the Marquee where we were supposed to be appearing, and a ten minute walk for a standard human can easily be a twenty minute walk for a Skin character. With a bit of luck and help from Brian (Mr Barbecue) who turned out to be a genial chap who made beefy jerky, we finally found ourselves a somewhat less luxurious unused space behind someone's stand, which we made our home for the remainder of the day. From there, everything was plain sailing and with pork pies all around us we entertained the massed crowds of food fanatics, appeared onstage with a celebrity chef none of us had ever heard of, were hassled by the intriguingly named 'Ladies In Pigs' who were most disappointed that we hadn't brought Mr Sausage with us and were off home at 4 with a bag of beef jerky apiece curtesy of Brian (Mr Barbecue).
As I'd made it home by 9 there was time aplenty to meet Housemate Brian and the lovely Renate in the pub for booze and silliness.
The central heating has been turned on, signalling that it is now officially The Autumn. This is no bad thing as far as I'm concerned, as the arrival of The Autumn means I now have licence to eat great heaps of big fat brown food with total impunity. I was in the middle of making myself such a big fat heap of food last night, when out of nowhere there appeared not one but two gigantic wasps. I've never worked out where these mysterious Winter Wasps come from - my nearest guess is that, like Sleepers planted in Britain by foreign intelligence services, these wasps infiltrate our houses during the summer and lie in wait, appearing and unleashing their stripey evil just when we least expect it. Well, the first wasp, having played North By Northwest with me around the whole of the downstairs of the house, was eventually hastened to its grave with a rolled up magazine, whereupon the second - stricken with grief or following instructions from its masters not to be taken alive, I'll never know - performed a bizarre suicide by landing on the top of the gas cooker, dragging itself to the edge of the ventilation hole and hurling itself over the edge into the grillpan below, where it met a swift and firey end amidst the sausage fat.
And so to today: Up at 5am and out of the door at 6, into a shiny new Vauxhall Vectra to take Beefy and Lamby to the East Midlands Food and Drink Festival. To explain, one of my various irregular jobs involves road managing for the company who make those big foam rubber cartoon character outfits you see at events having their pictures taken with terrified children. The costumes - known in the industry as 'Skins' tend to be filled by out of work actors and my job as Roady is to take them to the gig, dress the character and act as their minder whilst they're out in front of the public. Venues and events are many and varied - from trudging round an empty shopping centre for a day to running amuck in the gardens of Buckingham Palace on the Queen's birthday. So this morning it was down to Wimbledon to collect my artistes and the costumes then up the M1 to Melton Mowbray, the spiritual home of the Pork Pie, where the grounds of a stately home were playing host to several marquees full of fantastic foodstuffs. Things didn't begin well, as not one of the Hi-Viz vested yokels posted along the track knew anything about us or our contact, mysteriously named on the jobsheet only as Brian, and in brackets, (Mr Barbecue). Eventually having been passed around five different people, none of whom had a clue who we were or what we were doing there, we were shown to a luxurious room in the Hall itself, replete with tea and posh biscuits. Trouble was, it was a good ten minute walk from the Marquee where we were supposed to be appearing, and a ten minute walk for a standard human can easily be a twenty minute walk for a Skin character. With a bit of luck and help from Brian (Mr Barbecue) who turned out to be a genial chap who made beefy jerky, we finally found ourselves a somewhat less luxurious unused space behind someone's stand, which we made our home for the remainder of the day. From there, everything was plain sailing and with pork pies all around us we entertained the massed crowds of food fanatics, appeared onstage with a celebrity chef none of us had ever heard of, were hassled by the intriguingly named 'Ladies In Pigs' who were most disappointed that we hadn't brought Mr Sausage with us and were off home at 4 with a bag of beef jerky apiece curtesy of Brian (Mr Barbecue).
As I'd made it home by 9 there was time aplenty to meet Housemate Brian and the lovely Renate in the pub for booze and silliness.
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