Well a very early start as I had to be at Rowntree Park by about 8am... but arrived so early that only one gate was open but soon others started to trickle in and I helped put together a marquee.
I was in charge of the stalls area and my role was to direct the various stallholders to their pitches and show them where to park their cars. The BBC bus came and eventually got parked up in the right place. Lots of other activity. I was working with a steward called Qing (pronounced 'Ting') and we walked round the stalls as she was doing photographs and wanted to know about each stall. I wasn't aware of the time, just that there was loads happening... and then there was a call on the walkie talkie for me to go to the BBC bus, so I went up there and they wanted to interview me about green lifestyles and the festival and my bike...
They had a clock and I noticed it had just turned 11... the festival had officially started! The interview didn't take long and I was able to get back to the stalls area. Various family and friends arrived, including Gill and the boys and Ali and Ruthie.
The park started to fill up and at one moment the sun came out... but it was still overcast and potentially wet. The Environmental Health Food Hygiene person came and then radioed through to say she was happy with everything. Before long it was approaching 1pm when I was due to present a balloon modelling workshop so I went to the kids area and blew up a whole unicycle's worth of balloons (I put them into the spokes to hold them) and the marquee filled up... loads of children, and as I was doing the workshop, more and more came.... So I did an hour's worth of balloons, an almost endless queue of expectant children all wanting a balloon of their choice. I was glad when there were no more and I could get back to my Festival organiser duties and by this time it had started raining. But the Festival went on and there was lots to do... a very busy few hours.
At about 3.40 I went to the main stage as my favourite band were due to be on, but everything was running late and The Falling Spikes weren't due to be on for at least half an hour. I knew that the music would overrun so I went to find Baz to discuss this with him and he suggested that the music could continue til 5.30, which I wasn't too happy with as this would probably breach our consent. But I didn't argue for a 5pm finish as the audience were still enjoying the music and were resolutely ignoring the rain.
I started doing some litter duties, sorting out different waste streams into different bags, and taking the paper plates/food for composting and the aluminium cans for recycling. The Falling Spikes just did two, possibly three numbers and finished at 5.30 and the park soon became a lot emptier... but I stayed there til 7, doing assorted tidying duties, litter-picking the main lawn and helping John and Len the park-keepers sort out the last of the mess.
I came home very slowly as my trailer was overloaded but got home shortly before 8 and Gill had some home-grown potato chips ready for me, to which I added a couple of yummy things from Azra's curry stall.
Boys overtired and grouchy but they did eventually get to bed and I watched a brilliant programme on Sculpture on C4+1...
Later collected emails and wrote up this blog.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment