Sunday 3rd October 10 Beverley Food Festival

A very wet day ahead... the forecast was for continual rain, and it did rain all day.  I was picked up by one of my facepainter friends Maggie just before 8am.  She was a replacement for Lesley, who phoned last night saying she wasn't well, and that Maggie would pick me up.

I like Maggie... she's friendly good to chat with.  She's a careful driver too, just as well in the conditions.  We got to Beverley before 9 and found a free car park about 5 minutes from the town centre, which is totally taken up with stalls from the Food Festival.  I found Helen and introduced her to Maggie, who's not done this event before, whereas this is my fifth, I think.  Helen found Maggie a spare stall and after a quick walk around with Helen, i decided that I too would do best at this stall.

I was already in costume so I was ready to start work immediately. I made several balloon models as demonstration models or decoys... to draw in the punters... and it worked, with the added pull, directed to adults with children in tow, of  'Hello, do you know anybody who likes balloon animals?'.

So, I must have done about 50 models today.  I looked after Maggie's stall whilst she was at lunch and when I went, she kept an eye on my stuff.  During a part of the afternoon, when it was just drizzling, I had a request to run a unicycle workshop, so I did, with a small boy trying the four wheeler and two wheeler before the kids one wheeler.  It provided a change for me.. which was good.  It became less busy after 2.30 and I'd been asked to be in the main marquee for 3 to present a 10 minute piece on composting food waste.   This went well, and there were some questions from the audience afterwards.

I bought a stick of Brussels sprouts on the way back to Maggie, who was packed and ready to go.  We walked back to the car and in the pouring rain, drove carefully back to York. There was loads of standing water on the roads and the horse lorries were sending up fountains of spray, quite spectacular.

So, I was soon back at home, and took quite a while to warm up, but did loads more fruit and lots of writing.