Sunday 26 June 2011

Saturday 25th June 11, Sheffield Green Fair

Well another day of work, but one of my favourites, despite last year breaking my ankle at the Sheffield Green Fair.  So I got the 9.35 train and chatted with a nice lady who was heading to a cricket match in Gloucester with her husband and son.

I got to Sheffield at 10.20 and walked up to St Marys, took about 20 minutes.  The Fair started at 11 so I was in good time.  I had a wander around and chatted with one of my favourite Sheffield Green Fair people, Richard Clare, who is heavily involved with the Sheffield Organic Food Initiative, Grow!Sheffield, Abundance, Landshare and Allotment Soup.  He had his usual seed packets and I bought a few which I hope I'll get round to planting.

I got a vegan spinach and mushroom roll from New Roots, a volunteer-run veggie, vegan and fair-trade food shop (two shops!), and chatted with the nice folks at Waste Wood Briquettes and Litton Logs, who are one and the same thing. Finally I found the inside area with the Sheffield Humanists and a nice wood-turner who told me that on the Sheffield Woodturning Club wetbsite there was a page of links to other woodturning groups, where I might be able to find a buyer for my big cherry logs.

My work consisted of a load of unicycling around, and then soon after midday a one-hour show which went well... in the middle of which I spotted my Mum so I shot over and said hello to her.  I continued the show and when I'd done the 'two tricks at the same time' finale, had lunch with her, sitting in the shade of a tree, eating sandwiches.  Good to see her, it's been a while. My sis Anna was there too, helping with the Sheffield Freegle stall, and quite a few other lovely people I know.


After lunch I did mostly balloons as it was too hot to be unicycling around, but I had a constant stream of eager kids wanting dogs, kangaroos, giraffes, and dog's dinners.  Oh, and a few fighting worms.  So I did another circus bit as I was getting bored of balloons, and this became pretty full-on with more children wanting to participate than I could cope with.  At about 4.30 I went to get my cheque and then went to get changed.... when I came out there were two more kids wanting balloon animals.  I made them an elephant and a mouse, and got out of there, walking down to the station. 

My train was over half an hour away so I had a mocha and watched a pigeon.  On the train I met a lovely mother-daughter combo, coming back from holiday in Taunton, and we talked about all sorts, it was a nice way to spend an hour and it made the journey go quickly.

Home by 7.30 and Gill had made quiche to go with the last of the onion soup.  A chilled evening followed, enjoyed half-listening to Glastonbury on the TV.

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