Midsummer madness
Noel Coward was a wonderful lyricist, but he hadn't quite caught on to inclusive language. So when he wrote that "mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun", he probably didn't intend to exclude Englishwomen or, for that matter, English children... and they were all out on Saturday for our local Midsummer Festival. It's actually the second one. There was one last year too, but I didn't go to that one, since a) I had no particular reason to do so, b) it was hot, and c) I was still recovering from the concert the night before. I put on the first two concerts ever performed in this benighted town; the first was in February last year, involving d'Artagnan singing lute songs, and the second was the following June, involving his good friend and colleague Catherine King accompanied on the harp. Catherine turned out to be not only good fun and very easy to work with, but also quite robust and determined, which was just as well because the venue had booked another group in the adjacent room and they had a very noisy PA which would have drowned out the concert. Fortunately I'd booked the drama studio as a dressing room, and it's largish, so there was room for the audience in there, and the musicians made a last-minute decision to decamp into it for the concert. That stressed out the harpist, who was a gentle soul, and that in turn stressed me out, because if I invite musicians here I want them to be treated properly. I complained to the venue and they did give me a full refund on the hall, but still.
Anyway. This time there was no concert, and I needed to be at the festival for two reasons: first of all, the play, and secondly I'd got permission to sell earrings (subject to taking out public liability insurance, which is horribly expensive, but it does cover me for the whole year, so now I can sell at all similar events... plus I get paid quite a whack if I land up in hospital, which is reassuring, because I have that added on). There was just one little problem. It was slated to hit very nearly 30 degrees out there. We really should have put the Caterpillar in a duvet cover after all; the furry two-piece thing she had looked great, but she must have been half roasted. I mean, heck, I was too hot in a bow tie!
The other thing I'd forgotten, because I don't normally go to this kind of shindig, is that these days apparently you can't have a proper festival without very loud noise blasting out of the speakers, because heaven forbid that anyone should manage to have a decent conversation when they're supposed to be enjoying themselves. And it appears to be an article of faith that nobody can possibly be enjoying themselves if they're not being half deafened. It makes no sense to me. At least they weren't blasting the noise inside the community centre, which also happens to be air-conditioned so it was blissfully cool; so we waited in there till it was time to go out and be fitted up with mikes (apart from me, because I wasn't moving about, so I could have a stationary one). At which point the heat and the noise both hit like bricks.
They did, thankfully, turn off the noise to allow us to perform; and I'm delighted to say it all went swimmingly, despite an unfortunate accident early in the proceedings. A gust of wind caught our tablecloth, pitching all the props onto the concrete flags; Alice's second bottle was among them, and, inevitably, it shattered. Mercifully she did still have the first with her, so she could improvise with that; and nobody was thrown off by the incident, and it all got put right very quickly, or at least as right as possible.
So that was Alice. I don't know what the next one's going to be, but I do know I'm writing it. I've already had a request from one person to play a pirate with a parrot on each shoulder, one good and one evil. OK, we'll see what can be done... as long as the rest of the cast don't insist on a cosy detective mystery set in the 1920s (for instance), I expect that'll be fine!
After the play I ditched the bow tie, then went off home for a bit (it's not far away) for a chill break, which involved, among other things, wolfing down a bowl of mango sorbet. (It helped.) Since I hadn't been allocated an official pitch to sell my earrings - after all, I was doing so from the scooter - I decided to do the sane thing and sell them inside the community centre, where I'd neither be baked nor deafened, and where I'd get a steady stream of customers as people came in to cool off. So, once I was as cool again as I was going to get in the circumstances, I trundled back over there with my entire stock, a big placard... and a couple of bags of Hezekiah's finest.
Well, it's like this. I don't see that a ten-year-old ought to be expected to take out public liability insurance; but you can't sell at these events without it. So I suggested to his mum that he might like to piggyback on mine. After all, our earrings are so different that it's pretty much two different markets, so selling them side by side isn't going to detract from either; it'll just catch both sets of potential customers. Both he and his mum were delighted about this, so I put both sets of selling points on the placard and both sets of earrings on the tray. I wasn't expecting a mad rush, so I brought my sewing along (more on that, no doubt, in a future post); that was a good idea, but in fact I did get interest, which was very encouraging.
In fact, it was a bit of a surprise, in the end. About 90% of the people who came to look were children, who'd naturally go for Hezekiah's cute, cheap, simple earrings; mine are a bit too big to be suitable for children, and besides they're beyond most children's budgets. But I sold only one pair of Hezekiah's and one of mine. Not only that, but when I had to explain to the children that those beautiful earrings they were admiring were rather expensive, nobody quibbled. They all agreed, albeit a little sadly, that it was only reasonable that they should be expensive, because of all the work that had gone into them. One of them was even astonished that it didn't take me all day to make a pair! You don't know how much I appreciate it when people recognise I've been making an effort. The pair I did sell, of course, went to an adult, who took a photo of my shop link because she thought she might want to buy more. I told her that if she did, she should just e-mail me and tell me what she wanted, and I'd arrange to get it to her locally, which would be much cheaper than ordering online, because no postage or overheads.
Clearly, doing community events is a good way to go. Just keep me well away from the PA and I'm golden!
