The Festival Begins

I haven't blogged for a few days - I have been writing my talk for the Festival.  It took ages.
It is now Saturday morning - and it is raining, damn it.  I have great confidence that it will not rain too much - but the weather forecast does suggest rain.  However, the weather forecast is notably wrong.  The 24 hour one is the worst, always saying the opposite of the weather actually outside one's window.  I don't think it really is a Ramsgate weather forecast, but done for the whole of Kent - it's way too generic.

Today I am helping in Vale Square at Emily T's Van Gogh thing - weather permitting... then going to see Open Studios - then Scatterlings followed by Wendy Cope - if the weather's crap it should help the Scatterlings.  At some point we have to deliver letters about the Squall in the Park - and then check the areas for the marquees etc.

Last night we had the launch party - I managed to finish my talk and the slide show (my first Power Point!) by about 3.00pm - obviously I am now having lots of extra thoughts that I want to include - and need to edit it... but there's time.

I really enjoyed the party - once I'd got my "extra duties" out of the way - but I couldn't quite let rip - the thought of things to do today... still it was very jolly, drank just about enough to maintain the flow and met some new interesting people, as well as the usual crowd, some of whom I got to speak to, others I didn't.  But I am sure we will all be in and out of each other's events over the weekend, and then there's the volunteers' party on Monday night to look forward to, if I'm still standing.  I am terribly unfit, walked home with Sam and Mark and had to stop at a cash machine during the ascent of the High Street, just to get a rest.

The diet is working - I've lost a kilo or so - but is hardly very authentic, last night substituted canapes for supper - and ate a lot of really good samosas.  I am beginning to feel better though, more alert etc.  Not so tired.  Amazing the damage high carb foods do to one's mind. 

Noel Ensoll was as agreeable to meet as I had thought he would be - v. nice about my StageCorner blog - and bright and interesting.  Hope we'll have further conversations.  We were talking about some sort of Dickens event for next year's festival, as well as a Pugin event of course - and perhaps a Montefiore event... lots of things could be added in.   

However, there was a "comedian" who slagged off our programme for being so highly intellectual (she singled my talk out) - I didn't hear her, because I was outside chatting with people, I felt indignant at her dissing our rather inclusive and, I thought, well balanced, programme.   She can say what she likes about my contribution, I was amused that I had been mentioned in dispatches.  I expect I'll get more laughs than she apparently did.  Later I felt sorry for her, because she'd been very nervous apparently, and was trying to be ironic, had misjudged the audience and no one had laughed - and she'd plugged on for 15 minutes.   Christ!  But much as I hate the self-congratulatory nature of the municipal waffle that goes on at these events (actually, I didn't hear that either), particularly the high-class guff at things like the Turner Contemporary launch, I don't feel taking the piss out of an event is really quite the right thing to do - unless you can actually incorporate some genuinely perceptively critique.  I don't think we have the same kind of over-inflated pretensions of the Turner crowd, and are in far less need of being punctured. 

I also met a slightly slick suited man called James, who I suspect is a prospective PPC - i.e, doing the rounds.  He seemed quite nice, but I wasn't getting the whiff of clenched fist passion off him that I personally prefer in a Labour MP.  But who knows, he may have a heart for the poor?

We left at 9.30 - I felt bad about leaving the washing up, but I had emails to send.