Categories: uncategorized
Date: 16 October 2006 22:14:08
Photos to come, honest (have seen half of them, some are absolutely aces and spent an hour chasing photo permission for a number of faces in the youthwork crowd... so they will be there soon).
Aaaanyhow couldn't pass the opportunity of mentioning how I became the very temporary hero of the book fest before becoming somewhat of a spamhead.
Sunday saw me on duty with 7d, our churches younger teen group and for the first time in a while we had the whole crew. We spent the time sorting out the pages produced in the previous days big book draw (lower case now that it's been and gone) and all told it was a pretty fun morning. Got home, had lunch, started walking to Guildford for one of the afternoon shows.
Which was Tokyopop doing a manga drawing lesson.
The first I realised something was up was when I saw the organisers of the book fest walking towards me. There were thirty odd (don't start) people waiting to do a manga lesson and, tbh, I thought I was somewhat late, arriving as I did at 2.57 for a 3pm start.
Tokyopop hadn't arrived (long story, mixed up dates) and could I do an impromptu manga lesson.
No props I said, having done a manga drawing lesson on thursday, just give me a ream of photocopy paper and a pack of pencils and we'll be well away. And we were, it was good fun... The class was pretty large (35) and had a number of areas I needed to be looking in (3 participants on the aspergers side of the Autistic Disorder Spectrum) so was not exactly the calming down day I'd wanted following the bbd.... But there you go. Managed it well, changed it on the hoof in places where a little tinkering would be suitable and there you go, one happy class that hadn't expected to be so.
For half an hour I was Mr Vaguely Popular. Paul Blezard had arrived to prepare for his work on the Brenda Blethyn evening and I was introduced as the hero of the hour. As if. We all sat down (fest organisers - both of whom make me smile, PB and I) for coffee and, in my case having raised the adrenaliene for 70 minutes, a glass of Leffe and then, half an hour into my hero hour, a phone call came in to say that the A3 had been shut due to a serious traffic accident and Brenda was likely to be late.
Cue panicked phone calls to all and sunday sundry and, ten scarey minutes later, all was sort of sorted. Still a few hurdles left for them to jump but I walked off forgotten anyhow, having spent the past few minutes of their crisis control simply sitting and guarding the bags (including PB's very nice black Apple laptop... )
Then, to make matters somewhat worse I was embroiled in a small youthwork matter this evening, lost track of time and missed the first ten minutes of Sandi Toksvigs opening chat. I'm a huge ST fan, love her to pieces from No 73, the Mike Mc Shane/her double header that I can't remember the name of for the live of me, and her current radio broadcasting posts. My favourite moment of modern radio is her laughing herself silly following a Humphrey Littleton one liner about Samantha... Radio classicness at it's very best, she and I were crying with laughter at pretty much the same time.
So I'm ten minutes late, the Electric Theatre kindly let me in regardless and the rest of the evening was fantata. Excellent show. Bought the book, had it signed like a puppy with sympathy eyes, apologised for being late (she was very kind, as well as supping a pint of beer as well) and there we go. Spent the hour after sitting and trying to work my way out of a youthwork mess (people not speaking to each other, but of a bad situation) while drinking a couple of Leffes and there you go, that's the evening.
Onwards and all over the place. Tomorrows a big day (college, although with a weird session to come) and then youth arts centre with possible quite a hard session to come.... Sigh... But the evening was top and Toksvig was as wonderful as expected. So time for a smile and a snooze I think.