My feet are filthy

There has been a lovely stretch of gorgeous weather this week. Doubly nice as it has been half term this week so other people also had time off and there were activities going on. On Saturday I was down in Brockley with some of the fire-hazard folks to run games at the summer fete/festival they had going on. Perfect weather for a community festival. And for running around barefoot in the grass.

Fire-hazard's target audience is usually young professionals without kids who are looking for something unusual, active, and somewhat silly to do. The festival? Was filled with toddlers and adults who were just chilling out and listening to the music. Not a lot of adults looking to run around (did I mention it's been hot? It was hot) and many of the children were far too small to be involved either.

Giving it a go anyway, we set up an obstacle course with bits of rug, cones, a handy bench, and three big yoga balls. The idea was that you had to get through the course without touching the grass (it was lava you see), get to the inflatable sword at the end of the course, and then get back again all without being hit by the roving lava balls (yoga balls) or the rock giant (one of the team with an inflatable axe). It was pretty fun and we were having a good time with it.

Every once in a while we'd get a curious kid staring at us or starting to do the course and then I would try to corral the other children who kept stealing the yoga balls to roll them towards the runner. I think we only had three people who weren't from fire-hazard run the course.

There started to be some trouble with the yoga ball stealing children throwing the yoga balls too hard at passing strangers, so being the responsible adult that I am and the only member of the team that was not actively afraid of children I hollered at them all and made a big circle out of red cones and codified the game that they were already playing- which is to say "tag" where whoever was "it" was running away and you tried to hit them with the giant rubber balls so that you could be "it" next. No throwing, only rolling, and no going outside of the cones. Harumph.

We played that for quite a while (me and the kids; the rest of the fire-hazard team was refining the lava game) and then I was losing them and the balls again so we played something called "Manhunt" which is hide and seek and tag combined into one game. I made the other fire-hazard folks put up a boundary perimeter of cones that included a big area to run in and some trees for cover. Each of the kids got a neon yellow arm band and 10 seconds to run and hide. At which point I sauntered over to the one place that they actually could hide and managed to get three of them before they could run away. When you got tagged you gave up your yellow arm band and started running after the others. Last one with the arm band still on wins.

After that game ended we packed up and went off to enjoy the rest of the festival figuring that we had dispensed with our duty. It would help next time if we all had fire-hazard T-shirts and if there were some official looking signs. In spite of the announcement from the stage I think one of the big problems was that people couldn't tell if we were part of the festival or just a bunch of people having a silly looking picnic.

We played manhunt again with just the five of us later that afternoon. It was fun figuring out how to hide in a huge group of people and how to get away without running and freaking out the rest of the people innocently hanging out at the festival. (Most importantly- I won. Remember how everyone else is freaked out by kids? I found the highest concentration of children that I could and so spent most of the game making things out of pipe cleaners in the crafts tent and keeping an eye on where the rest of the players were out of the corner of my eye. They never even looked for me there.)

Springtime Adventure

Linda came round today and we went trekking. It was a gorgeous, gorgeous spring day and I have the privilege of living nearby this massive set of parks. So we went to the corner shop and got provisioned with trail mix and juice boxes. (side note: corner stores in the UK are brilliant. Specifically for their selection of Rubicon juices in exotic and delicious flavors. I had mango and Linda had lychee. We skipped the guava and passion fruit that was also available. Yum.)

The trek was epic- we went through many of the parks and even wandered into a very cool nature preserve that, we later figured out, only has one entrance which is unfortunately located and the opposite end of where we wanted to get out. So we looked a some water birds through the wooden flaps in the viewing area, and we admired the giant mosaic of a grasshopper, and we read informative plaques about small and cute ponds before deciding that, really, since we could SEE the path we wanted to be on just over that fence- we might as well just hop it.

So we did. But first we had to find a place where there wasn't barbed wire and where it was low enough that we had a chance of being dexterous enough to get over. We ended up jumping down in front of this family of four with two small, blond, impressionable young boys that we were setting a very poor example for.

It was an excellent adventure.

Back in London

We arrived at Gatwick airport at 3:45am this morning. None of us managed to sleep very well on the plane, but we were all fairly coherant all things considered. I think we even managed to get all of the instruments home to their proper places. Simon, Kate's boyfriend was kind enough to pick us up at the airport and drive us home. We fit 5 people and 16 pieces of luggage in to his station wagon (oddly called an estate car in the UK) and drove home as the sun was rising.

When we got back to Sundial I was very awake and very hungry so I scoured the kitchen for food and ended up eating some pasta and writing out the previous blog while sitting in the middle of all of my stuff that I dropped on the floor of my room. I managed to be totally awake until about 8am when I passed out on my bed.

I woke up again at lunchtime and called up Jon. We went wandering around brick lane and ended up eating at a BBQ stand before heading over to Regent's park to meet the dinner club people. They were having a picinic but unfortunately were just about to leave as we got there (we had taken our own sweet time and bought ice cream cones because it was such a lovely day) so Jon and I borrowed their frisbee and went off in search of more ice cream.

It was a bit too windy for the tiny, flimsy frisbee but we did have a nice game with four cousins hanging out with their father/uncle at the Park. There was a large group of fun people under a tree that I was convinced were a bunch of goths that looked like they were having a lot of fun. Jon and I kept trying to figure out a way to go over there and say "you look cool, can we hang out too?" without being you know, weird. Fortunately frisbees solve all problems and we ended up having a fun game with their heavier, and therefore better, frisbee.

Anyhow, it was a lovely nice day wandering around London and it reminded me of when I came to audition and exploring all over the city. Good welcome back day that way.

The tiredness is hitting now, so no more writing for the time being. I have uploaded all of the pictures and will begin transcribing my journal and posting pictures and videos starting tomorrow.

Capoeira in the Park or I don't speak French

I've been wandering through parks recently. Yesterday was the Kensington Gardens and today I walked through Regent's park on my way to Camden market. At the Kensington Gardens I realized that I was tapping my foot to something, and so set off to find the origin of the rhythm. It was this little family group where the adults were playing whatever the instruments are called that accompany capoeira and these two little boys were doing the kicks and stuff. And by little, I mean they couldn't have been more than four years old. It was very cute. And then today in a band stand near the Queen's garden there were a bunch of twenty-somethings jumping around. (I wish I remembered the names of the moves or anything more authentic sounding than "jumping around" and "kicking.") Anyhow, it was cool and now I want to go to all the other parks and see if they all have bands of people doing capoeira. It might be a city wide movement, you know.

And the French. French would have been useful at the concert yesterday (or just in general for eaves dropping purposes. A remarkable number of people around here chatter away in French.) The opening band was eh. So-so. At one point he started talking and I'm pretty sure asked if it would be okay if he spoke French, and a massive "OUI" swept the crowd. From there on in, I was lost. Also, there was this woman sitting right behind me that kept randomly hollering Aiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi (and no, that is not an exaggeration: it was long, loud, repetitive, and high pitched) Some other people were doing it on lower levels and it actually sounded pretty cool, but not right next to your(my) ear. Then it was just painful. That being said: Rachid Taha was awesome.

I'm all for any band that has tons of energy where the musicians roam about the stage and actually interact. (It's one of my favorite things about the Baltimore Consort). Rachid came out in a black suit with a shiny, orange tie and a white cowboy hat. He clearly loves being a rock start and was eating up all the screaming for him. Women kept climbing on to the stage. At one point there were twenty of them dancing away (I counted.) But it was really good, and fun and I have *no* idea what any of the songs were about because they were all either in French or Arabic. But high energy goodness none the less. (I get the feeling a bunch of the songs were political, but like I said: I have no idea.) Speaking of awesome live bands: Ozomatli is coming to the Barbican on April 13th.

Today I went to Camden Market where all of the merchandise is remarkably uniform. (I'm in a computer lab nearby instead of my regular one, and I must say: I like mine better. The guy who is in my regular one from Monday-Friday is much more pleasant. His name is Ronny and his from Sri Lanka and listens to a lot of Sinhala songs on You Tube while working.) I went to a bunch of shoe stores trying to find the quintessential ballet flat that I've been looking for, but found little success. I did end up buying a new pair of concert shoes though. I'll post a picture later. Oh, oh! I had a wall's ice cream! I had a "twister" which was my favorite from when we were on the canal boat when we were nine. It is pineapple ice cream with strawberry and lemon fruit ices. And I still like it, which was a surprise. Most of the things I liked when I was nine are a little too much now. Except not avocado. I will always like avocado. Particularly when drenched in Grammy's dressing. That's the best.