04.02.08

The Scottish Play

Posted in Juggling, People, Reviews at 10:38 am by alby

My word I’m tired.

It’s early on Monday after a very long and tiring weekend of extreme goodness.

Started on Thursday after work with me zooming off to quickly pack and then off up to Dumfries.

The weather had been terrible that morning.  Not so bad in Leicester but the M6 through Cumbria had been closed.  So I went up the A1 and across.  The road I cut west on was the A66.  I found out a day later that this road had been blocked by snow on Friday stranding a large number of people on it for the best part of a day.  But wasn’t terrible for me.

I stopped at Carlisle to have a break but the wind and rain were pretty viscious so I only got out the car to dash to the loo. I also checked my phone to see any messages; I had 1 voicemail from my host for Thursday night.  When I listened I got

“Hello it’s chhchchchhchcchhc.   The weather’s chchchhchchhhch awful at the mo.  Are you chchchchhchchchc.  Give me a call chhchchchhchchchchchchchhchc.”

Where the “chchchchhchchchchhc” was wind noise blocking out any voice.  When I called they were concerned that I’d not bothered because of dodgy weather.

After more buffeting around on the roads I finally made it to rural Dumfriesshire and sat and caught up a little with 10 years worth of news and drank too much wine.  A good evening.

The next day was spent firstly helpng her and her man move into their new house (and very nice too).  That was followed by a Thai food lunch (and very nice too) before heading off to meet LP at Glasgow airport.

I’d planned to arrive at 3pm.  I got there at 3.02 so not a bad guess.  Saw Parit leaving the place at speed and hung around until LP showed up (I saw him about 2s after getting a “where are you?” text off him).

Then we had the wonders of navigating Glasgow in a car.  The funnest bit was knowing that we had to leave the M8 at J20 and seeing J20 sail past on the wrong side of a barrier where there was no way we saw to get to it.  Cue a period of faffing around trying to find a different route to the hotel.

Hotel sorted eventually.  I slept for a bit whilst LP buggered off to find the venue and take pics.

The Convention Bit

I walked to the evening site quite easily from the hotel.  Mildly concerned that I wasn’t sure where I was going but it turned out to be quite straightforward.

Got through the front door to be instantly rugby tackled by one overly energetic Biskup.  So hellos and “how are you’s”….  More people met and then Sarah wanted to get food and invited me and Matt (2 devilstick Matt) to come and get curry.  But she wanted to show off her local takeaway rather than one anywhere close to the venue but the local tube system was handy so we had a bit of a wander round there and found somewhere to eat.

She was very excited that we’d gone to her fave place.  I think she was a little crestfallen when I didn’t like the veg samosas and the curry I described as “oily, orange and glowing”.  Wasn’t great tasting either.  Then I mentioned that I live in Leicester and they do Indian food extremely well here.  Then Matt mentioned that he lives around the corner from Brick Lane.  I think we made her a little grumpy there, especially as she’d made us travel for ages to get to the place.  In fact by common assent the opinion of Glaswegian takeaways was “meh!”

The rest of the evening was spent in a haze of chatting with Lynne, LP, DB, Tom, fak, Mini, Mike, Sarah and a wide variety of other folk whilst drinking lots of polish beer.  Ewano was playing with flaming sambuca (sp?) and Sarah was trying to get us all drinking her tesco value chili vodka.

The walk back to the hotel was nice enough with a small group of jugglers staying there all coming along for the trip.

One other thing I noticed was the Glaswegian kids.  Think of a little lad about 11 years old.  Small built and ginger.  The face is screwed up in an “I’m hard, fear me” contortion which is clearly nonsense.  Loads of em were like that.  One went into the Beer-off we used.  I expected him to try and give a half-arsed “Give me cider or fags” spiel but instead he plumped for the Passionfruit Rubicon.  Such a sweet drink for a wannabe thug.

To Saturday:

Me and LP went over to the day venue at around 11 via the longest most convoluted route ever.  Encountered the worst speed bumps ever too.

But the new day site is a smasher.  Bellahouston Academy is its name.  Big hall with stage and a sports hall with 3 gyms spaces for workshops, vendor etc…

When we arrived there were already a decent number of people around showing off including a good number of the performers in the show.

Az showed me where I could set my bed up for customers and I stuck my name up on the workshops board and was away.  Busy for 2 hours with a nice variety of problems and a lovely variety of people.

Back to the gym to discover they’d kicked us out for the tech run of the show.  I bumped into Az and Miles who asked if I could do a supermarket run for them.  So that was done; mild irritation was that I discovered that I could get no money out with my cash card.  Seems that the bank have stopped it.  I hope it’s because it’s timed out rather than I have no money.  But after last month I’m not sure.

Back in time for the show.  I’ll write more about the show in the next post.

After the show we were back to Kinning Park for more drink, more socialising and the ceilidh.

And you’ll all be surprised that I did actually join in the ceilidh and had a grand old time.  This may have something to do with the very nice german girl who insisted that I dance with her.

After the dancing stopped the renegade started.  Again more about that in the “shows” post. After that, late to bed.

Sunday early start and lots of sitting and chatting at the Academy.  Goodbyes straggled over hours rather than minutes and me, Tom and DB headed home after 2.30.  In fact for the first bit we had Mike too as he’d gone to the train station only to come back to the site as he’d left his ticket there so we gave him a lift to the station.

The drive back was long and sometimes unpleasant (weather wise) but the company was good.  Dropped DB off in L’Pool and Tom in Brum before getting home at around 10.30.  So Glasgow to Liverpool to Brum to Leics in 8 hours wasn’t too bad.

Am knackered this morning.  Urgh.

Shows post to come later.

Have fun, I did.

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