25.05.08

General (unrecyclable) Rubbish

Posted in Juggling, People, Reviews at 11:25 pm by alby

Ah Bungay. (Pics here)

Home now. S’lovely.

That reads like I don’t like Bungay. Not at all true of course. But it rained hard today leaving the campsite wet and drippy and de-camping awkward due to the unrelenting heavy rain.

As at the BJC this year I sensibly decamped the day before, this time I slept in the car last night. Not quite as comfy but.

I made it there on Tuesday after only a slight detour for a map malfunction.

First job after tent upping? Pub. Of course.

Juggling? Did a bit.

Well that’s enough of the juggling. Let’s talk about what else went on.

Volleyclub? Did loads for me. Started with me and Clurb practicing and then Dave and Lynne and Mamph and Jake(?) and Rod and Blake and others joined in at some points to make things more fun.

Unicycling? Some. Was going to do some every day. Managed 3 lots. First one was terrible, 2nd was pretty good, 3rd was pretty good. Ta to Clurb for the shoulder. Still need to work on the fitness.

Animals? Dog next door. Ahhh. Cat on the site. Awww.

Travel? Nearly crashed the car in Halesworth. Ta again to Pete for the shout. As Bungay tradition dictates DB was lifted back to Leicester today as well.

Music? Time at Bungay for lots of different music. Major points for Void for playing a live Melt Banana set. Had some of Tom’s Jap techno thing as well. Marvellous. Oh and some local Germans spent some time banging away at their instruments too. Occasionally had to use some spectacular noise to drown it out.

Special mention required for DB for his hurling of my MP3 player across the length (nearly) of the tent. Impressed the onlookers.

Games? Not many actually. Croquet seemed to kick off in a big way this year. It’s one of those games like Bridge that makes no sense at all. I hope never to learn either games’ rules, the mystery will be gone and any interest thus evaporated. No Scrabble. Some DS stuff. No rudeness nor “purility”.
A wasted opportunity.

Work? Some taping done. Shoulder stuff done. Gym ball stuff done. Looks like a gymball workshop will be a grand idea sometime soon.

Now on to the interesting stuff.

People. They’re ace. Loads of them are anyway. I didn’t meet an unpleasant person at all. Very lovely to have a week like that. But I’ll mention some folk. You other regulars will just have to assume that you’re grand (you are).

• Abbie – ta for the paracetamol – just what I needed.
• Blake from Canada – nice bloke and up for volleyclub.
• Jani – over from Finland for the week and a really pleasant bloke. Nice to have met you – see you in Finland EJC if not before.
• Si and Em seemed a nice couple – see you in June.
• Leicester lot are as ever grand – working to get them tents down today showed you all up as magic. Ta.
• Sarah gets a mention too for coming out with sparklingly mad utterances. The pinnacle of which was in answer to the question “When are you going to learn clubs?” Her (on-topic) answer? “I’m thinking of getting my nipples pierced.” Apparently it makes sense. I’m going to save her blushes by keeping her other utterances private for now. But be aware that I can be bought. We also had a great half hour discussing potential jugglers as marriage material for her. We had certain ideas but any suggestions will be looked at for comedy potential too.
• Special cheers to Charlie, Alex and extra-specially to newbie Libby.
• and of course to Farmer Paul.

Shows?

Shows? Plural?

Why yes.

We had the pleasure of zooming off down the road a way to visit a circus. A little local thing. BUT. One of the performers was a certain Sarah B of BYJOTY and Shakira fame. She wasn’t at BBU this year because of her having run away to join this circus. Very annoying as she’s ace company. But as luck would have it they were just down the road.

She knew that one or two of us were going to come and visit at some point. On Thursday night they had 38 of us show up. We were their biggest audience of the tour and by far the most boisterous.

Imagine the scene. They’ve had 14 people in the crowd the show before. And 20 the time before that. This one had 50. And we were loud.

More specifically we were loud whenever Sarah came on.

Now I don’t simply mean when she came on to perform. I mean whenever she came on.

Cheer for putting a mat down for one of the other acts. Cheer for “walking across back of stage”. Cheer for dancing with lighty up thing in the dark too.

Apparently she got the chance to point out audience members to be “volunteered”. So we had the fun of watching Mini and 3 others doing the “lying down on each other whilst not falling over” thing.

Gawd bless ‘em but the other performers dealt with this very bizarre event wonderfully. The ringmasters both tried their best to get the non-juggler audience to join in and they did (eventually). The performers got into the spirit as well. Sarah and a couple called Si and Em were most worried because we all knew what the difficulty of what they were doing was. Em, bless her, came on to do poi and mouthed a “sorry” to us all and then proceeded to do a really cool routine with lots of stuff I’d not seen before. Very good indeed. The other performer who should be noted was the clown Alex whose nipples stood out a mile. Even without being doused by Rob. But her nipples shouldn’t be noted as the err stand-out bit of her act – she could clown and entertain and she did it well. Nice one.

The other thing the circus does is teach the school kids and some get to perform in the shows. 2 in particular were excellent. 2 lads did a clown routine involving classic clown gags. They did the ladder (actually it was an easel) in the face gag really well, they did the foot in the paint bucket gag. They gurned and acted their hearts out. Really good indeed.

The finale was when the performers all came on again to get their applause. Sarah was last on and this led to a standing ovation and nigh on a literal “raising the roof” wave of noise from everyone. It didn’t stop. At one point she came over to me and said something along the lines of “For fuck’s sake cheer someone else, it’s embarrassing”. Bless. Cue the tears and laughing combi that she does so well.

At the end Void and Pete kidnapped Sarah and we took her and Si and Em back to the site for a night of being at Bungay. They loved it and it was fun. So much so that they turned up again the following night.

Sarah at the site led to her getting cheers everywhere she went and for everything she did. So she’d enter the tent to cheers. She went to brush her teeth at one point rousing cheers and more cheers for demonstrating which brand of toothpaste she was using. Very odd indeed.

After the show I could no longer speak after shouting so much and trying to deal with the combination of a cold and tonsillitis. Seems to have improved since though.

And on to the main show on Saturday.

They’d done it as a “Bungay’s Got Talent” thing, organised by Ewan who’d spent the week asking folk to play and being rebutted at most turns. Clurb had been asked to be one of the judges but she eventually retired in favour of Mandy. T’other judges were Dave tB and Farmer Paul himself.

Last year the site got busy on the second Saturday as people arrived for a long weekend. It didn’t happen so much this year. Possibly this was down to the weather forecast being a tad appalling but it did mean the show was quite quiet.

First act on was Rob Fiery with a weird boxing match thing. Loads of in-jokes, lots of juggling and manipulation with clubs and hats – entertaining if a bit rough. He was triple-x’d off by the judges right at the end of his act. This led to the first appearance of Alan (last year’s compere) the Act Catcher who burlapped him up to be interviewed by the judges.

Next act was some kid trying to get us to sing. A: bad idea. B: he tried to teach us not only singing but doing actions to the words as well. C: it was a potentially religious song (thankfully he didn’t get to the “Isn’t God great?” bit that I felt was inevitable). And D: they didn’t bloody triple-x him for ages. Don’t make me sing – you wouldn’t like me when I sing. And anyway I refuse to sing potentially religious songs.

Mention for the compere. Bloke by the name of Pretentious Ken. Seen him before. I’m convinced he was a Bruised Fruit but everyone I’d expected to be able to confirm this was a bit “Was he? Ooh I can’t remember” about it when probed. He did the job (apart from his DNA gag which fell flat on the basis that the model he held up clearly wasn’t of DNA and couldn’t be taken as so by an audience as nerdy as your Bungay show crowd). Nice.

Belgian Martin and (?)Paul were up next with some smooth passing things they’d worked out over the week. Nice stuff and nice to see that they got a good applaud for a trick or two that me and Clurb have sorted ourselves. They were a bit droppy but considerably less so than me and Clurb would have been.

Monte came on 3 times. Buzzed off twice – it may have been staged it was difficult to tell but he was the only one to do the Bungay trick in the show. Nicely done. Monte was also responsible for some of the better heckles of the night.

Blake from Canada did some nice 3 ball stuff, some of which worked. Then he headed off into bizarre world with a coat hanger routine that at times looked like that game with tumbling monkeys in that whenever he put something on something would fall off at the bottom. Very odd indeed.

Sam came on. Small child on stilts doing 1 diabolo trick. A few times. Yes.

Sean did his Singin’ in the Rain diabolo and brolly act.  Very smooth and as good as I remember.

James did some club stuff. Really very droppy but some nice ideas and what worked was very good at times. XXX-d off for droppiness.

Finale of the evening was Grant Goldie who was criminally unable to do an Irish accent. He did his hat routine and people laughed about Butlins. A nice routine but hats as you may know are not my bag.

So what happened next? Judges decided which won the top 3 acts.

Grant got third and a WJF CD. Belgian Martin and (?)Paul got second (but the best WJF DVD) and the “winner” was young Sam who got another WJF DVD. Some oddness ongoing there.

First. WJF? What?

Apparently the WJF sent some flyers (which were plentiful) and a couple of DVDs hoping that the orgs could promote the WJF event in December. They did but….. at Bungay? This is Bungay. The Bungay Balls Up. WJF and Bungay does not compute. We’re in a field, sitting and knitting or reading or talking rubbish or playing non-serious volleyclub or having a barbecue. The WJF? What?

And I do wonder what Jason G will think if he finds out that the top prize of a WJF DVD was given to a very young, hippy haired lad standing on some stilts and doing a v basic diabolo move – a few times – with only a couple of drops. Just the image he’s after I’m sure.

The show was over and the tent emptied again. So late to bed after more volleyclub.

And that was it really. The rain dampened Sunday and all us Leicester lot left after getting soaked when communually striking the tents down.

And now I’m home and I don’t want to be. Sigh.

PS I know I’ve over used the adjective “nice” somewhat. But I’m tired and I really need a nice sleep.

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