TWENTY - THREE

And so the festival continued, although we were only just going into week three, I was definitely experiencing the mid-season slump, and the only thing that got me to work that night was the fact I was going to be on my own in the box, and it was going to be ludicrously quiet. All fine by me. It was even a slightly shorter shift than usual as the Wau  knock-off drink. And bumped into one of the main people of the Garden, who then took me to the Deluxe tent, and decided my knock-off should be a vodka martini. Good call sir!  So, I enjoyed that little treat, and hobnobbed with some important people from a certain large venue in Edinburgh, and spoke of a certain giant purple cow…but I won’t say anymore! And with that done, I went to get some food, and once again decided that a pancake was a suitable dinner food. It had strawberries on it; therefore it was one of my five-a-day.

And on Tuesday I had another day off, and absolutely no plans at all, I tried to get in contact with Nathan, but he was being useless, so, I had the day to myself, and had plans to go and see lots of shows in the evening – I just couldn’t get enough of the place! I also phoned Hannah for a bit of a cheer-up, and a dose of the gossip from back home, and then I went to see ‘La Gateau Chocolat’ and had no idea what to expect, but I knew he was an opera singing drag queen, so I suppose I knew exactly what I was getting myself in for – loud singing and lycra. And I have to say he was absolutely fantastic! Funny, witty, talented – I sound like I’m trying to sell a ticket, but it really was amazing. My plans to go and see the Wau Wau sisters were once again put on hold, as I am just really not that excited about it, and I still had the rest of the week to see it so there really wasn’t a massive hurry. I decided to have a relatively early night and a good sleep, but sadly this didn’t quite work out, and instead I spent the night tossing and turning. Hurray.

And so I woke up feeling like I had hardly slept at all, which was lovely. But, I did have the excitement of m first Front of House shift, which was a change, and some say it is as good as a rest, so I was sorted! In the afternoon I found out I have a job for Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which is all very exciting. I was starting to panic a bit about it, as it has been so long since my interview, but, anyway, pretty chuffed. I don’t really know what at the moment, apart from Front of House, so fingers crossed it’s something good! Anyway, back to the job in hand, and I got ready for my first shift being outside the box, and was very excited. However, when I got to work I wasn’t given much in the way of instruction, but did get to play with poster glue for a while, so everything has it’s up side. My main job for the night was to be a replacement for someone, sounds simple enough, but no one really seemed to have much of an idea what he did for the night, but I did know I had to cover people’s breaks – that’d fill up a couple of hours. For the rest of my time I wandered about and made sure everyone was OK, pretty simple really, I also collected some programmes, at some point in the night, not exactly thrilling, but it filled up a few more minutes! At one point in the night I got drafted back into the box office to help out ,as there seemed to be an unexpected Wednesday-night rush. But this respite didn’t last that long, and soon I was sent back into the cold, to continue my wanderings .At the end of the night I helped sweep out a couple of the tents, and then it was the end of my shift, and all I can say is that I’m glad I don’t have to do it all the time, and for the first time during the festival, I was grateful of my little box, despite it’s problems.

I slept until some ridiculous time the next day, which didn’t leave me massive amounts of time to do anything before work, but I decided that the dishes really needed to be tackled, as we had pretty much run out of crockery. I’m not really sure how we created so much washing up, as we were all eating from the wonderful culinary delights of the food vans on site. Strange. I had a little bit of time left, so decided to try and sort some stuff on my computer, but Dad called me, so I chatted to him, much better! He also told me about some inheritance I will be getting, which is incredible. I had to pinch myself, but, it was true, and I couldn’t believe it! My shift at work dragged me back to reality though, as half the site lost power half way through the night. Not exactly perfect. But, as we were included in that half, it meant we couldn’t even issue refunds for people, so we sat there, quite literally powerless, and just tried to apoligise as much as we could. The most annoying people were the ones who came up somewhat oblivious of the fact we were sitting in the dark, and proceed to ask us about show. So that was all a bit exciting, and all the fun seemed to last about an hour, which livened up my shift a bit, even if it did mean Will was running around madly!! None of the punters seemed to find it half as funny as I did as we would get power for a minute or two, and then lose it again – I wonder why?

 Sadly, Friday was no where near so eventful, and it was just a very boring average Friday, with lots of sold out shows, lots of drunken bogans, and people asking stupid questions. Yes, ‘Sold Out’ means there are no more tickets. Our cashing up however was more than average, and took us an hour, god knows why, but we just kept getting the number wrong, which was frustrating at the end of such a boring shift. As it was indeed Friday night, and the Garden would be open for a few more hours with people tottering around on the grass in stilettos, so I made an early exit, and went home for a gossip with Hannah till some silly time in the morning. Plus, I had my day-shift again, so had to be up early.

So I started work at 10am again, and my first place to visit, was the café downstairs, and I ordered my usual giant cup of tea, and I got a bonus cup of coffee because no-one collected it. Awesome. Although I was slightly tempted to keep it, I thought it was slightly greedy to have two cups, so offered one to the first person I saw on site who looked like they would need one. One good deed done for the day. The tea helped me slightly recover from feeling like death, and the rest of the day was pretty quiet in the box, although sweltering hot, despite the air-conditioning being on all day, it just didn’t work! I got to leave early that night which was lovely, and so I got to escape the sauna, but into the heat outside. At least there was a breeze. Then I realised I was locked out of the flat, which was annoying – one of the many downfalls of sharing two sets of keys between 5 people. So I waited around for a while, and waited for one of my flat mates to finish work and let me into the apartment. I then had a shower and slept for three hours which was well needed, but meant I missed seeing some of the shows, and feeling slightly disappointed at the number of shows I’d seen, decided to brave Saturday night in the Garden and go and see Phat Cave, I had to really, it used to be such a festival classic in Edinburgh. So off I went. And I once again experienced the madness that it was. So, my entertainment for the night was Elbowskin, amazing, Eddie Ifft – always a charmer (?), Gordon Sothern – doing a terrible Elvis impression, and a cameo appearance from Imaan. What a brilliant and thoroughly weird show. Sadly that night I couldn’t sleep, and ended up making a 4am trip to the corner shop to  get milk so I could have a cup of tea. Annoying.

After my few hours of sleep, funnily enough I woke up knackered, and not exactly feeling ready for another day in the sweat-box, but I made my visit to the café, and after a large amount of caffeine I felt slightly more up for the challenge. And it was a hot, hot day. Not as hot as Adelaide is capable of, but pretty damned hot in the box! I think the searing heat had something to do with my somewhat little fuse all day, and by the end of my shift I was well and truly over it. So went to see some comedy. Fiona O’Loughlin was first on the cards, yet another comedian I saw years ago in Edinburgh, who has since sobered up, and despite the show lacking the somewhat unpredictability of her stories before, she is still very funny, and by the end of that I was in the mood for more. So, I went home, had a couple more beers (buying them on site seemed insane when you had them so close, and for half the price, and then headed back to site, for the final night of the Wau Wau sisters, and my last chance to see it. It’s actually a hilarious show, and I probably should have gone to see it much sooner, but now I know at least. All I knew about it was that it was two women naked, and doing circus tricks. And, although that was the crux of it, it was actually a lot more than that, and it seemed like a very good way to get back into the feel of it all – and being in the Spiegeltent doesn’t hurt either! After that I thought I would try and find Will, and was curprised to find that he was in the backstage area of one of the tents having a drink. Normally this wouldn’t surprise me, but considering he had just finished a 36 hour shift I didn’t imagine him to be out and about still. I went to have a couple of drinks with him, and then decided to go home,a nd he stayed out – something backward about that I think! He didn’t stay out long, and in the end of it a he curled up on the floor of the living room, and fell asleep. I tried to wake him up a couple of times – by pulling his hair, kicking him, and other nice sisterly ways to make people up, and in the end gave up and left him there. I did give him a cushion for a pillow – so I wasn’t all bad!

So, I had a great end to a somewhat monotonous week, but there is still a fortnight to go, but, on the up side, I still have lots of time to go and see shows! Hurray!