The Party's Over...

Well, it happened! At last.

Yes! A man with a Big DSLR and a Humungous lens came up to me and said,

‘That’s an interesting looking camera you’ve got there…’

I gave him the full low-down and he made appreciative noises. He was up for the Fringe from Derby, always comes. I asked if he was a professional. No. And he asked if I was... No!!

This is the last day of the Fringe, and they're tidying up and taking down all the stages and scaffolding. There were a few staunch performers still, and plenty of folk on a hot sunny morning.

We were both watching a Japanese group getting ready to go on. They were in marvelous colourful kimonos and Ninja suits. They were very good at posing. In fact, you could not get a candid one of them - one would spot you, nudge the others and they would all line up, and smile and wave at you. The Big Lens man and I looked at each other and laughed and winked. It’s great that folk want you take their photo, but we’d both prefer that they forgot about cameras …

Turns out they are the oldest performing troupe in the world, or maybe I mis-heard it. They’re all over 50, and several of them are over 70. They’d obviously been learning the speeches in English and had a (busy) prompter at the side.

‘We are from Japan.’ One of the kimono-ed ladies announced, proudly.

‘The Land of sushi!
The Land of motor cars!
The Land of hari-kari!
The Land of tsunamis!’

Not quite sure if they were promoting their land, or telling us to stay away...

The first dance was the kimono-ed old gals prancing around to a jazzed up version of ‘Comin’ Through the Rye.’

I moved on to some wonderful African singing, like the backing group for Paul Simon. They were gorgeous and I was there for ages.

But my blip today has to be the ukelele player I lost on my *CARD ERROR* last week. She was most un-animated - just her fingers whizzing around (Ravel’s Bolero, if I’m not mistaken). Every now and again, she’d look up and glower at the audience. Never smiled. Even when I gave her £2. (£2!)

I normally try to wait till there’s a lull in the background passers by, although it can be fun to include interesting ones as well. Then the street sweeper came by.

I waited. Please look up... Please look up... He swished and he swept and moved along. Please look up... And don’t smile!

And she did! And she didn’t!

Blip!