Hello again to all my faithful blog readers!  I am sorry once again to leave such a humungous gap since my last post.

As you know we were at Glastonbury the weekend before last performing our new puppet show “Clueless & Wuffles – The Case of the Missing Jewels!“.

We performed the show about 6 times altogether and Professor Panic, Mrs. Panic and our fellow puppeteers all said how much they enjoyed it.  Professor Panic said were “brilliant!” and that we were “stalwarts of the Panic Circus Tent”.

The audience appreciated it too – in fact while we were making a cup of tea at our tent, one of the Kidz Field artist’s children came to tell us specially that they’d enjoyed the show, (she said she liked the dog best!).  During our final show the children were so enthralled by the performance that they actually chased the villains of the piece waving swords that they’d made in the wood work tent!

We were a little concerned about whether the Panic Circus tent would be used as a creche instead of adults staying to look after their kids and watch the show, but luckily there were adults in every audience we had.  One of the main reasons we were concerned about this is that the show is aimed at a family audience and contains jokes for the adults as well!  I am pleased to say that these went down very well too.

I was also a little worried that I might find it difficult to relax and enjoy myself when we were not performing our show.  This was not a problem in the end, though we may have had a couple of slightly earlier nights than other people on days when we had earlier performances.  I am not someone who does well on too little sleep which is one reason it has taken so long to write this blog as I needed some recuperation time.

We arrived a day earlier than the general public and thus had a very smooth journey down to Somerset.  We had been warned in our information pack that glass, dogs and excessive amounts of alcohol etc. were not allowed and that our vehicle would be searched when we arrived.  We had great fun imagining what might happen when they discovered a life size Alsatian dog puppet in the van.

In actual fact Wuffles remained concealed in his bag and the stewards merely did a little peak through the van windows to see if they could spot anything noticeably suspicious looking, (they had a lot of vehicles to deal with).

So we arrived at roughly 3pm and had plenty of time to unload our props/puppets at the Kidz Field, pitch our tent, park the car, walk back to the tent, make our tea and suss out where the toilets and water points were.

We were lucky in having close access to the nicest toilets on the site which were the composting ones in the Kidzfield.  These use no water to flush, instead you use a cup of bark chippings when you have done a poo, (my apologies to those of a delicate disposition, quick pass the smelling salts!).

There wasn’t a lot of room left in the Kidz Field Crew camping so we grabbed a spot which tilted somewhat although it was at least mostly flat.  We were careful not to face the tent entrance uphill so as to avoid water running into the tent, (it was brilliant sunshine when we arrived but we wanted to be prepared).  We also put all our guy-lines out as this is essential if you wish to avoid water getting into your tent when it rains and we did a very good wrinkle free job.

We had scorching weather when we put up the tent, and again when we took it down, and torrential Biblical style storms with thunder & lightening in the middle.  We took our sun-cream and our sunhats for the sun as well as waterproofs and wellies for the rain and we were quite comfortable most of the time.  In one of the ridiculously colossal downpours I did discover water got in down the neck of my waterproof jacket but we took shelter in one of the performance tents.  The jacket is perfectly fine for normal amounts of rain!  You can see a picture of the spectacular Glastonbury mud below.  It seemed to come in three types – sticky, sloshy and slippery and it was quite amusing trying to get around in it.  We also managed to keep the mud only in the porch of the tent and kept the inner dry and largely mud free.

We took everything we needed to cook all our meals on our camping stove but recognised that if it rained all the time we wouldn’t be able to use it and would have to buy stuff instead – in the end I think we bought just under half of our meals out as we had plenty of good weather.  There was a lot of very good vegetarian and vegan food to be had – particularly in the green fields area, though finding stuff that was good value, nice and big enough portions was a little more challenging.  One of our favourites was a very big curry at the Avalon Cafe which actually started to fill me up before I’d finished it!  They also have live acts on a stage in there too which was great.

We got free earplugs from the info. stall on the Wednesday and these were good for when watching bands close to the speakers, and for sleeping at night.  I am very good at sleeping well and the sloping tent and the noise didn’t cause me any trouble.  We even managed to get at least one shower while we were there and met some nice people while queuing for it too.

Meeting new people in random places and having a nice chat happened quite a lot while we were there and was probably one of the nicest things about the festival.  The majority of people were very nice and friendly and there was a good camaraderie among the Kidz Field crew too.  It was heartening to discover that a lot of real hippies still go to Glastonbury and we attended a proper anti-fracking concert by an activist band called “Seize the Day” in the “Toad Hall” tent in Green Futures.  They were seriously good musicians as well as having a message to put across.

You can see from the pictures, videos and links below what kind of stuff we saw and got up to.  As we have so much to talk about I shall do some further reviews etc. in a second Glastonbury blog post including the new Ramshacklicious show “Grime” and the “Kiss on the Apocalypse” show by the Mutoid Waste Co. and not forgetting our fellow Panic Circus Tent performers also.

Do feel free to comment at the bottom and don’t forget our “Clueless & Wuffles…” show is available to book now for your event – (CLICK HERE to contact me!).

 

Links to Fellow Panic Circus Puppeteers –

No Strings Puppet Theatre & Mainbrace Theatre

Nicada – Punch & Judy

Over the Top Puppet Company

Professor Eek

Panic Circus

Also on the Kidzfield –

Ian – OtherWorld Arts

In the Outside Circus Tent –

Kiki Bittovabitsch (Video below not suitable for children)

Snap Boogie

Theatre & Circus Field –

Ramshacklicious

 

Cabaret Field –

Le Navet Bete (Napoleon: A Defence)

Glebeland –

Mutoid Waste Company (Joe Rush)