Tag Archives: street festivals

Tents & Cooksets & Mailouts, Oh My!

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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I have largely been doing one of the boring parts of my job this week, that is the admin.

“Oh, no! Surely not the admin!”, I hear you say.

I’m afraid so.  I have been working on databases and mail-merging for primary schools.  All very dull, but printing mail-merge envelopes does seem quite magical in its own little way.  My husband Tim was most amused to hear me regularly tittering to myself as the envelopes came out of the printer.  I did restrain myself from saying: “It works, IT WORKS!!!! HA HA HA HAAAA!” in a mad scientist kind of way.  Well, you’ve got to do something to relieve the monotiny haven’t you?

While waiting for things to print I had a look at the old social media stuff and found a fun video combining 2 of my favourite things: Kate Bush and puppets! (please don’t watch this if you don’t like to see puppets behaving badly):

Also my camping cook set and tent arrived on Friday and that cheered me up immensely.  If you’re wondering why I ordered them so far ahead of the Masquepony Street Arts camping event in August, it is because I hoped by ordering them now before the season starts I would get some bargains, as indeed I did!

According to the “Tent Commandments”, (I know, an appalling joke, but I’m not guilty of this one).  You should try your tent out in advance in good weather and then “weather” it by wetting it all over.  Seems a bit bizarre but I guess it’s better to find a hole in your tent well in advance rather than during a rain storm in the night when you’re in it and don’t have anywhere else to go.  I think it is probably a bit like stretching paper for painting too.  Looking forward to a dry day in Bentham, (she laughs sarcastically) we do have them occasionally.  We get a lot of rain here because of the proximity of Ingleborough, one of the famous 3 peaks.  I’m not complaining as I’ve always loved mountains, you do get rained on, but at least you do have a mountain to look at, or climb if you’re feeling energetic.

Masquepony – Cartmel and More Bridlington Puppet Workshop

Posted on by Collette Knowles
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You may remember from last week I mentioned bumping into Jeremy Shine of Manchester International Arts at the train station.  Well he mentioned that he might have some work for me and now it’s definite that I’ll be performing “Edward Lear’s Nonsense” at his fabulous new street theatre festival “Masquepony” in Cartmel, the Lake District.  It is believed to be the first UK street arts festival with on site camping!

We were also invited to camp the day before and see some of the other shows, and I lost no time in acquiring a decent tent.  The pop-up tent we borrowed to camp in the Netherlands after the Toy Theatre festival was really only suitable for one, as my husband Tim and I were constantly sliding into the sides of the tent, thus letting the water in, plus there being virtually no ventilation if it was raining and you closed the window flap!  The one I’ve ordered is a 3 man tent, (and as such is suitable for two really) and has a porch to put shoes and other stuff that you don’t want in your sleeping area.

The venue is only an hours drive from where we live, but it will be fun to camp and to check out what other people are doing.

I also have some lovely photo’s taken at the Bay primary school workshop in Bridlington, and their teacher has promised me photos of the finished puppets that they’ve been working on soon!