baggage
Time was, when you participated in a Theatre festival there would always be some sort of official present. Inevitably there would be a t-shirt, equally inevitably the wrong size, made of impossibly cheap material and covered in the names of sponsors that you have never heard of, and finished off with some sort of snappy arts related strapline across the chest. Commonly, when you arrive at your venue there will be a row of carrier bags, one for each participant, containing the afforementioned t-shirt and some sort of quirky gift; a mozart kugeln in Vienna, a recycled pencil in Copenhagen, and incomprehensively, a condom in Bogota.In the last year or so, however, things have changed, the message is now the bag- it has become de rigeur for any self respecting festival to produce its own celebratory luggage; weird nylon things in Latin America or over-printed cotton in most of Europe. Last week we were clearing out the store, in preparation for an influx of unusable tat (aka: the new show), and as I was clearing, I was struck by the sheer number of discarded festival bags littering the floor. The prize for most creative goes to the former Eastern Europe, and a festival in Prague: hand sewn and finished with patches of coloured fabric providing a series of mysteriously purposeless pockets. Will this madness never end?
By way of a digression, I took Tim the satnav out for its first European outing this weekend, driving from Zeebrugge to Gelsenkirchen, and he performed admirably, guiding me through three countries without any trauma. The only moment of dissent occurred when I switched it on on the ferry, and it announced; 'turn around when possible', either it had developed cold feet about travelling, or it was still determined that Dover is a nicer ferry port than Hull, I think the jury's out on that one.
posted by Lampy @ 5/06/2008 09:00:00 am
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