WEIRD WEEKEND SCRAPBOOK: Marquee Moon

The Weird Weekend is great fun but the one thing I don’t look forward to is putting up the marquee each year. We have two marquees - a new one and an old one. Neither have instructions so it’s like putting together a three dimensional giant jigsaw designed by the makers of the sadistic Japanese game show ‘Endurance’. The older marquee is held together by bits of gaffer tape and string. It took Graham, Oll and myself till 11 at night to get the bloody thing up.

The garden part is a nice evening to catch up with folks you haven’t seen in a while. Luminaries such as Dr Dan Holdsworth, Glen Vaudrey and Perry of the 4-teans were all there. For me the nicest part of the evening was catching up with the former landlord of the Farmers Arms Alan Lindsey and his lovely wife Jenny. I’d not seen them in over a year after they moved to the sunnier climes of exotic Bideford.

I well remember the first time we had a piñata a few years ago. It was in the shape of a dragon and just about as though as a real one. It shattered all sticks used on it including Jon’s walking stick. In the end Dave had to hack it apart with a garden spade. This year’s piñata, in the shape of an Apatosaurus caved in after one tap from a tiny girl! Mind you it had been in storage for 12 months.