Paddy Fletcher of Incubus Theatre

The Fairs?
It's difficult to know what to say about 'the Fairs', mostly because ones faculties are so wrecked for the majority of time one spends at them. There's something complacent about them, but that complacency helped initially to force INCUBUS into discovering characters like The Beggar, Mistress Crabbyquim, Black Bart, etc, up to Psycho the Clown and the Goblins. And of course there's something extremely tolerant and even self-critical about them, which allows the above characters to go around insulting everybody.
Is this coherent so far?
Probably not, but then 'The Fairs' never are. A mixture of good and bad, giving rise to a love-hate relationship, the best kind of relationship anyway. Lets get specific:

LOVE: All the Barshams we went to, even the last one when it pissed down, which was probably the best of all.
HATE: The ones we went to which merged with more established institutions; i.e. riding on the dodgems with a gutful of brown rice.
LOVE: Arriving and leaving.
HATE: The bogs.
LOVE: The tent next to mine which always organises a bonfire, late at night.
HATE: The ice-cream vans, the people who sell fags for 1.50 a packet and the site dealer who you can never find when you want him.
LOVE: A lot of friends made over the years.
HATE: People who turn up and spend the whole time moaning, (apart from other performers, who have a right to moan, being artists and therefore more sensitive than ordinary people.)
LOVE: Having a moan with another artist (or even ordinary people come to that).
HATE: Plastic glasses.
LOVE: Remembering to collect the deposit on a real `glass' glass.
HATE: 'Theme' fairs, because nobody ever bothers to stick to the theme, so why bother?
LOVE.: The hilarious attempts made by performers to relate their acts to the 'theme'.
HATE: The readiness of audiences to accept any old crap, even though that's helped us out on a couple of bum nights.
LOVE: Too many more to mention and that goes for the hates too, but all in all:
NO CONTEST.
And here's to next year (without plastic glasses)
love,
Paddy.