Blundeston 1978

Blunderston. Properly spelled without the letter R. A village fete is what it was really. A fete decked out as a medieval faire, with the local experts (us) invited to participate. Held on the school field. The regularly mowed school field. That was strange, none of the odd contours, patches of thistles or hawthorn or boggy areas to work with or around. In fact as sites go it was rather characterless. That wasn't a problem, the trouble was is it was organized by the people whose response to the theme was to go out and hire proper royal courtier style costumes and to organize a (paying guests only) spit roast type feast for a finale. Not a mindset that gelled well with the rough and ready approach of the Barsham types.

The day bumbled along okay, children entertained, adults diverted, but no spark. Came the evening and left to perform were Ian Hinchliffe and Roger Ely, performance poets the pair of them. Faced with an utterly inappropriate audience, of local worthies in period gear, Roger Ely did what any crazy poet would do, carried on regardless. His perverse and scatalogical rants were so out of line with the place and audience that Ian Hinchliffe felt it necessary to take protective action. Ian, normally as in yer face as the angriest wordsmith, tried to distract the audience with daft antics, while Roger continued to make verse of his attempts to masturbate the cat and other incidents of his lost low life. Finally he had sense to stop and we all scarpered before a medieval lynching took place.