ARTY FARTY

Saturday was Dorchester's famous performing arts festival . Cafe C was one of the featured venues for the days proceedings.

Things were not looking good as I fought my way thru the evil smelling crowds to start work at Cafe C. A depressed looking 'poet' was declaiming his tortured verse from the main stage by the town pump , the rabble of disgruntled peasants in front of the stage were looking restive and I feared a lynching.

Incidentally the main stage was almost billed as the Cafe C Stage , but following diva like demands by the arts council and a hissy fit over the sound system(Which Cafe C was going to provide) , Mr C had a tantrum and withdrew his patronage (and sound system) .

Anyway we had a day of being entertained by a string of performers on the stage in Cafe C itself .

First up was a girl with big blond whirly Princess Leah ear hair , and a voice that could strip paint , she bought a whole new meaning to the phrase 'off key' .Had she performed like this 200 years ago , the woman would have been dragged from Cafe C and burnt at the stake in the town square......

This was followed by a very good folk duo .~Then , a couple of acts I missed entirely as I was up to my armpits in salad leaves , steaming paninis and dirty crockery and finished with an excellent classical guitar player , who stoically sat and played his 45 minute set altho all the punters had buggered off to the beach as it was a beautiful hot afternoon .

After all this excitement we had a couple of hours to prep up and prepare Cafe C for the infamous Rubber Duck Nite .

One thing that made me laugh was the young Kitchen assistant John was all agog because he had never seen a drag artiste before.He was peering out of a crack in the kitchen door to get a good look while the act was having a drink before taking to the stage

Picture the scene . Mr C was sitting chatting at a table with a couple of blokes , a couple of middle aged women and a burly man in a sparkly dress , 9 inch stiletto's and a two foot platinum beehive . John studied this tableau studiously for about 5 minutes and then said to me

'Which one is it then ???? '.......honestly , you have to worry about the youth of today !.

The rest of the evening went past in a blur of drizzled salad dressing and piles of washing up , punctuated for me only by the arrival of Frobisher and his entourage as they majestically swept into the Cafe and got torn to shreds by the acid tongued drag act , and a drunken Mr C stumbling about toward the end giggling merrily to himself and falling over the furniture.

Holiday Monday we debated wether it was worth opening the Cafe , and eventually decided we would , which , as it happens was the right decision as it was so busy we managed to completely sell out of food.....

All told it was a tiring but enjoyable weekend , what did you all get up to ???