31st May - Olympic Procession

David getting into Role before the parade.

31st May 2012, the olympic came through Stafford.  Traffic came to a standstill, the high street lined with people, some of whom waved Union Jacks, many just came for a glimpse of the famous flame.

The idea was for a parade with the theme of "circus", to start the event, and set the stage for the later procession, which would include the olympic flame.

In the rush sophie spilled several thousand sequins

Konnektiv were very excited (well those of us who didn't want to boycott the olympics were very excited), and planned to meet in Castletown at Mervs, to make up as circus or Japanese Fairy Tale characters, and go and join in the parade.

Anthony made a very splendid priest

We had a really good day - but not without it's hiccups!  For a start we arranged to meet far too early.  The sign up time for the parade was 3.30 - 4pm, we met at 1pm.  This gave us a great opportunity to relax and get to know the new members better, however, we got too relaxed, and suddenly it was 3.35 and we hadn't done our makeup!  circus and Japanese Fairy Tale makeup takes some time, and some people hadn't made up their faces before so this was the first time for them!  We rushed as quickly as we could, everyone looked rather splendid, and ran to the bandstand in Victoria Park, missing the beginning of the parade by 2 minutes.

The parade really wasn't very long, and in that 2 minutes, they had completely disappeared round the corner and up by the town centre.  We sped walked, me at the helm, painted in Kabuki style makeup and weilding a bodhran (Irish drum), accompanied by Anthony, a rotund priest character, with stern face paints, flowing black robes and a straw hat.  Race as we did, we never caught up with the procession, and when it sunk in that we had completely missed out some of us were very upset.  Some friends of mine are in a Samba band from Birmingham, and they made the parade, but we didn't.  Pah.

We made our way, rather dejectedly, to the market square, like a gang of Japanese Cinderellas, all dressed up with no ball to go to.  Luckily, David had bought some flyers, and we managed to put some onto a stall, and this is where the events of the occasion took a turn.  David, Kurtis and Meryn got out their juggling balls and diablo, and began to juggle, I joined in, playing the bodhran, and the rest of the group began to give out flyers of the upcoming Gatehouse performance. 

Soon we had attracted quite a crowd.  Later David took center stage with his diablo, and I interacted with the crowd, wondering how high he would be able to toss the diablo and still catch it.  Finally, we all started doing some improvisation - I told everyone to move into a tableau, following the pattern of our performances, but with different images, the tableau changed to the time of 10 drum beats. 

Sometimes I told the group to be led by one member, sometimes by another.  Then I told the group that on the 10th beat they should all look at the sky, then the audience. 

Finally, I told the group to start to interact more directly with the audience, becoming very interested in one persons shirt, and spotting Damon with his camera phone, they became very interested in this.



By the end of this impromptu performance, the spirits of the group had raised considerably, as we did not feel that we had wasted our time coming to town.  In retrospect, this would possibly not have happened if we had made the procession, so it may be a case of good luck that we did miss it!


There were other acts going on in the market square - some fire juggling, hoop spinning and other circus acts.  We watched for a while.  As time went by, our enthusiasm to wait and see the olympic flame (which was more evident in some than others) began to wane, and we felt that we deserved a pint of beer.  We hung around for a bit, but then when we joined in a great cheer, and found that we were cheering for a huge Samsung coach, which was followed by a Lloyds TSB coach and various other multinational super rich corporation advertising, the community spirit diminished completely, and we all trooped off to Joxter Brady's for a well earned drink and bonding session.  All except the very determined Anthony, who waited paitiently for the flame and even got a picture.

All in all it was a good day, juggling skills were shared, we did some guerrilla drama, we looked fabulous and we had a nice pint at the end of it all.