There is no point having the longest day unless you fill it to the max with things to do, so yesterday found yours truly decorating a carnival float for the local town festivities. Last years dismal turnout of no floats and 6 entrants in the child's fancy dress show meant that there was a renewed effort to make the carnival a success. Or lose it.
Hence Red Kite putting on a Toy Box themed float, now naturally I cannot show pics of the excited little kiddies that took part, you will have to trust me that there were enough Scooby Doos, Tom and Jerry's, Penguins, Clockwork Ballet Dancers, Robots, Panda's, Mat Poppins, Minnie Mouses and me as a dinosaur riding cowboy to make the float look crowded. I ambled alongside throwing sweets at eager spectators or jumping on members of the crowd lining the street that knew me. The apprentice and rug rat MkII failed to appear due them both going down with lergy, so no pirate or Noddy and my beautiful and oh so patient wife sat at home with them her 101 dalmatian costume put aside for next year.
This was my favourite float complete with squashed hedgehog on the tracks.
We followed the band to the parade ground and
after a bit of judging the tank came first even though it was last, so to speak.
I thought work was over, so did George the dinosaur so he headed over to a food vendor for a Indian flat bread stuffed with dead chicken. George loved it but complained when I got gravy on his head.
Actually work wasn't over so after more judging Red Kite got 3rd place! And before any wag comments there were more than three floats.
Show over I got to move house
it was a tight fit but we made it onto the trailer for the ride home.
Where we had a confrontation with idiots on trials bike who tried to convince me they were farmers looking for their sheep. The fact that I didn't but their boo peep antics and asked them not to race through our property did not go down well with them and they resorted to swearing and threatening me as they had been looking for sheep for 30 years and what did I expect farmers to look like in the modern age. I responded by saying that I expected them to be able to tell me why they were playing shepherds, who's sheep they were looking for and where were the sheep anyway. This was all too much for the particularly fat motorised non shepherd who resorted to more foul language and they managed to get past Gerry and continue their riding along the footpath thus breaking several bits of section 58 (I think) of the highways act. Lucky for them their illegal number plates were too small to read otherwise they would have had a visit from the local Police who haver the power to seize nuisance motorbike riders toys.
Once Gerry was unloaded and free from the trailer we set of to the land of the Stable Sprite where I fed and watered his pigs. They were very hot piggies so they all had to be cooled down with a cold hose. This task went without incident save for yours truly accidentally locking himself in the dog kennel and only escaping thanks to an ingeious use of a two inch twig and amazing dexterity of my left hand.
Back at HQ we almost missed the finale, the sunset, so here it is.
The furthest point west the sun sets.
And there it was.
The longest day.
Gone.
