Saturday, August 04, 2007

9 Days To Go...


It has been a busy couple of days with a few surprises along the way as the dawning of my "Royal Progress" comes ever closer. Yesterday (Friday) I had to meet local journalist Martha, who was doing a profile of me for the local freebie paper "This is Crewkerne". We met at Bilby's Coffee House in the High Street and she interviewed me for about 45 minutes in which time I managed to plug the tour mercillessly. My friend Pete Flanagan turned up halfway through, suddenly realised it was an interview and left again! When we had finished I then wandered down to Footprintz Print Shop to see how much 50 copies of my tour poster in A3 would cost. If I wanted to have the poster done with the red Tudor roses left on it would be £40 for the 50 prints. For black and white - £10. No contest for this tight fisted Tudor King. I went home and emailed the original artwork from my sister through to Footprintz. Later in the afternoon I went back into Crewkerne and to the print shop - and they had forgotten who I was already and had forgotten to check for any emails. The Boss quickly promised to get them printed very quickly, so I wandered off down the High Street to Woolworths to get some marker pens. On my return to the print shop I was delighted to find the prints finished - but he had done them in colour. I pointed this out and with an air of resignation he agreed to let me have them for £10. What a nice man! He obviously knows not to trifle with a King. When I got home I was just in time to do another interview about the tour, this time with Chris Sweet from the Western Gazette. More publicity.
Later, much later, about 10.30pm to be precise - the phone rings. Now when I get a call at that time of night I usually assume it is either a friend has kicked the bucket or something else equally horrible has happened. It was neither. It was the splendidly eccentric Blackwolf Dragonmaster from New York City, a dear friend of mine over the internet and talking to me personally for the first time. He explained he was in the middle of organising the New York Renaissance Fayre and would normally be bothering Raaaay Irving from Lancashire, but he was hiding somewhere in Spain at the moment, so it was my turn. We had a nice little chat about my tour and his Fayre, but I was more than half way through a very decent bottle of red wine, so please if you are reading this Blackwolf, please forgive my slightly shell shocked reaction to your call.
Today, my wife, son and I have been touring round the area plastering up the first few posters for the Seavington show on the 13th August. More grist to the mill I hope.
The photo on this page was taken by the station manager of Ivel FM Radio Station in Yeovil at the recent Medieval Banquet for the local Lions Club. The lady in the photo always dresses like that. Apparently.

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