Food Festival Work

I sat down just a moment ago to check something before starting the blog, and seem to have lost a few hours. Recently, specifically since the BBC Good Food Show, this has been happening more. You stare idly at a fixed point in the middle distance, brain cruising on stand-by and the world revolving quite happily without you. Then the car in front turns off unexpectedly.

Food festival work was our entire life last week, from Tuesday when we dropped the van off pretty much continuously, with breaks for dreaming about toastie-making once every 16 hours. It being our business the work is not nearly as long or as hard as it would feel working into someone else’s pocket, but that doesn’t stop it being a drain on resources that were already not terribly well stocked. I’m drifting along at the moment, wondering why everyone else is in such a rush and when I can next take a little nap.

Working at one of these enormous events is like moving into another world for a few days. You pack the van, say goodbye to the life as you know it and journey into a little bubble where different rules apply. The universe is condensed down further into the space directly around your pitch, giving you just one view of an event that holds 90000 people and hundreds of things to see. In some ways it’s relaxing. Once the food was covered and the forecast for rain was outside that all-important lunchtime sitting the days flew by. We had a collection of lovely regulars, who got themselves daily toasties and stopped for chats about the area beyond the hatch, where all sorts of things were going on – all mysteriously involving small things.

And now, number one, the Larch. The Larch.

You can follow it on twitter. Seriously. @theplantvan. Totally exists.

Some slightly bedraggled, thoroughly played with chicks. Must have been a pretty long weekend for them as well. 5pm on Sunday and the kids were still crowded round three deep.

However inside the bubble you are the Jabberwocky, indescribably lovely food van, but more importantly purveyor of toasties this lunch time, right now. The queue must be served, so you find a rhythm and get those toasties out faster than several people expected – thanks very much for mentioning it – you’re welcome.

If you are ever offered the opportunity to work at a festival of any kind then take it. It’s long and tiring, but once you have gone through the physical exhaustion there is a sense of achievement on the other side that really is quite pleasant. Just a side note: On the far side of that there is impotent rage at anything and everything that doesn’t instantly work the way you want it to and spectacular indifference at everything else. So work at the festival, but do everyone a favour and take a few days off afterwards.