Minstrlmummr's Parade

"My" subway platform was, on my arrival, occupied by a highly resonant  Kenny  G  wannabe  with  a soprano sax and a cranked boom box.    He played some of the most aggressive "smooth jazz" I've heard in a long time   =80

I murmured a quick prayer for the passengers' ears and moved on.     One side effect of using a car is that my Metrocard is now a pay-by-trip rather than unlimited, so I sometimes zigzag downtown and uptown to change trains on the same fare (the other fare cash is turned into gasoline).     By a circuitous route, I found myself on the unoccupied  "A" train platform at Penn Station.      The busier stations are not my favorite during the week  because of the number of trains.     There's a bit of a formula to platform selection involving the  tunnel acoustics, the highest volume your act generates, and how many trains come through, how often (indicates the size of your audience but also how much of their attention you'll be able to command).       Frankly,  Soprano-Sax Boy would have had no problem playing right through the four trains which were sometimes in the station.   

However.

Soprano-Sax Boy was nowhere to be found when a young lady approached me and identified herself as an intern for a local daily free paper.       They were doing a piece on subway buskers and would I mind being interviewed / recorded?      (So there, Soprano-Sax Boy!)   I gave her my card in case I actually make the cut this time  (If she finds a B-boy dance group or something like that, I am of course out of luck, but...).     I worked hard for a little over an hour, then...my body urgently commanded my attention.   This doesn't happen to me very often, but this time I had to close down my show and  hie me unto the facilities.    (I knocked over someone's suitcase in my tearing haste.   sigh).     While  I was there, I  slowly became aware that there was some sort of altercation going on  somewhere in the vast  porcelain labyrinth between me and the door.    An altercation involving angry shouting (demands of "I  WANT MY  M$#!*&^$ING MONEY!!!!!") and the announcement "There's a police officer coming in!!"     I deemed it prudent to remain right where the hell I was until it became niiiiiiiice and quiet again out there.       

So here's my question:    If my being nudged out of my profitable platform (where the passengers know me and like me) into a place where there was an intern with a notepad  was Divine Providence,    what the  f%$#  was that other $#!t ? 

If I ever hear from the intern, I'll keep y'all posted...

BTW, apologies to woodwindy  --  my clothes for Investiture won't be new like I once planned.     I will, however, be wearing clothes    8)     8)

Governor's Island, even with a steady sea breeze, was hot today.    The three of us were among the first ones there, and setup hummed along nicely.      There was a problem when we were told the field where they permitted us to set up did not in fact belong to NYC Parks or whoever but was Federal land, and so we moved and they helped.     Modern art was all over the place, including three life-size  metal rocking horses, and a wheeled sculpture with four manual scooters which played a piece of classical music when spun.    Art-festival denizens contain people whose interests overlap with many SCAdians (also Burning Man denizens), and the Chatelaine said it might be useful to look for other such festivals in the city.     There were fiber geeks and fencers and stone carvers and glass blowers / glasswork exhibitors (see below) and weapons collectors and "heavy" weapon fighters and mummers  ( *HI* ::::::waves::::::).    We were too close to the amplified music to make audible SCA - demo music.     We had a much larger crowd than the organizers expected (we were told that by the later hours, they were turning people away at the ferry because they were at maximum capacity for the return trips before 5 pm. (last ferry).   I had lots of customers to try on the masks, and (a first) lots of requests to take pictures of people wearing masks.    I got to see how several cameras worked but I behaved and returned them all afterwards.     My reputation as a low criminal entertainer-type is in tatters   8)
 
The other Big Problem of the day was that the glass blowers had been told they were permitted to practice said craft today, which necessitates a blowtorch flame.     Equipment was rented and hauled on-site.    Site management refused to permit flame of any kind -- not nowhere, not no how.   Glassblowing demo became finished - glasswork exhibit.    Cut to shot of frustrated glassblower stating, "If I'd known there was a problem, I could have done music."    Several serious discussions took place, hopefully all is improving.

The site is lovely, and the Feds who turfed us out wanted and received our contact info for future reference (apparently one of the rangers has been to Pennsic, or at least knows about it).    

Tear-down had to start at 3 pm, and we got packed in time for the 4 o'clock ferry.     Early supper followed.

Payday comes but once every fourteen days, and on that day I eat out.    Today I treated my Inner Anglophile.

The day started, dressed for the rain (complete with a London Fog coat and a bumbershoot) trekking to Brooklyn for da paycheck.     The gray sky and chilly rain were what a Brit friend often described as "typical English weather".     (He wasn't mine, but he was my friend and he looked and sounded divine.     The one sketch I've drawn which I'm proud enough to display (on my bathroom wall...well, there was already a nail there...) is based on a photo of him.)    

Late lunch (a fried sole fillet) was obtained from a Village chip shop called A Salt and Batterie.    They do not use actual newsprint to blot the oil, but the battered taste is completely perfect.    (They sell all manner of dreadfully unhealthy fried matter, including Mars Bars)     I'd planned to have a "cream tea" for dessert at Tea and Sympathy, a tea shop two doors away owned (I think) by the same people as the chip shop and predating it.     The clotted cream I've had there is surrounded by roses in my memory and it's been more than a few years since I've tasted it.    The shop was packed.     It appears to be so habitually packed that the tiny shop's owners have had to post several rules including "$9.50 minimum purchase per person".      

So I'm on the crosstown bus trying to remember which block of 14th Street contains a Garden of Eden (It's off 5th Ave.).      I'm willing to bet they have scones and berries.     I have tea.     If I have to forgo clotted cream for creme fraiche or something, I'll deal.    Got the scones, got berries, hit dairy case...creme fraiche...glance to the right...what's this other stuff?     

Oh. 
My.
G-d.

I didn't know they sold clotted cream in jars  8)    8)   8)

Later, after the triglyceride haze wore off, I made myself a nice plate of veggies.      So it all balances out, right?

I couldn't decide whether I wanted to hear "Blackadder II"'s real English accents or  "Merlin"'s mix of real and fake (Sam Neill's from NZ but Miranda Richardson...isn't  8).     I finally popped in "Pirates of the Caribbean:CotBP", settling on Mostly Fake (I have no idea where Orlando Bloom is from, but Geoffrey Rush is an Aussie).

I should be good for another 10,000 miles   8)