Another go at fringing

Ticked another box with this fringing effort. The Festival of Spirituality and Peace offered a Japanese Tea Ceremony and this has long been a desire I wanted to fulfill.  The ceremony began with a young Japanese piper in a very fetching blue plaid kilt playing traditional Japanese tunes he'd arranged for the pipes. Different, but in a good way.

Then the beautiful gracious ladies began the tea ceremony. Sadly it was all too disturbed by tourists wandering in and photographing it and other comings and goings to be the relaxing event it is designed to be.

The audience all tasted the tea - not bad and sampled some other Japanese teas - very good, but we weren't told what they were.

I treated myself to Persian thick soup in a temporary Persian Tea house set up for the Festival. It smelt of unspeakable things, but they were so proud of their homemade food, it would have been heartless to leave it untouched. I bravely tried a spoonful. It was awful; not as bad as it smelt, but deeply unpleasant. I forced another mouthful and it got better. I ended up finishing it, but I will avoid it in future. I think it was the whey drizzled on top that was so bad.

Scuttled up the High Street and met a solid block of tourists. It took some doing, but I reached the Hub, to pick up tickets as instructed by Sig Other. More of this another day.

Time then to meet Y and her posse who were sensibly relaxing in the only empty cocktail establishment in town.  I was making up a fourth for the sets of two-for-oners purchased in anticipation of company by the posse.

The first show turned out to be less palatable than the vomit scented soup. Even the hardened fringe-going posse found Cul-De-Sac nasty and not a fit subject for comedy. Posse J thought it was akin to 1984 done in an hour. I was perturbed by the explicit bullying of one adult male by another about his experience of childhood sexual abuse. I have no problem with lines being crossed but this needed a trigger warning for any survivors in the audience who would have struggled with it.

This is a pity as the actors were fine, sets, props and direction good.

There was a quick turnaround and into Isy Suttie: Pearl and Dave. Pleasant Pleasance comedy. Soothing after our feathers were so collectively ruffled.