ferrousland.com - daily news archives
Sunday, December 30, 2007
busking - 09:16 PM
(filed under 'general')
(entered on my handheld while at the woodford folk festival & uploaded later.)
every day for the past few days, smiley & i have been going to the circadia tent where they have workshops going on for people to learn circus skills. we hadn't been taking part, but just sitting back watching people do their thing.
smiley quite liked watching people use the poi: a pair of balls on the ends of string, chain, or inside a pair of socks (either an actual pair of socks or long sack things made especially for poi) which are swung around in the air, one in each hand, in various configurations that look cool & tricky.
the night before i knew what they were for, i saw a couple of kids playing with a glow poi each. they glow & change colours & looked just like the sort of thing that smiley would like. after seeing the poi in action, i bought smiley a set of the glow poi, not thinking that they'd really be used as poi at all, but rather just enjoyed for the glow.
he did enjoy them for a little while, but it turns out that his passion is really for the diabolo. the modern diabolo looks like two semi-circular cups joined together at the small ends. it's balanced on a string & made to spin as it's moved along the string or thrown up into the air & caught again. it's one of those things that's easy to learn, but takes some practise & skill to master.
smiley really, really, really, really wanted one. for the first few days, i refused to buy him once since i didn't think he was going to get any use out of it, considering that it's kind of tricky to use, but he got a little bit of money from his nanna & poppy for christmas, so i asked him if he'd like to use that to buy a diabolo. it cost more than his money, but i covered the rest.
as we've been walking around the festival village, we've come across quite a few kids busking with puppets, flutes, diabolos, drums, whatever. smiley has enjoyed putting a coin or two into their hats & has even wanted to seek out more buskers purely for the sake of giving them some money. he decided that when he got his diabolo, he was going to busk with it.
we went to a sort of park area where i thought maybe i could give it a go & then teach smiley how to do it, but i couldn't even get the thing spinning! lol! 
i took smiley out anyway & used my accumulated knowledge of people, instead, to set him up in the right place & coach him on where & how to stand to attract some coin droppers.
he did amazingly well. after our second, much better position, smiley earned himself almost $18 in around half an hour. his diabolo skills are almost zero, but the cuteness factor goes a long, long way. some people were even dropping $2 coins into his hat!
i sat a few feet behind him to make sure he was okay & that he said a loud 'thank you!' to everyone who gave him some money. i also taught him to call out in a loud voice, if no one was stopping to watch, 'who wants to see my diabolo trick?!'
the information about the festival actually states that busking isn't allowed since there are street performers wandering around, but i haven't yet seen anyone told to move on. mind you, i've seen mostly kids busking so far, so maybe the organisers are happy to turn a blind eye for the kids who are enterprising enough to give it a go.
smiley decided to spend some of his busking money on a tin whistle. he gave that a go with some more busking, but it wasn't as successful, & he's mostly stuck with the diabolo. he also bought a snow cone with his earnings.
i've budgeted for only one bought meal per day in the village, but smiley wanted to continue busking instead of returning to the tent for our food, so i made a deal with him that if he earned some money busking, then we could stay there to buy our meals instead of going back to the tent. i thought it was a fair call that he got to at least choose the food. it also pretty much covered the rest of the cost of the diabolo that was over & above his christmas money.
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