Muncaster Memories, Continued

With the 2010 Festival of Fools at Muncaster Castle rapidly approaching, I'm frantically sewing, packing for both the trip and our move to a new house, and scrambling to get the best deal on our plane tickets. But I must not neglect the completion of the blague accounts from the last time I visited the hallowed haunts. More Muncaster!

Goofing with guests on the third morning of the Festival.

Here's Sadie, our indulgent and too-kind liaison from Muncaster. She'd just been for a walk with me, letting me know the hosts and guests were really enjoying my act. I was tremendously relieved -- being a Fake British Person surrounded by Real British Persons is daunting, but I was glad to know my walkaround was helping people have fun.

Checking the gate.

Huzzah the Family Flip-Flap! I cannot remember their real surname, and I'm not sure I ever actually knew what it was. But I just made Maynard Flip-Flap's family into "the Family Flip-Flap" in my notes, and it makes me happy to think of a family named Flip-Flap. When Maynard introduced us to little 2-year-old Lydia, he swung her up into his arms and said, "She's got a pooey bottom and a poor disposition." Here she's completely clothed, but we'd often see her darting around without trousers, gleefully escaped. And when Maynard was onstage bedecking the new Fool of Muncaster Castle with hat and coat and awards, Lydia seized the opportunity to appear onstage with them, "sans pantalones," as we are fond of saying (mis-matched languages at no extra charge). Mrs. Flip-Flap remarked to Jenny and I at one point, "Do you two perform together? If not, you ought to. I see a double-act here." (If only she could have seen the puppeteering madness with which we'd gotten away years ago. In a way, every adventure Jenny and I have ends up as a double-act, and they always get great notices!)

The stick being wielded as a staff by young Eric Tree-Head here was presented to me as a gift at the end of our visit to Muncaster. It was a serious, weighty, and happy-sad thing, and I have to tell you about it later.

That's all the reminiscence I can afford at the moment -- it's April Fool's Eve, FOOL author Christopher Moore comes to Milwaukee tonight, and there's so much to do!