Festival and farmers’ market on World Cup weekend

A little more on the festival weekend. Every Saturday morning there is an excellent Farmers’ Market in Courtenay/Comox, conveniently placed right next door to the festival. So the minute we’d staked our tarp we marched ourselves over there to see what was on offer. There was a looong line snaking towards one of the several bakery stalls and I later heard it was all about the cinnamon buns. But I went elsewhere, and bought some incredibly good cheese bread, a fantastic pumpkin muffin and some durable vegetables for snacking on, including peas in the shell and cauliflower florets. This morning I came upon a clipping that’s been floating around my office for a while that says certain vegetables, particularly broccoli and cauliflower, are naturally abundant in the compound sulforaphane (SFN) which is believed to reduce the risk of developing hereditary cancers.

Back at the site, I was greatly amused by Todd Butler who hosted a Sunday morning workshop. Acknowledging they were up against the gospel hour on the big stage he said, thank God for atheists or we’d have no audience… Paul Reddick’s concert was well attended by a well baked Sunday afternoon crowd. One of them in a mellow stupour in front of me piped up at the end of Villanelle. Hey, he said, did you write that one? Yes I did, said Paul. Man, that was beautiful, said the listener… Sunday afternoon in the barn was hot in oh so many ways when the giant talents of the Campbell Brothers shook the pigeons loose from the rafters. As this musical mayhem was immediately followed by epic and ecstatic helpings of Los Rastrillos, the birds didn’t get much rest till much later… Crankiest moment of the festival came courtesy Jamaica-based Anglo-German punker Ari Up who dropped out of her scheduled workshop to feature herself in another and then tried to run overtime, and when that didn’t work she — um… the polite word is remonstrated I think, although her arguments appeared to have far fewer syllables than that — with the beleaguered organizers. I suspect she’s not getting a repeat invitation. Even if her mom did marry Johnny Rotten. (Well ya didn’t see Peter Yarrow‘s daughter or Joe Fafard‘s son behave that way. )

Charlotte and I slipped away midday to cheer with the Italians and weep with the French in the air conditioned comfort of the bar at the local golf club. It was harder than it should have been to find ourselves a World Cup venue (shockingly, we were two of only six footie supporters in the pub) and near impossible to find an authoritative start time for the match: there was not a newspaper in sight and I must have asked at least a dozen people at the festival (including the Information booth, the First Aid booth and a pair of homesick Ozzies working the Mediterranean BBQ kiosk) before a man at the Security booth said he’d heard from a dedicated soccer fan that the start time was 11:00 (PST). Cut no ice with the bartender who had looked it up and decided it started at noon, so we missed the first 21 minutes before he got around to switching it on. And of course with two goals in the first 19 minutes, that was tragically poor timing. Since it all ended I’m tapering off by checking at intervals for breaking news of What Materazzi Said To Zidane To Make Him Do It.