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ELF's BLOG 8, 'Exploring New Vistas',
April 2008 We Weirdigans scattered throughout the UK and Europe for the winter. Studying, making music, working with homeless folk, travelling, cooking up a storm, selling sparkly things at fleamarkets, catching up on sleep and friends, reading escapist novels; and preparing for another festival season... Smiley D and I had a great adventure driving through France and Spain to Portugal, with Kipper-the-Travelling-Cat. Loved the hilly North, the sleepy rural backwaters of the Alentejo, the misty mountains of Monchique, the bubbly little green hills that could be home to Hobbits, and the bustling South with its beaches and markets. Kipper adjusted to a nomadic European lifestyle with feline grace and ease. Our mate Ali (the Metal Man) made her a catflap in the van door. We were self-contained and independent in our van, lived cheaply, found opportunities to do tea and tat stalls, helped Ali build his roof, even managed to fit in a Portuguese Green Gathering and quite wanted to stay forever. Suddenly, though, it's Spring and time to start all over again - getting vehicles and tents ready, confirming gigs, booking crew, sourcing supplies. We're hoping to do a few new events this year – check out the Calendar page for details. Imogen and Kristen will be back, hopefully Stevie too for a couple of gigs, plus we'll have some lovely new crew members. We're all hoping for less mud this year. More sunshine, more cake, more fantastic festivals. Touch wood and see you in green fields in Summertime :-) ELF's BLOG 7, 'Riding High', October 2007 Tying up the loose ends of a fantastic season and already looking forwards to the next. This year there's been more of everything than ever before - learning, trying, testing, growing, consolidating, sleep deprivation, joy, success and mishaps. More cakes, more campfires, more happy customers. 3 new crew members – Imogen, Kristen and Stevie – found us via this website and travelled with us for the whole summer. They were absolute angels throughout all the exhaustion and exhilaration of the season, and rose to the challenge of surviving the muddiest festivals imaginable. We worked double-overtime when one of the core Weirdigans had to drop out due to illness. We had two tyre blow-outs on motorways, a burnt out clutch and a broken ankle to hobble us, but we kept on making tea and cake and having a ball. We tried out some new festivals and wove ourselves deeper into the fabric of our old favourites. We're still interested in exploring new events, incarnations and collaborations. This year we linked up with Dougal to run a solar cinema in our lovely new Bedouin tent at the Northern Green, lit the replica iron-age longhouse at Knockengorroch with our solar-powered LEDs, and hosted late night music sessions and impromptu performances at several gigs. Plus we were on telly when 'Fern and Holly go dating' descended on us at the BGG (not sure that's a great claim to fame actually...). Dave and I spent the last few weeks sorting out our van, making it into a proper living vehicle with stove, sink, shelves and twinkly lights. After a summer of sleeping on top of tents, ropes and all the rest of the cafe tat, it's really exciting to have our own space, even if it's only wee. We managed to kit it out on a tiny budget after rummaging through various tips, skips, cellars, garages, barns, unlit bonfires, roadsides and rubbish heaps. With some welding help from our mate Pete at Mad Monks music shop, and the hospitality of Wierdstring James who let us stay in his caravan and use his tools, we got the job done beautifully. Winter is going to be grand. ELF's BLOG 6, 'Growing Up A Bit', April 2007 Until recently Weirdigans had managed to live on a shoestring. We're very good at reclaiming, reusing, salvaging, scrounging, borrowing, blagging and doing without... but Health & Safety and vehicle licensing regulations are being heavily ramped up and this winter we've had to spend a lot of energy and cash on making sure we comply. Plus there were a few things we really wanted to do to make things run more smoothly and sweetly for crew and customers. So we've been gathering, building and buying new and exciting stuff. We've bought two vans – one to live in and one to carry all the kitchen equipment. We're going to be supplementing our solar panels with wind-power so we can survive non-sunny festivals. We've built a new kitchen – a Medieval-style green and white striped octagonal tent - from reclaimed canvas (a marquee hire firm was going out of business). This tent can also be used alone as a take-away cafe for one-day events or can be set up as an organic cafe-bar at private parties. And we've bought a second-hand Bedouin-style tent too, which will eventually replace our antique army tent when that has to be retired. In the meantime the new tent can be used as a luxurious annexe to the cafe, providing more space for musicians for example, or we can hire it out in it's own right for weddings, parties etc (see 'special tents for special events' or contact us for more info). Having spent every scrap of savings on the cafe, we're moving out of our housing co-op to become nomads. The commitment's made – we can't afford the rent anymore so the Weirdigan circus is hitting the road full-time! Some of the regular Weirdies have moved on to fresh adventures so we've been recruiting new crew members. An ad on this website brought a totally unexpected deluge of applications and we've been meeting lots of lovely wannabe Weirdigans and trying to work out who will fit in where and when. Sorry to those we haven't a place for at the moment. Keep in touch. Scary stuff: we've just registered as a Workers Co-operative and Company 'limited by guarantee'. I'd been dragging my heels over doing this, but Weirdigans has become too complicated to run as a self-employed one-woman-band, so the plunge has been taken. We now officially exist and will soon have a Weirdigans chequebook from the Co-op Bank! We're still not making the cafe itself any bigger, we're sticking to our simple menu of drinks, home-made cakes, salads, sandwiches and toast, and you'll still be reclining on Weirdigans lounge floor on a patchwork of rugs. We may add a few fluffy cushions and some new hot chocolate flavours, but we're not fundamentally changing. We love the cosy intimacy and hotch-potch homeliness of Weirdigans and there's no way we want to lose that... even though it means we'll probably never turn over any profit :-) So, we've grown up a bit, but we're still full of enthusiasm and you'll easily recognise us in the festie fields this summer. Thanks to our mums for contributions of towels and tea-towels, to Roly for helping us make the new kitchen tent, to the new folks for joining the circus, to you who performed, made tea, dressed up and danced at the Mad Hatters party, and to everyone who's helped us and been lovely this winter... ELF's BLOG 5, 'Learning Curves', Oct 2006 It’s been a rollercoaster. The craziest season yet, all bundled into a summer snowball of intensely hard work, fabulous feedback, blazing sun, torrential rain, gorgeous festivals, van breakdowns, relationship ups and downs, great customers…and finally, a little bit of cash to reward us for the hundreds of unpaid hours we’ve worked over the last few years. That’s not to say anyone’s getting rich, just that we can have a bit of time off now rather than having to scramble straight into fulltime work to pay off debts built up over the summer. Ah, relax…bliss! Being solar-powered felt great. Dave’s shiny LED teapot was much-loved ("We used it to guide us home every night, thanks so much!" said a Glade customer). We’d like to add a wind turbine too for the dull days and are hoping to raise money for that at the 2nd Mad Hatters Party in March. We’re also hoping to have our own van next year, rather than having to beg, borrow, scrounge and hire vans as we have until now. And we need to buy a new tent to replace the ancient 70’s house tent we’ve been using as a kitchen - this year it had to be covered with a patchwork of flapping tarps because it had gaping holes as big as baby elephants in the back. Mending, making, fixing, working things out, experimenting and inventing…we’re already making lists of things we need to do over the winter. We don’t really want to make Weirdigans bigger so we’re going to concentrate on making it more eco, more cosy and beautiful, more fun for the much-appreciated workers (including ourselves!) and better service for our lovely customers. A couple of long-standing Weirdies are off to seek greener grass, so we're going to need a few more workers. Please get in touch if you'd like to work with us at festivals in 2007! Enormous Love and Abundant Thanks to all who helped us out this year and to our ‘regulars’ for being part of the Weirdie spirit. Loud Cheers to the Wierdstring Band for being so entertaining. See you all in Spring if not before…X ELF's BLOG 4, 'Gearing Up', May 2006 Winter has passed in a blur. We repaired the cafe tent, experimented with recipes, painted menu boards, improved the website, searched for organic suppliers around the country, put together applications for festivals...kept the wolf from the door with odd jobs...and now, already, Summer is sneaking up on us. We've had our fundraising Season Launch Party - 'Mad Hatters & April Fools' - and we've done our first gig - Beltane in North Yorkshire (see 'Reviews'). We have the money to buy solar panels to power our ever-more-beautiful 12-volt LED lights & our slowly-growing eclectic CD collection. We're very happy about going solar. We wanted to do it from the start and now it's really really going to happen. We've also splashed out on a brand new shiny oven and a portable fridge. How we've managed for 2 years without such basic kitchen items is a mystery and testament to our make-do ingenuity. This year we're going to need them because we have a couple of gigs where we'll be the sole caterers for a few hundred people. Yikes. Huge Thanks to Liz who gave us £100 for no reason at all and enabled us to buy the fridge. Roles and responsibilities amongst the Weirdigans have begun to settle down now (in an organic and flexible fashion, naturally). Excitingly we're beginning to be 'head-hunted' by smaller gatherings and festivals who want a cosy, eco cafe serving food cooked with love and organic ingredients. Our reputation is building and we've had great feedback from customers and festival organisers (see 'Comments'). We've got more gigs this year than ever before, we're going to be solidly on the road for weeks on end, everyone we know has been drafted in to work a festie or two... If we can just make enough money from it to support ourselves we'll be over the moon. Before we dive in to our most full-on, challenging season yet: cross fingers and humbly request from the Universe that our vehicles remain robust; that we all stay healthy; that the weather is good (particularly for setting up and even more so for packing down); that customers flow through our tent; that all our equipment works well; that the cakes rise and don't burn; and that 2006 is a thoroughly thoroughly enjoyable year. See you in the Weirdigans tent at a festival near you very soon!
Wow, what a season! Halfway through the summer we belatedly realised that we'd got ourselves a full time job here. All plans & ideas not involving Weirdigans had to be jettisoned along with anything resembling a normal sleep pattern. The gig offers rolled in, our horizons expanded, the Weirdigans' dream began to seriously shape up. Luck, hard graft, creative thinking & helpful mates kept us trundling from gig to gig despite hiccups involving transport (our van died), lack of storage space (thanks to Zion for putting up with our tat & to Mike for finding us a garage) & other minor crises. A host of fantastic festivals, a couple of weddings, the odd private party; Weirdigans rose to each occasion & we all had an utterly amazing, exhausting, exhilarating time. Meanwhile, we have somehow managed to squeeze a few significant personal events into the summer. Em-Elf & Dave B got married in June, Em A decided to leave Weirdigans to concentrate on her new life & Duncan got himself a lovely new girlfriend. We can hardly wait for 2006. We're working on lots of new ideas: an expanded festival menu; solar-power for our 12-volt LED lights & mini sound system; further collaboration with a talented bunch of acoustic musicians & more... But we're also aware of the need to consolidate. We don't want to get too big for our boots, we're not gonna try to run until we've got walking licked. We know, from the wonderfully positive feedback we receive (see 'Comments' page) that our customers like the fact that we're a small, intimate, friendly, quirky, hotch-potch outfit. Don't worry, we're not gonna go changing that! Huge Thanks to those we drove like slaves this summer: Alex (washer-upper extraordinaire); Lucy (for adding a dash of glamour); Tim (cheers for all the presents!); Hippy Andy (who worked even in the midst of writing his M.Phil dissertation); Mike (self-styled 'Grandfather of Weirdigans'); Gillie (threw herself into it even though she hardly knew us); Tall Blond Dave (for being tall & blond); Dave (who used to be Boaty but is now Bikey); Brian (Jesus in a Jumper); The Bear (for driving & being very strong)... Thanks too to all those who helped out during financial, staffing or other crises: Rob G, blond Dave, Tim & Lo (for trusting us with your money - & look, we paid it all back!); Gordon (drove us to Glade even though he couldn't go home 1st due to a bomb scare); Hilary, Mabe, Josh, Fern, Stuart, Christina, Rob B & Hebden Andy (part-time slackers! - we love you); our Mums (for donations of cooking equipment, trestle tables, tea-towels etc...); all at Zion Housing Co-op (thanks for letting us hog the oven & for eating the cakes that didn't quite rise); everyone I've forgotten - sorry! we love you too.
Em A: spent the winter finding a lovely new life: new man, new home in a small North Yorkshire village, new job on an organic farm. All this good new stuff is taking up a large chunk of the time that she used to plough into Weirdigans, so Em won't be going to as many festivals this year. The other Weirdies will miss her and will just have to make sure that she works & plays twice as hard when she does get her festie boots on... ::: Cheers Em, for all the hard graft & silly sensational fun of last year - we'd never have got this far without you! ::: Duncan: spent most of the winter living in a shed on a building site near London, helping a friend redesign his (the friend's) house. This involved pretty much knocking it down & starting from scratch. The project continues, but Dunc has moved North & is now busy baking cakes... Em F (Elf): spent part of the winter working & playing in Thailand, visiting her family there and walking around Koh Phangan on little-used jungle trails & coastal paths with Dave B. Dave B: the newest member of the Weirdigans' crew, Dave helped to found the Zion Housing Co-op and instigated Hebden's quirky Crickstock festival. Then he fell in love with Elf and asked her to marry him...
In the Beginning there was The Bean. The Bean was small and round. It was a geodesic dome made of hazel poles and second-hand tarps, and inside there was a full fresh pot of coffee, day and night. The Coffee Bean made its first appearance at a Treesponsibility benefit party in 2002. As wind & rain lashed down, the dome filled to bursting point with Yorkshire tree-planters drinking steaming mugs of coffee and tea. The customers had to sit on top of each other, but we took that as a sign of success. Later that summer, the expanded Coffee Bean - comprising a 70's orange house tent ingeniously tacked onto the original dome - became the VIP chill-out lounge at a two-day outdoor party in Lancashire. 2003 saw The Bean at Crickstock, a cricket/music fusion festival (?!) in Hebden Bridge, the 'Glastonbury of the North'. More quirky Northern events followed. By the end of that year, the house-tent/dome combo could no longer hold the masses flocking to our coffee-pot, and the menu had grown. It was time to shed the chrysalis and emerge as - what? "We need a tent & a new name & loads more tat & a van to carry the tat and the tent in". The tent, van and tat were swiftly bought, begged, borrowed and blagged. The name was coined by our old college friend Rachel - "You lot are weirdigans, you are". And so Weirdigans Travelling Café was born. Infrastructure and name in place, Weirdigans'
purpose and ethos was easily pinned down. We wanted to run our café
the way we run our lives; we wanted to create the kind of place that we'd
be happy spending lots of time in ourselves: Weirdigans had its 2004 debut at a folk festival in Cumbria in the Spring. Em A, Em F (aka Elf) and Dunc - the core crew at the time - cooked up big pans of hearty campfire fodder. Stews, veggie chilli and curries with home-made cakes to follow and twenty-four-hour teas, chai, coffee and cocoa. As we packed up on the Monday morning we were booked for 2005. From there the gigs got bigger, better and more varied. After Crickstock '04, where we fed the crew as well as the punters, we ventured South. The Glade, in July, near Reading, was the highlight of our year. A new festie; we weren't quite sure what to expect. Any expectations we did have were exceeded. The location was idyllic, the site was spacious yet cosy, the atmosphere was fantastic, and the feedback we received assured us that we were doing everything right (see Comments page). In September, as the festie season drew to a close, Weirdigans branched out into an oak grove where we catered for Giles and Natalie's Handfasting Ceremony. Our biggest challenge yet, we pulled off feeding over 180 people in one sitting as well as baking and decorating the wedding cake and, as always, serving drinks all night. Again, the feedback we received was extremely good. Roll on 2005... Credits: 'The Coffee Bean' - name & concept
collaborated on by Mike P.
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