Archives 2002: First year in mas camp

You would not believe it. Talibah, the Calypso singer who I talked to that fateful day I heard about the Yaa Asantewaa centre, saw me today and commented "Hey whenever I see you son, you've always got a HUGE smile on your face. Keep it up!" and she wasn't wrong I can tell you. This is the best time i have had for fucking ages, living my lifelong ambition of being on a float and taking part in the carnival - it's a shame that for a second I actually put money first. What a fool I've been!

:: Yeah I had been scraping around unhappily for money until then, trying to please everyone but myself. Then it hit me. And the rest of the summer was amazing ::
Today for instance, I spent the first half of the day working upstairs in the theatre with two rastafarian actors who were rehearsing their lines for a play about slavery. I just sat in the background making the Bat wings for the bat costume which I spent 10 hours on yesterday - it looks absolutely amazing! I got out of the centre at 1 yesterday and home at 2:30am!

In the afternoon of today I carried on making the wings but relocated downstairs into the main hall, where I saw the kids doing their summer theatre production "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" yesterday. Today though, they were testing all the sound systems for the float and I think it's safe to say that the verified that they ARE loud! It was an absolutely brilliant atmosphere as the sounds of calypso, soul and rnb thumped out and filled the hall, rattling the rafters and all the people were hard at work but smiliing in the sun. This is the life! And I was worried about money!!!! Ha!
So there you have it, life is a blissful sea of colour and sound, rastafarians, french and spanish all blended in with the smell of incense and weed and puncuated by the sounds of the caribean. Life is good.

Anthony, a workmate from RBS last year, cooked me dinner and I met his wife and their beautiful kids including the newborn girl. It has been a truly great couple of days.
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