WAKING UP

It’s been quite some time now. Two years maybe. Aside from proving beyond all doubt that she has the Constitution of an Ox when it comes to wine, cigarettes, late nights and falling over, and the Mind of a Small Lentil when it comes to things like saving money, getting jobs and not speeding, Bloggiana has been keeping her head down and the One World, One Chutney world has been really rather quiet.

But suddenly today, in our parlour, the Bloggic one has a ghastly rush of blood to the head.

"Festival!"

I Piccalilli am sitting on an open sack of flaked maize next to the Very Expensive Cooker making bunting out of old pages from the Radio Times when the air – a trifle muggy with chicken guano fumes – is rent asunder by this unheralded blurting of the f-word.

"Festival!"

Bloggiana is across the room from me. She has her feet up on the desk (one made from an old Handy Pony obstacle) and she is leaning back in her Sweeny Todd lounge-facility smoking silky butts two to the minute. Every now and again, as her mind roams restlessly over her recent past, the Pony Club Commissioner sighs. Sometimes her sigh pertains to the recent loss of her driving licence; or to the sheer bloody audacity of her latest vet's bill; sometimes she just wails out loud because someone somewhere has mentioned something about profits in the pantyhose department of Marks & Spencer being slightly down and we all know, as Bloggiana trumpets loudly, that there is only one thing that can mean and that is ”that the Entire Western World is Doomed.” Then suddenly out of a clear blue sky, Bloggiana drops her bombshell.

"Nothing for it," she wheezes. “Nothing bloody well for it.”

"Going to have to run a ruddy festival."

The funny thing is, Bloggiana mentions the word in one breath and in the next, she is on the telephone to her old fashionista contact Arky. It is as though the Bloggic one is undergoing some kind of epiphany.

“Arky? That you? Hell do you make of the idea of running a festival?”

And it would appear that Arky is nothing short of delighted at the idea. I snip out around a profile photo of Tony Blackburn and the telephone is practically on fire. I hear a stream of words bubbling on the air – words like chutney, words like Nepalese banquet and pumpkin-rolling and korean pickles and MCAs. Bloggiana listens for a moment while she receives some feedback from the other end of the telephone and now she is talking about food stalls and bric a brac and pop-up restaurants and, if you please, a tomato-trebuchet.

When we woke up this morning, Adolesco, Teener, Our Dog and I were thinking of going for a wee walk. Along the canal, we thought. Maybe take in a weed or two. Maybe spot a moorhen. Now it is the afternoon and everything has changed.

Bloggiana has reawakened.

One World, One Chutney has taken on a new form.

And before Adolesco can grow another chin-hair, before Teener can utter the word Skype, before the chickens can hatch out another mid-kitchen egg and Our Dog can utter one more stanza of Robert Louis Stevenson, there we are all of us signed up to the committee of the latest biggest event to hit Peeblesshire, the forthcoming ONE WORLD, ONE CHUTNEY – an international festival of food, words and lots of sauce. Coming to Neidpath Castle this October – 22/23, 2011.

Seems like our two-year hibernation is truly over.