The Festival That Wasn't

Today was supposed to kick off the....

Jugglers! Fire eaters!! Mimes! Death Defying Feats of Unbridled Humor that'll make you gasp, gape and guffaw.
I was most looking forward to this chap's performance. He combines acrobatic feats AND his passion for the rock band Queen. If that's not a recipe for entertainment, people, then I don't know what is.

http://www.marioqueenofthecircus.com/home.html


Long live Freddy Mercury impersonators!!


But, alas, it rained and the festivities never got underway. I took a walk to Merrion Square Park in the hopes they would get it started after the rain cleared up some.

No dice.

( Click on the pictures to see them full size and in all their glory and Suess-ness)

I found crews in the middle/muddle of setup/breakdown. I was promised they'd be in full swing tomorrow, come rain or shine. In return, I may have promised to bring one of them a latte in the morning.

The accents were a bit thick.

They tarted up the park with whimsical decorations such as this. Felt a bit like going through the looking glass.

The up side of a festival being rained out is that you can get up close and personal with the whimsy. And who doesn't want to get personal with the whimsy, I ask you? After this, though, I was still faced with the task of entertaining myself for a couple hours. So I did what any self respecting jobless moron with a camera would do on a rainy day in a Dublin park...took pictures of nonsense.

Here I am trying to cheer up the Eire sculpture (to no avail)


I tried many times, unsuccessfully, to get a decent self portrait with this guy, but he was uncooperative.

So in retaliation I snapped him from an unflattering angle.

Michael Collins was a bit more cooperative, though he looks pretty peeved at my cheekiness.

This meadow was so inviting the sun even tried to make an appearance. But he was denied. I have plans to come here with a picnic on the next sunny day and roll around in the grass and clover.
I dunno if it was related to the street performers festival, but these little danglers, each filled out by a different school child, littered the trees at one entrance. The wind and rain had knocked many of them to the sodden ground, enhancing the overall magical/menacing feel of the place. Have I mentioned that the whole outing felt like a trip down the rabbit hole? The fanciful was juxtaposed with the foreboding in just the right dose, anyone see the film Pan's Labyrinth? (No? See it!! It's great!!) This place, on this day, would have been a perfect setting for that film.

The other bonus to this trip was that I discovered Merrion Square park houses a collection of Dublin's lampposts over the last hundred years or so. I was so captivated by these that I decided to create a separate post to do them homage.....stay tuned...

-k