We had our informal festival catering business dissolution meeting on saturday evening. It was kind of sad because we've all decided that we don't want to do it again due to all the fun being sucked out of it by the actions of the one founder not present that night.

It's rare that I fall out with people (well, that's not true - it's rare that I fall out with men. I can fall out with women with a practised ease *resists the temptation for a lame gag about women not being people*) and especially not those that have been friends for a long while. I'm picky about whom I consider to be a friend so to have one stitch us up to such a high level is rather disappointing.

Obviously such a critical board meeting was held in a pub over about 8 pints of beer and many chuckles were had about the positive things that happened this summer (lest we forget, three people with zero catering knowledge created an entity capable of feeding 500 people, 3 meals a day for over 2 weeks. Plus we did this during the wettest summer on record, under 4 inches of mud almost continuously and never once stopped serving - even when we had 5 inches of rain in an hour and a half. And we almost broke even.)

I jokingly suggested that it would've made a very interesting documentary due to the following highlights:

• Closing a planning meeting with the memorable line "and I'm not spending two thousand pounds on fucking hammocks."

• One of the directors having a blazing argument with a major Cash and Carry chain's New Account Manager about opening an account - all the time completely unaware that he still had flourescent pink face paint on from going festival-side the night before. (I thought it was funnier not to tell him frankly.)

• Trying very patiently to explain to a chef why serving food was a higher priority than chatting up yet another one of our staff. For an hour. Then finding out he'd taken 20 E's the night before and thought he had four hands.

• One supposed 'senior' member of staff lighting all twelve gas rings and having both ovens on full with the doors open in an attempt to heat a marquee 20 foot high and 2400 square feet. He was sitting 80 feet away from the ovens too. Useless wanker.

• The same member of staff having the following conversation whilst still pilled up the following morning (relayed to me later):

  *Enters kitchen holding a tray of sausages and chewing furiously*
  "What are these?"
  "Sausages, mate."
  *Stares at sausages*
  "Right."
  *Returns sausages to the serving area*
  *Re-enters kitchen with another tray*
  "And what are these?"
  "They're sausages too."
  "Right."
  *Returns to serving area*
  *Enters kitchen with the original tray again*
  "And you said these were......?"

• After directing the fruit & veg delivery van to our personal entrance at our final festival (a festival being - should you not know - lots and lots and lots of marquees over several square miles) I had the following phone conversation with driver when he failed to arrive:
  
  Him: "Where are you? I'm on site."
  Me: "I can't see you. What are you near?"
  Him: "I'm by a tent."
  Me: "I may need a bit more info than that."
  Him: "Um, it's red?"
  
  Retard.

• Blundering into the middle of a swamp while on the phone and getting stuck with the water coming over the top of my wellies. My plaintive cries for help went unanswered so I had to pull my foot out by hand. If you've never done this, what happens is that when you finally wrench one wellie free with both hands you discover that your only point of balance is the other foot, which is also in a wellie and unable to move. You then fall over. You can only go straight as well. I covered 20 feet in an hour, and myself with black mud. I then got a lift in a tractor, so that was cool.

It's possible we may do it again next year now if we can film it and use that money to cover our potential losses, ha ha ha. Watch this space.

My hangover on Sunday precluded all action, apart from dragging myself on to the sofa to watch Spurs lose in injury time to Birmingham. At home. I clearly curse any team I support.

I'm available for hire should anyone wish a team relegated :(

And a welcome to Elle and Valley Girl *waves* :)

(Hmmmmm, bullet points no worky for some reason :-S )