Championsheeps Live at Whipsnade Zoo

Over half term I journeyed down to Whipsnade Zoo (it's near Luton) to work on a crazy but oh so awesome family event put on by a bunch of lovely people at SGA Productions in association with Aardman for Shaun the Sheep's Championsheeps. Trying to describe this event is quite a challenge but I shall try my very best. There were 6 different games that were adaptations to games that you would find at your average village fate/school sports day. We had a Naughty Pig Sack Race where the sacks had piggy bodies painted onto them and the contestants had to wear pig masks whilst people standing at the sides were encouraged to throw "fluffy poo" at them. We also had a coconut shy type welly wangling competition where people had to try to knock the farmer's heads off the scarecrows (pictured below).

There was also an egg and spoon race where you had a lot of chickens sat on baskets and you had to find chicks and eggs underneath the hens and distribute them into various coops and other baskets. We also had "sheep hopper" games and and cabbage throwing games and giant sheep rolling games and plasticine modelling and aerobics classes where we had to dance around like loons to S Club 7 for 15 minutes every hour. We were there for 10 days in total, including the weekends and Jubilee bank holidays. It rained lots and there were gale force winds and the giant inflatable sheep nearly blew away and we had to clear up animal dug from the roaming animals who had been trying out our race track during the night. On the other hand I essentially got paid to have a lot of fun. I love working with kiddies and there were certainly loads of them about.

I decided to hire a car for the duration of the job because I thought better of trying to navigate public transport during weekends/bank holidays. This I discovered was a very good idea. For those of you who don't know me personally, I haven't driven a car for four years due to mainly not having enough money to fund a car of my own. I'm not going to lie to you, before I picked up my little Peugeot 107 I was petrified. I was concerned about forgetting which pedals do what and navigating roundabouts and overtaking on duel carriageways during rush hour. When the man at the car hire place at Luton airport handed over the keys I walked out to the car thinking "why on earth did he just do that????" and I spent a good 10 minutes checking the mirrors were all pointing in the right place before setting off. It turns out however that the cliché "it's just like riding a bike" is actually true...albeit a rather large bike with four wheels, a roof and a motor.  By the end of the contract I was seriously tempted to drive back to Manchester in it.

So that's what I have been up to since the last time I posted. It has been a mad whirlwind of a ride and I would do it all again in a heartbeat! 

Carry on Temping

I'm at a tricky stage in my freelancing career where I'm starting to get my name known by production companies in the North West and people are asking for my assistance on set and in the production office. Unfortunately the jobs aren't for long enough periods for me to pack in my temping-on-the-side just yet. The trouble is I get bored easily when I'm not working and also slightly panicky so if a temping agency phones me during a quiet period asking me to work I will instantly say yes.

At the moment I'm in a period where I'm temping for a couple of weeks to tide me over until I journey down near Luton for 10 days to run around Whipsnade Zoo with a bunch of overly excitable kids as part of an event put on by the guys from Aardman (read more about that here). Originally this temping contract was only going to be for a couple of days which is exactly what I wanted but then it got extended and extended some more and now I'm here for a whole 3 and a half weeks (and dashing around the country on Saturdays to work on Dickinson's Real Deal). I do this until the 30th May then I travel down south on the 31st, pick up a hire car and work for 10 days solidly missing all the Jubilee bank holidays as I go. It works out that I have just 5 days off in the period between 3rd May - 10th June whereas most people with normal jobs will have had a total of 15.

I need to get me some of these mittens made by Jennifer Westwood

I'm not complaining and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's really nice to be busy but what started as temping for a few days to stop my brain from shutting down completely between freelancing jobs has snowballed out of control and I'm left feeling that perhaps I should start saying no to these pesky temping agencies that phone me up to work all the time. The major down side is that I've had three production companies phone me in the meantime asking if I can do ad hoc days of work with little to no notice (one phoned me up at 09:40 one morning asking if I could be in Liverpool by 11am!) and I've have had to turn them all down due to me not keeping myself available for such eventualities. If the work had been longer than a day I would obviously pack in my temping job in a flash but this particular agency has been very good to me in the past and the people I'm working with at the moment are all very lovely. I'm always the first person they ask for when they need a spare pair of hands so I don't want to piss them off by leaving them stranded because they will just go out and find another favourite temp and when I'm going through another dry work patch they won't be there to help me out with my rent and my bills and more importantly fuel my alcohol and cigarette addictions.

When I finish my manic working stint in a month's time I'm having a week off and bumming around London for a bit. Hopefully by the end of this spell I will have sorted myself out and shall rise to greet the dawning of a new era...in which my tv and temping work come together in a great and glorious future!*

* Obviously I would rather be in a position where I can ditch the temping altogether, I just really wanted to throw a Lion King reference in there.

Life's a Treat With Shaun the Sheep

I've been told off in the past by friends and parents for doing voluntary work in the industry. However, as I have only recently moved to Manchester, giving a day or two of my time every now and again to a worthy cause can be good for my soul, it gets me out of the flat and gives me an opportunity to work with people in the industry.

As soon as I moved to Manchester at the start of November I was constantly badgering the BBC to help out with Children In Need until eventually I was pointed in the right direction and added to the list of volunteers. When the day came around, my designated job was chaperoning Pudsey Bear around MediaCity and also helping out with a teddy bear's picnic event put on for two sets of pre school kiddies. This however was over by 11am (and Pudsey had been whisked away by someone else) so I set about finding other things to do. The guys from Aardman Animations had some rather exciting games going on outside on the Plazza including Welly Wangling and  Championsheep competitions which involved running around an obstacle course rolling a sheep that was a metre and half in diameter and a coconut shy type welly throwing thing. It was all crazy fun and although they had designated people working on the games I helped out here and there  inbetween selling Children in Need merchandise. At the end of the day I helped them pack up all their gear and just happened to be there when the lady in charge passed round a piece of paper so we could write down our email addresses for any other future Aardman events and thought nothing more of it.

Fast forward four months and out of the blue, in amongst all the spam that Linkedin send me on a daily basis, I found an email in my inbox from the very same lady from Aardman who was looking for people to work on an event for a week over the summer down near Luton. My initial thought was "it's too far away" and then remembered that one of my best friends lives not so far away from there who hopefully wouldn't mind putting me up for a week and a bit. Then I read to the bottom of the email and saw how much they were willing to pay for me to stand in a field and have and awesome amount of fun (with extra money for travel expenses) and I thought that I needed to do it no matter if I have to live in a tent for the duration . Basically, with my really pathetic temping wage I would get the same amount for nine days work as I would sitting behind a reception desk for a month so it's a no brainer really. It has only taken me four years of working really low paid jobs whilst trying to fit it around slightly more secure mind numbing temping jobs and trying to scrape together enough pennies to pay rent and bills but this is my first paid job that I can comfortably afford to live off that will last longer than a day. I know it might not seem like much (after all it is only going to be for nine days) but I feel it's one huge giant leap in the right direction towards an actual career for me and it's a very exciting thought.