CHUNKY FRINGED

Well… yesterday was unexpectedly lovely. I mean, it started with me getting a Facebook friend request from Marillion’s guitarist, which was a bit surreal.  

Before I say anything else… a huge, huge shout-out to lovely David Walford. He paid for the entire Chunky Fringe and even supplied free pizza! Though he had help from the likes of Jamie Nemeth, Chris Bell, and everyone who showed up to showcase their tech stuff, it was David who had the idea for this and pulled everything together. We really appreciate him.

With it being a free event, it was impossible to gauge numbers, and were worried that we might have more people on the panels than in the audience – I mean, that got close during the unwieldy Bubblegun! But in the end it was a healthy turnout, and the perfect number of people. Thank you to everyone who made the effort to come, especially those who travelled so far!

Digi Live was always a lot of moving parts for us, and though we can look back and be proud of them, we rarely get to enjoy it in the moment.

With the pressure off – with nothing to actually have to remember or think about - we actually got to enjoy ourselves. I mean, during the Digipedia panel with our old friend Chris – as I reclined on a blow-up sofa that progressively deflated under me (I was more or less horizontal by the end)  – I was so relaxed that at points I kind of forgot there was even an audience in front of me.

I really hope the audience enjoyed it too, and it was worth the trip. We didn’t remotely put on a “show” – this really was a live podcast recording followed by me laughing at my own jokes for 90 minutes – so I’ve no idea how entertaining any of it was. We hadn’t thought that far ahead!

But for us the main thing was that we got to actually spend time with other attendees, and go to the pub after (literally cannot remember the last time I was even in a pub) – actually have conversations instead of snippets of chats, a quick photo, and move onto the next person. That’s what we appreciated the most. Even at the ghost hunt last month we were too focused on our filming to socialise properly. This was borderline chilled!

Inevitably, there are still people I didn’t get the chance to speak as much as I’d have liked, but I’m sure there’ll be opportunities in the future. It always strikes us how nice our audience is – just decent, lovely people, who we’d be friends with regardless.

When David and Chris first approached me about doing Chunky Fringe, I was still in the midst of what I now realise was some pretty heavy grief, and I said no. I couldn’t envisage being around a crowd, having to summon the energy necessary. But they asked again a few months later, and I was in a different place. Chunky Fringe was as much a marker for me that I’ve moved forwards as it was anything else.

Even so, we’re knackered. Our already depleted social battery has nothing left to give – we desperately need to be able to find a way to recharge and give ourselves a bit of self-care, as we’ve been running at full-pelt for months now; I’m close to hitting the wall. But… we’re so happy to have had a chance to be part of Chunky Fringe.

It’s important to us to try to say thank you for the support we get – especially as we dragged ourselves through the tough times and out the other side. I know I say it a lot, but the fact that so many of you are still here, and stayed as we’ve flailed around trying to find the right formats for our videos, as we paused BYAMPOD, and just… dealt with life… we can’t stress enough how much we appreciate it. Thank you for enriching our life.

We’ll find more ways to get the Digi/Bubblegun/Paul And Sanja/BYAMPOD/Patreon family together - and Chunky Fringe and the ghost hunt have shown us we don’t need a full-on live spectacular to do so. We recorded it, and will share what we can, but first… little bit of rest.

New video next week, mind. And Bubblegun might be a tad late. No idea how I’m going to edit that shitshow together.