Having finished my shift tonight, I plugged in to Birch. There are huge grounds. It is gorgeous to be here and feel like I have this freedom of space.
There’s something mildly perplexing about being Panda. He has a name now. A group of children decided that my name is Clive Panda. They have insisted on it to the extent that I started to like it. I ran it by the artist today and she didn’t seem to hate it. For the short term I’m Clive Panda. But he is perplexed.
Seeing anything when the head is on is hard. I have a little rectangle of gauze, but if I feel like you’re looking to disbelieve my pandaness I will look at your feet. That way you can’t see my human eyes through the gauze and it feels like the panda eyes are looking directly at yours. If I can, I’ll make you talk to Panda as Panda. It is much more fun to do that than to just talk to Al. Still, some adults just refuse to play. I’ll try to get you to play. That’s the extent of my job, really.
It has been lovely. Nasty hens: I curse them all with thrush. Everyone else since then has got it.
Tomorrow I’m gonna pack all my stuff and check out at the start of my shift, just … in the hope that now the conference is over I don’t have to be a morlock anymore and live in the basement.
The weird thing is… living here with all these fun people who I’ve played with. I go out into the bar and they all look straight through me even though I’ve had fifteen minute chats with them about value. I’m just the Panda. They haven’t been talking to a long haired beardy guy. I don’t need them to recognise me. Mostly I am happy that I can sit there and not be recognised. Sometimes they are talking about me without knowing I’m there. It’s weird.
It has been hard work the last few days, and full on. Thanks for understanding, those of you who have been expecting comms. You won’t get any sense out of me until this is done. Panda is hard work. Joyful but hard. But I’m surrounded by glorious people.
AlBarclay 