She stole my karma oh no

By 'she' I of course mean Mother Nature. Wasn't it obvious?
By that entire statement I in fact mean that I have an awful, awful cold. Again. This must be something like my fifth this year. One of these days, immune system, one of these days...

The upshot of this is that I spent all of today at work outside. Wait, that's not an upshot, it's a, wait let me think...oh yes, a terrible stupid idea, and I really should have requested a move indoors. Nevertheless, it's given me something to blog about.

I spent the majority of today shouting, or at least wheezing, "gum ob da grazz plead" at various tourists, a strategy which was never going to work. I ended up waving at said tourists' families and helplessly making up sign language designed to tell them that the "Please stay off the grass" signs did not in fact say "Please come and take a closer look at this tree". At this point I remembered that I was wearing a cape due to Breezes and they could not actually see my hands. My final technique was to unravel my hands from the cape and flap at people. This seemed to work, although I suspect it was merely that by that time they had taken photographs of everything this side of Maidenhead and wanted to find an ER embossed drain-cover of which to take a snap-shot(I have witnessed this happening. We may as well begin a Drain Photography competition so many people do it).

My apologies if this seems like a whole post of me venting, but this cold has taken all of the minorly irritating events of today and catalysed them into an infuriating blob of anger.

Having now warned you, there was an absurd amount of activity happening in the Mews today, some of which apparently required a huge lorry to drive to and fro between somewhere and somewhere else. As my job title today may as well have been Glorified Car Park Attendent I had to move the heavy, metal (not Heavy Metal) posts - normally used for stringing up ropes so we can treat the tourists like sheep and herd them towards the interesting parts of the castle, otherwise you know they would start taking pictures of the staff car park - around at least 3 times today so the impatient lorry driver could fit through.
Thankfully I have the next 2 days off to recover, and on Friday I go back to the security machines, a job which requires you to sit down for half of your day. It's not a bad job, all things considered.
Also today I got to meet one of the many cats which head up to the Castle for some attention, which was nice and calmed me down somewhat.

To end this post I must recount to you an incident which happened on Sunday. I held the post I shall refer to as Gatekeeper, because it sounds much cooler than the actual title. This was before the Cold and it wasn't raining, so I was quite happy, and the following event served to make Sunday an even better day than today.
I was standing, doing my job, when I was approached by woman wearing an extravagant looking dress, which makes sense now that I know how this story ends, and two men. One of the men started the conversation, his opening line going something like "We from Brazil. No speak good English", an opener you know is going to lead to an amusing anecdote. He tried in vain to explain his request to me, but the only words of English I could make out, and apparently the only ones he knew, were "music", "no professional", "photograph", "video" and "parking". Well, what was I supposed to make of that? So I did my best to look concerned yet confused. His solution, a rather ingenius solution I must say, was to ring "my friend" who turned out in fact to be the pastor of his church, a man who spoke much better English than the man in front of me, albeit with a strong accent.
As it turned out, the woman was something of a professional singer/dancer in Brazil, and they were wondering if they would be allowed to film part of a music video inside the Castle grounds. Blow me down, I'd met a foreign celebrity! Of course, I don't have the superiority (yet. Mwahahaha) to give that sort of permission, so I said to the 'friend' down the phone "Tell him I'm getting a manager" and thrust the phone back at the man.
I managed to track down C who didn't have that kind of permission either, but at least knew that they would need to go through the same kind of bureaucracy as if they'd wanted to film a wedding video here, and given how little English they all knew it was hardly worth it, so just tell them no, which I did. Appeased but a little disappointed, they left.
Not ten minutes later I began to hear music and singing come from round the corner of the Gate. Having mostly consigned my Brazilian encounter to the "Remember later for amusement" file I assumed some yobbo had parked up with his window open. I was more than a little surprised, then, when I rounded the corner and saw that the small group had propped up a large video camera, previously hidden in a bag beneath some very glittery shoes and what may have been a frock, on a wall and were filming the music video right there in the street. The lady singer was actually in the road, singing and dancing. About half way through their recital the bells of the church next to them started tolling loudly and they had to pack up. I chuckled quietly and went back to work.
This whole event either serves to warn me against Brazilians, singers, or both. I'll try to track her down on Google and will let you know if I find her.

Blogged to the sound of: A Brief History of Love, The Big Pinks.