Saturday 3rd March
Four of us from Edinburgh ventured south for a day in search of signatures, support and just some good conversation from visitors to our Greenpeace stall at the Dumfries & Galloway Environment Fair. Well, we found all of that - and much more besides.
We arrived to a massive hall, the formality of which was nothing like what we're used to in our usual stations, prone to hurried and uninterested passers-by and typical bouts of Scottish rain. Inside, a bubbling atmosphere of games, quizzes, demonstrations, crafts, interactive displays and, of course, face painting! All of the other stalls looked awesome and the event had attracted a lot of people. Everyone there was keen to stop and chat, listen to our campaign messages and talk more generally about Greenpeace and environmental issues. Dumfries don't have their own Greenpeace group, so it was great for us to have a stall there. Most people were happy to sign one of our Volkswagen cards while their children waited in line to get their faces painted. That was my job.
Having never done face painting before, I thought I'd better practice on Sam first. I painted him as a tiger, and although initially I was quite pleased with how it had turned out, looking up I saw a gathering queue of expectant children and it dawned on me that they couldn't all be wanting a tiger. Throughout the day, I had requests for anything from butterflies and vampires to fairies and dogs – one little girl even asked to be moth. “A moth?” I asked. She was adamant, so I shrugged and picked up my moth-coloured paintbrush. By that time, all of the paintbrushes were getting a bit murky and we were running desperately low on white paint, but seeing so much of my (rather amateur – but free!) artwork wandering around the rest of the fair and having so much fun made it all incredibly worthwhile.
Sign me up for more face painting at the next stall!
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