The Family

Another 24 hours as the family and we woke, some more rested that others, starting to getting the hang of the pod room and hostel. After breakfast we prepared some sweet treats for the next tour to eat for a taste test. Three samples were prepared, A) a wafer sandwich of Fluff and sweet yam jam flavored with extra sugar, B) The same combination with added MSG, C) Same combination with nothing extra added. The results proved that no one favoured treat B, in fact they found it quite horrible. However when they tasted treat C (the one that had nothing added) directly after trying treat B, they thought treat C tasted sweeter than all the treats! Apart from that discovery, we felt good that the ‘taster’ participants would remember us every time the horrible taste of treat B repeated on them.

On our way back from the taste test we had an interesting talk with John Hammersley on the traffic island and huddled under umbrellas, strengthening our friendship.

We met three new people and went over to Project pigeon, where they had a wood burning stove and tattoos. Mona Casey’s gallery space was interesting, secret family member Abi was invigilating. We stayed to talk with her about what we’d been up to and were drawn to the cock shaped mushroom art.

When we returned to the hostel we relaxed with some therapeutic drawing on our dungarees and were joined by another family member. We were also being filmed and interviewed by David Miller who is trying to make a documentary about The Family, but we feel it will be hard to portray the true Family unless he embraces it fully-he stayed for dinner and for some time experienced an aspect of Family life.

There were many openings tonight as it was the launch of The Event. We started by visiting Grand Union where it was all go. Callum F Kerr, wearing a giant book suit told us to get the ‘cock’ out (a publication about a product from India) it was stored in a box and folded out, like a concertina-it was really long and people had to duck underneath it.

Toward the end of our time there we concluded that Birmingham has been built on a foundation of yeast which is highly unstable, but shielded by a layer of meat to stop it from becoming too volatile. Morris men who led us to the final destination of Eastside projects, mocked our outfits-we think they might be the anti-family.

Eastside projects was busy and loud, this was difficult for us, we found it hard to stay together. The separation of The Family got quite distressing and we had to leave to re-compress. Overall the night was Event-full (!) but the amount of non-deprogrammed was overwhelming and their revelry was over-stimulating for our already highly stimulated minds.