Abergavenny man plans to hold a Fast Festival!

AN ABERGAVENNY man has announced his intentions to bring a Fast Festival to the town and further enhance our reputation in the eyes of the world.

Johnny Turnip told the Chronicle that the idea hit him after attending this year’s Food Festival and in his words, “being poisoned by a criminally undercooked burger.”

Turnip explained, “As a rule me and the boys don’t usually do the Food Festival. It’s a principle thing. You won’t catch us paying to enter parts of the town we’ve roamed like feral dogs since our teenage years just to pay over the odds for one of those runny Scotch Eggs and a jar of pickles that look like pig’s testicles in a jar.

“No sir. We didn’t come two in the last shower, or for that matter, the last train from Cardiff; we know a thing or two about a thing or two. A man can’t live on avocados and sparkling water alone, but you can achieve a lot with a chip butty and a mug of sugary tea in your guts.

“Having said that, just like he did with the Green Man, our pal Julius Geezer came up trumps with a few moody wristbands for the weekend. And so me, Big Tony, and Puerto Rico Paul decided to venture down on Sunday to drink off our hangovers and see if we could find Richard Branson and tap him up for a few quid.”

Turnip added, “Rumour has it that the Virgin man moved to the area late last year and has been hauled up in a big mansion on the outskirts of the town counting his millions and doing whatever else rich recluses do in rural areas.

“Apparently he was doing a talk at Angel about his latest product. The plan was to collar him when he came out and pitch our new business venture to him.

“Branson’s an innovator and not afraid to think big. He’s got his hands in a lot of pies from airlines, luxury cruises and space tourism. So he’s no stranger to the travel sector, which is just as well because my business plan will revolutionise the industry.”

Turnip told the Chronicle that he is working on a project to make time travel accessible for the masses, or “at least the billionaires who will be able to afford my services.”

He explained, “I haven’t actually mastered the knack of time travelling myself yet, but I feel I am getting close. It’s just a case of more meditation and more cosmic reflection. But to do that I need plenty of leisure time and that don’t come cheap. So I need a rich investor not only to free me up for greater things, but also to fine-tune the business I intend to launch once time travelling becomes a reality for me.

“I plan to call it ‘Turnip Time’s Eternal Escapes.’ Obviously I can charge top dollar because it will be a premium service for the top five percent in society. Again, Branson can help me with that because he has the connections and experience of hanging about with the sorts who will be interested in traveling through history and altering pivotal events for their own ends.”

Turnip added, “Initially, I planned to go on Dragon’s Den, but those chumps are strictly small time and don’t have the vision of necessary finance for what I’m planning. Which in essence, will be time-travelling workshops that will help people with more money than sense bend the laws of physics to their every whim.

“Yet that’s still a long way in the future. I’ve got to learn how to travel through time myself first, and it’s not as easy as they make it in the movies.”

Turnip explained that after hitting the Food Festival in search of backing for his fledgling business project, he was hit with another great entrepreneurial idea.

“After wandering around the Brewery Yard, we headed for the Castle, and somewhere along the way I was near mortally wounded by an undercooked burger.

“I was quite drunk at the time and can’t even remember eating the burger. “Puerto Rico Paul had a bottle of absinthe on him, and things had got out of hand. One minute we were arguing about who was the best James Bond, and the next minute I was kind of puking up my body weight.” Explained Turnip.

“All I can remember is being on my knees, and every time I looked up and felt better, I caught sight of the brown loafers, pink salmon corduroys, checked shirt, and navy blue jumper Puerto Rico Paul had bizarrely seen fit to wear for the occasion, and began puking my guts out again.

“After another 30 minutes of this, Big Tony removed Puerto Rico Paul from my sight, and I instantly felt better.

“As I staggered to my feet, a fat stranger with a kind face asked, ‘Are you ok?’ As I nodded mutely, they looked at me with concern and said solemnly, ‘Do you think it was the burgers?’

“How they knew that, I don’t know, but who was I to doubt them?”

Turnip said that after reviving himself with a couple of session lagers and a pack of fags, he left the castle and hooked up with his friends before heading to The Angel in search of Richard Branson.

Turnip explained, “We never found Branson, because apparently we got the Richards mixed up. He doesn’t live in Abergavenny at all; it’s Richard Dawkins that’s moved here apparently. Which is no good to me. I want hard cash investment not a lecture on the selfish gene.

“But in the end it didn’t matter, because as we left the food festival and my nostrils filled with the collected stink of the street feast, I felt nauseous again, but not so much on a physical level, this sickness had more of a French existentialist vibe to it.

“I saw no festival but a horror show of mindless and insatiable appetite. All I could see were eyes deadened and dull with mindless consumption, and gaping jaws stuffed with animal flesh, saturated fat, and greed.

“It was then I had a eureka moment.

“‘How much food does one place need to eat!’ I wondered. And then I screamed out loud, ‘What this town needs is a Fast Festival!’ Which earned me a few shady looks, but I’m used to that. Needless to say, the seeds had been sown.”

Turnip added that after retiring to his Mardy bolthole, he hatched a plan to organise a festival that will revolve around fasting.

He explained, “For one weekend a year, no one in this town will eat. Like a medieval village governed by superstition and limited intellect, we’ll all go on a collective fast.

“Tickets will cost £30 for the weekend, and the cost of admission will permit residents entry to any part of town you wish to hang about it and wax lyrical about how wonderful fasting and Abergavenny is.

“Visitors are welcome, but they’ll have to pay double. It’s only fair. Fasting doesn’t come free!”

To be continued......