In honour of Fathers Day I thought I’d let you into a little secret I recently discovered. Wandering around the Fremantle Chilli Festival, I stumbled across a little known fact…. chill has a sex….who knew?
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©The Ponder Room
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Arriving at the festival I couldn’t get over the colour palate before me, if it wasn’t red it was black. Red I could understand, it was a chilli festival after all, but black? I’ve been to many festivals and never seen so much black. Then there were the product names. Names like Taipan Venom or Devils Tears, and the portions, everything was huge, ‘dainty’ it appeared was outlawed.
Coaxed in by the black t shirt wearing boys at Pan-o-rama, I was soon ploughing my way into a plate of chilli. Half way through it was some relief to see the sign for ice cold drinks.
Moving clockwise, next came a taste of chilli mussels, and a side order of iced tea. As I gulped a full mouthful of tea, I realised my error of not reading the sign correctly. As the iced chilli tea hit, my nose started running.
Coughing and sniveling now, a huge man dressed in an equally oversized Mexican sombrero thrust a piece of soft bread towards me declaring ‘this might help’. Stuffing the plain bread into my mouth I was thinking anything would be better than the burning sensation on the roof of my mouth. Anything that was until the hidden cheese filling sprang forth, bringing with it a full hit of tobacco sauce. Looking up the man had scarpered.
Panicked I ran in the direction of the water sign I’d seen earlier, and was soon praising the immense intellect of the person who’d included a water tank on the strategic plan, though I was unsure about the relevance of the ‘no parking’ sign in front of it.
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© The Ponder Room
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Quenched I returned to the festival only to be handed a cracker biscuit by an average looking man dressed in a black t shirt that declared he was ‘Really Hot’. Thanking him, just as I was deciding whether to launch into the finer points of false advertising, he stepped to one side and pointed to his Cane Fire products. The realisation hit me just as the heat of the cracker did.
My face taking on the hue of a rapidly boiled crayfish, I noticed the stall next door was offering Mango Lassi.
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© The Ponder Room
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Silently pointing to my choice I handed over five dollars, while watching a life sized hot dog wander past, complete with dripping chilli sauce. As I swallowed I realised they’d served me Spiced Tea instead of the soothing Lassi.
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© The Ponder Room
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Unable to feel my lips I bypassed the Devils Tears stand, wondering if anyone would notice if I threw myself into the ice truck that was offering bags of ice for $4.
On the way, however, I did spy one small haven of femininity. A delightful middle aged lady had taken it upon herself to sell aprons and oven mitts with chilli motifs. Ensconced in her stall, she declared ‘I was worried as I put up the tent, it’s all white, I should have got a black one’. Smiling I told her not to worry, that it was nice to see and wished her well. Besides there was something that I found far more worrying…….
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| The Ponder Room |
The decided lack of toilets, 16 to be precise. Thankfully it was only mid morning when I visited them.
At least the organisers had the sense to place them next to the St Johns Ambulance First Aid station.
As I sat inside one of the orange cubicals I pondered….
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What kind of last minute chilli induced emergencies would require the use of a quad bike?
- After the preponderance of chilli branded products I did notice there was one product missing. There was chilli chocolate, chilli beer, chilli ice cream, even chilli soap. The only thing left to put chilli on was…. toilet paper. No doubt that hole (pardon the pun) will be filled next year. Here’s hoping it will be a stencil version loving crafted by the lady in the white tent, not one of the sadistic black tent men. It’d be just like them to market an innocent looking toilet paper, only to find out way too late, that it had been infused with real chilli…now that doesn’t bare pondering about.
- But mostly I pondered that I’d never been to such a blokey festival, even car shows have a female presence, albeit scantily clad, but female just the same. Clearly chillis are a male bastion…don’t say I didn’t warn you.
6 Comments
Oh dear, I hope you still have functioning taste buds. Nice work.
I can report that all taste buds have returned to perfect working order…after several chocolate taste tests, just to be sure.
Haha, good rescue remedy 😉
Just had to check it wasn’t the chilli chocolate 🙂
Hilarious!! Although I’m not getting the feeling I’ll be putting next year’s chilli festival on my must-do list.
Com’on live dangerously (just smuggle in your own ice…the water variety)