Abbey Gardens Street Theatre

It was indeed a lovely day for it, and the Abbey Gardens looked a picture, as usual. The entertainment started at 11:30 with the Van Dunk Brothers Dutch Synchronised Swimming team.

How on earth do you do synchronised swimming in the Abbey Gardens, you may wonder. Well it requires a bit of audience participation. Little Miss and Little W helped hold up the pool, while they performed. And the Dad of one of Little W's classmates was picked from the audience to join them.

The Dutch accents turned out to be no more authentic than the swimming - allegedly from Rotterdam, they are really from somewhere closer to Rotherham; but no matter - it all adds to the fun.

More audience participation followed with ladies picked to hold the tapes up to turn the swimming pool into first a boxing ring and then the winning tape for for a slow-motion race. But I have no photos of the finale as they picked on me to dance with them! Yes I had to wear one of their swimming caps with a duck on top. Little Miss looked really embarrassed to be seen with me afterwards.

But there was one unexpected side-effect of my impromptu performance - local blogger 21st Century Mummy, famous for her Rubbish Diet blog and appearance on Radio 4's Woman's Hour, recognised me and came and said hello!

Next up were the Street Pirates with their show of juggling and acrobalance. I'd never seen acrobalance before (acrobatics + balancing), but they were very good. After building a human pyramid using a girl from the audience, they performed a routine with a number of great balancing poses, like this one...

The finished the act with a 'slackrope' routine. 8 men from the audience had to pull the slack rope tight enough for our Pirate to balance on while he juggles 3 machetes.

We were hungry by then so went off to find the Barwells hot-dog stand for some of those lovely St Edmundsbury Gold sausage hot-dogs. Then it was back to the gardens to watch Bruce Airhead. The highlight of his act is his spectacular metamorphosis of himself and a giant balloon. Here he is about to climb in...

He ends up completely inside it. Here he is with just one foot left outside...

I wont spoil it for you by saying what happens when he eventually pops the balloon, but if you really want to see, you can find my pictures of all of these acts here on Flickr - watch the slideshow and see the man and balloon transform.