A Year In Redwood

Well I can finally reveal all that big secret from way back in July…. the tv show aired last night.

I can tell you it is not a pleasant experience watching yourself on tv, but I got through it… it is at about 14 minutes.

So how did it all come about?

Good friends Zack and Wendy have set up Irish Food Tours – bringing Irish people and overseas visitors around to visit the wonderful food producers that are scattered all over this island.

John and Francis Brennan of ‘At Your Service’ fame heard about Irish Food Tours and asked if Zack and Wendy would bring a group along to Cloughjordan Eco Village for the purpose of the programme.

Living just a few miles from Cloughjordan…. Alfie and I were asked if we would volunteer to be ‘tourists’, and as it happened Lily (My Mexican Shop), Alan (Red Curtain Review) and Daili (From the Darkroom) were also staying with us…. so of course it was brilliant to bring them along…. genuine Mexican tourists (or at least 2 anyway).

With all these bloggers and twitterers (is that a word) on the show…. twitter was alive during the show last night!

It was John Brennan who was there for our visit – easily known he is the numbers man!!!  He instantly gave us the breakdown for the show…. they take 96 x 15 second snaps for a 24 minute show.  Go on… try it…. the figures do add up! I checked!  We were there for over two hours for the little segment that was shown!

When you watch the programme…. you will have no idea of how many times we walked up and down pathways, got on and off the bus!  And poor Pa, from Django’s Hostel, had to repeat his story so many times as the crew decided it would be better if he stood in a different spot or that the wind had interfered with the sound quality.

Filming

Nor will you know that our time there was interspersed with torrential downpours where we had to scurry to the polytunnels for shelter, or that we couldn’t be seen with umbrellas as we hadn’t gotten off the bus with umbrellas.

Harvest from the polytunnel

Attention to detail is everything.

However, to me the best part was that as we were being shown the large vegetable field…. a man (who I now know was Pat) came across the field with a wheelbarrow laden with marrows.  Pat was a natural… started posing immediately for his audience of ‘tourists’ with their cameras, and then launched into detail of the varieties of marrow, getting everyone to taste them.

Pat… the natural 🙂

This was all unscheduled and spontaneous!  As we walked away Wendy and I said that that was just such perfect tv!  We are going to have a new career as TV producers…. we were so right :).

Once the serious stuff was over Zack could not resist….

Zack – he couldn’t resist!

It was then time for a cup of tea!