A deputation from the show were off on Fire Marshal training this morning. Having just put out a series of statistics about workers burning to death in factory fires I hoped that they would pay close attention. Whilst being a little cagey about what they actually learnt they did assure me there’s more to fire marshalling than shouting “There’s a fire, follow me” and charging for the exit.

Whilst the Fire Marshals were letting off fire extinguishers the Rice Wranglers spent much of the morning being photographed and filmed in a press call. A great piece came out in the Birmingham Post yesterday so hopefully that’s a sign of the P.R. blizzard cranking up another notch.

The day wasn’t without anxiety. A local news agency, having received a press release, phoned up expressing an interest in the show. Normally this would be a good thing, but their first question was “how much did the show cost?”. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard a national news story about what excellent value for money a particular work of art is, particularly not one which isn’t oil placed on canvas looking a lot like the thing it is ‘supposed to be’. So we didn’t answer the question and we’ll see what happens. Ironically the same agency sent a photographer, who arrived woefully late, but whom we politely accommodated, and he loved the show. He left with a fist full of fliers and a promise to return with his girlfriend. Hopefully this is the start of a crazy word-of-mouth snowball.

James