Pie Flyers for All! Please Help Us Out!

Well would you believe it? 21 August – 3 October 2009 is the annual drive to Do A Queer Fatty a Good Turn For Six Weeks, and here's one really easy way that you could help.

See, we're putting on an event for next to no money and, see, we want people to come to it. But people can't come to it unless they know about it. This is where you can help.

1. Download the .pdf of our lovely roughly hewn pie flyer (see link below)
2. Print it on A4 paper
3. Photocopy it a load of times
4. Chop it up into individual flyers
5. Give a flyer to everyone you know and tell them about our fabulous Harvest Festival
6. Bathe in our adoration of you

Easy!

A4 Fat of the Land Pie Flyer (.pdf, 280kb)

Say hello to your Harvest Festival organisers

Fab new versions of the Fat Queer Harvest Hymn!

I always suspected that Mike Wyeld and Chopin Gard were the most talented fat queers in town and now I know it's true because, look people, they have recorded their own versions of The Fat Queer Harvest Hymn. Maybe they were inspired to do so by themselves, they both get a name-check in the hymn.

Version one makes them sound like a pair of medieval minstrels wandering the hills and dales (.mp3, 2.1mb) with a fol-de-rol and a hey nonny no. They've sampled my recorder too!

Version two blows my mind as Chopin channels Hendrix at Woodstock (.mp3, 964kb). Swoon.

Version three is a hoot - your very own karaoke version! (.mp3, 2mb) record your own vocals on top, in any lo-fi way you choose, and submit it to the blog. I will find a crap prize from under the settee cushion for the best.

Listen, enjoy, and come and sing the hymn with all of us at The Fat of the Land on 3 October.

Follow The Fat of The Land on Twitter

Look! I made a Twitter thing. If you're one of those people for whom a blog is not enough, come and follow the exploits of The Fat of the Land via 140-character Tweets. I will tell you secrets the like of which you have never dreamed.

http://twitter.com/thebeefer is where it's at.

Next: come and live in my house, come and sit with me as I work at the computer, come and implant yourself in my brain! Thrills await!

Fat Queer Harvest Hymn

Kay Hyatt, Simon Murphy and I wrote a secular Fat Queer Harvest Hymn that gives Harvest Festival-style thanks for fat queers of the past, present and future. I composed the tune on my recorder! Yes, once again, I am well aware that we are some of the most ridiculous freaks of the universe.

Anyway, here's a little video of the three of us giving it a whirl, I'm trying to look as pious as I can: Fat Queer Harvest Hymn. Let me know if you have trouble viewing it.

I'm hoping that we can teach it to people and that we can all sing it together at the Festival. Maybe you'd like to learn it and make your own recordings or videos of yourselves singing it? I could post them on the blog.

This is only the first version, it may develop, and I am open to suggestions. Just so you know.

Here are the words:

Fat Queer Harvest Hymn
by The 123s, London, July 2009

chorus: So thanks to all the fatty queers
The ones who've come before us
For trailblazing through the years
We sing our grateful chorus

Let's start our fat queer history
With The Fat Underground
The FaT GiRL zine defined the scene
And BJ won her crown

(chorus)

Community is strong today
With NOLOSE at the top
The Chubster Gang, Mike and Chopin,
Beth Ditto and The Bop

(chorus)

We don't know what the future holds
Some people think we're wrong
The tree we've planted will bear fruit
As long as we are strong

(chorus, with extra gusto)

I can't write music, but the hymn consists of the following notes on the recorder:

chorus:
B B D B G A B
B B B D B B A
B B D B G A B
B B B A A A G

verse:
G G G C B C B A
D D D E D A
D D D E D C B A
A B G A F# G

Please get in touch if you can write music, and/or feel free to create your own arrangements of the hymn.

Why? Why? Why are we bothering? Why?

The Fat of the Land is about making our own visible fat queer culture and presenting that culture within the context of London's already existing queer and trans communities. It seeks to capitalise on the success of the Chubsters event at the 2009 London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, which witnessed a fierce outpouring of fat-queer activism in the UK and a hunger expressed by many of the participants for more events of such a nature. The Fat of the Land expands possibilities for fat queer activism by applying a fat lens to a familiar format to create something new, radical and exciting.

The event fits NOLOSE's mission in that it combines low cost, accessible entertainment with fundraising potential; it is open to all and is supportive, inclusive and expansive; it offers opportunities for developing fat consciousness, fat community-building and fat visibility amongst a population that is relatively new to these concepts; it is a defiant celebration of abundance and plenty amidst a 'healthy living' agenda in the UK that is often reductionist, fatphobic and mean, and is thus health-enhancing for people of all sizes. You want challenging, weird, boisterous, empowering, and FUN? We've got it!

What is The Fat of the Land?

The Fat of the Land is a secular DIY fat queerifying of a traditional harvest gathering. It's a DIY food festival, synthesizing interest in slow food, recession-busting, local food, 'make-and-do' etc with a fat queer sensibility.

We see the event as a celebration of the abundance of harvest time and our connection to the rhythms of nature and creativity, albeit executed in our own idiosyncratic, outsider, warped, prankish, punk, 21st century, Wicker Man style.

The event will take place in the afternoon of Saturday 3 October 2009 at St Anne's, 55 Dean Street, Soho, London. This is a fully accessible venue.

3 October 2009 is the weekend of this year's Harvest Moon!

The Fat of the Land will feature entertainment, games and activities, stalls and information. More about this later when we've had a meeting about it.

The Fat of The Land is being principally organised by me, Charlotte Cooper, and Naz Jamal and Jason Elvis Barker of The Queer Institute. It has been made possible by a Small Projects Across the Land loan by NOLOSE (which we will pay back, honest!).

Please come!