The city of Adelaide is currently on the verge of what is locally known as

'March Madness!'

Towards the end of February and throughout March are two major tourist-focused events known as the Adelaide Fringe Festival and the Superloop 500 (formerly the Clipsal 500 V8 Supercar Race). The city is crammed packed with tourists, and various spectacles. Musicians, comedians, acrobats and performers of all kinds descend on the city and what is often seen as a sleepy town becomes... alive.

It's also a time when local people tend to flee the CBD or Central Business District because of the noise from the cars, the cheers, concerts and fireworks can be a little overwhelming. Not to mention traffic comes a to standstill.

As I am a local, you can imagine that I want to avoid the city as much as possible during this time for the same reasons.
There are, of course, exceptions. One of those being an upcoming Steem get together this week, and the other is the

Adelaide Podcast Festival

As a few of you may know, I produce my own relaxation-based self-help podcast called 'Easy Like A Sunday Morn'.
It's available on most podcast apps, spotify and even here on dsound. Feel free to take a listen, I could do with the download numbers.

Anyway, I decided to scrape together the money necessary and pluck up the courage to order a ticket to the event at the Elephant British Pub and head on in.

Initially, it was fairly quiet and I sat by myself with a complimentary drink taking writing down a list of the supported podcasts. Before long I saw Mark Aisten from The Mental Heath podcast start networking about his podcast and then come over to me and we started talking. I really need to network more at these things.

I also had a lengthy chat with Adam Little from the 'Precision Shooters Podcast' about all things rifle and gun ownership. You can easily get very OCD with the intricacies of this particular sport as there is so much detail and so much depth to it.

Soon it was time for the festival to start and they were set up to broadcast the podcasts live on the radio and if you brought the right equipment, you could have your podcast segment recorded. There were photographers and videographers there to record the proceedings, and you could get your photo taken for their promotional material if you were a podcaster.

The ladies from the 'Oh, Now I'm Hungry' podcast made these strawberry balls (think chocolate snowballs but mixed with Cherry Ripe) which were incredible, and for some reason beetroot on a toothpick for everyone to try.

Then we were treated to a preview of a fringe show called '2 Cats On A Hot Fringe Roof', by Steve Davis of the Adelaide Show podcast, which also stars Ralf Hadzic, the guy who played children's television favourite 'Fat Cat' for 17 years.
Steve does a hilarious impersonation of Mr. Squiggle, and there are only 3 shows left this week.

Steve wants me to do a comedy course this year, and while I am reluctant to admit how scared I am of public speaking, I do actually want to start doing something like this when I can get the money together.

Finally, beecause I stayed for most of the night, I not only won a packet of "Mystery Flavour" Pringles (I thought it was a joke, to be honest) from the team of The Show and I was given a few free drink vouchers too by the event organisers.
It was a great night and I look forward to attending the event next year, however not as an audience member, but as a sponsored guest.

The presenters were, in no particular order: