The ramblings of an odd little man: October 2013

Well it's been a good, long while since I last had anything to natter about on here, but yesterday it was the biggest public zombie event of the year, so if anything deserves a blog post it surely must be that.

Saturday October 12th was World Zombie Day 2013, an event which has been going on for some years now (obviously they don't call it 2013 every year, but I rather hoped you'd figured that out already). Although everyone turns up to have a good time and be part of a massive mob of zombies, there is actually a good cause at the heart of WZD, and that's to raise money and other donations for charity. Obviously being World Zombie Day, the charities varied from country to country, but they're all in support of the homeless. Here in the UK, the big gathering took place in London, and food donations were being accepted for the Hackney food bank to help the homeless, whilst at the same time monetary donations could be texted in for St Mungos.

I was planning to meet up with the Silent Studios zombies, who I'd worked with in the past on their Zombie Weekend and the zombie invasion of Big Brother, and we'd agreed to bring food donations, so I'd already got my bag full of canned meat and fish ready to go.

The downside to being half a country away from the capital is that whenever I have a zombie trip to London I always have to get myself ready early. Unfortunately on this occasion I also overslept, waking up at 7:30 and drastically reducing my makeup time!

Still, I did the best I could with the time I had available, and knocked out some acceptable zombie makeup in just over 45 minutes (I had been hoping to have 2 hours to do a really nice job on the skin tone and texture). I should mention at this point that my choice of zombie for the day was the zombified version of Walter White/Heisenberg from the TV series Breaking Bad, which meant that for the first time I also had to zombify the back of my own bald head. Only having one mirror in the house, this proved tricky, but later in the day I was told I'd managed to cover the whole area pretty evenly (phew!).

So I headed out of the flat nice and early to be greeted by rain (grumble grumble). It was a half-hour walk to the train station, so even with my umbrella there was still some moisture getting through to my water-based makeup, and by the time I was actually on the train to London I was looking an absolute state (and not in a good way). Luckily I had packed an emergency touch-up kit, so I took a seat close to the toilet and every few minutes kept dashing in to clear up the mess that had become of my face, and re-apply facepaint and blood to repair the damage. By the time the train pulled up in London I'd made myself just about presentable, and the weather down south was absolutely perfect, so I hopped on the tube and headed to the meeting point at Marble Arch.

Part of the Heisenberg (or Heizomberg, as my friends labelled me) costume is a full-on chemical suit, which looks fantastic but (for obvious reasons) is completely non-porous, so I knew as soon as I started wearing it I'd start to cook. For this reason I didn't actually bother wearing it for the journey down, so when I arrived at Marble Arch I didn't turn any heads as I was just another zombie amongst the masses already assembled. Once I was there though, I was happy to suit up, so I grabbed the suit and lab gloves out of my bag and started to climb in (into the suit, not the bag). Before I'd even got zipped up I had one bunch of zombies run over to ask if I was zombie Walter White, and half a dozen photographers approach to ask for shots once I'd finished getting ready. By the time they'd all taken their photos, more people came over for pics, and I found that I actually couldn't escape from the entrance to the tube station for quite a while! This might sound like an annoyance, but when you've put time and effort into getting your costume together (and shaving your head) it does give you a massive buzz to see people appreciating it.

Throughout the next hour - before the actual walk began - the zombie numbers began to swell, and the Silent Studios guys appeared for me to join. Once the food donations had all been handed over, the walk began.

It was separated into four parts, with an hour's stop between each part for more zombies to join the fray, or for people to grab something to eat or drink. The first leg took us from Marble Arch to Cavendish Square, then onto Picadilly Circus, from there to Leicester Square, and the final leg took the walk to the afterparty at Denmark Street. Throughout every part of the walk it was great to see the reactions of the public as a horde of zombies came shambling past. Some looked on with amusement, some with fear, some with amazement, and obviously there were a few who sneered and walked on by, but they were in the minority, and weren't going to ruin a great day out for the thousands of us :) At each pit stop I got mobbed for photos again (I've never been stopped for so many pics in my life, hopefully it means there'll be some good ones online somewhere!), until finally I had to leave the proceedings at Leicester Square. It was a bit of a heartbreaking moment, and I would have loved to have joined the afterparty, but sadly the final Denmark Street stop was at 19:00, and I had to be on a train back to the Midlands at 18:45.

It was an absolutely amazing day out, my first World Zombie Day and the first zombie walk I've actually walked in (having had to leave the Birmingham walk before it actually got started). I'll definitely be going again next year, but next time I'll book myself a hotel room for the Saturday night and return home on Sunday so I can join the afterparty! The only question is: which zombie shall I be?

As usual, I was too busy being a zombie to take many photos, but the few I did take are here :)