Saturday's Questing.

The day's questing began as usual at Next, where Exeter's East Gate once stood. We meandered along the High Street towards our first stopping point opposite the Exeter Riddle Sculpture created by Michael Fairfax. We fruitlessly stood awaiting our first quest of the day until a young woman handing out fliers for the restaurant Tiger Bill's Bar and Grill attempted to hand us a leaflet. We quickly turned the tables on her and she ended up asking us for a quest which was to hand out some of the leaflets for her. I must say here that I was much worse at this than Joe, who has had experience in this particular field. I also blame my rather unapproachable appearance for the lack of leaflets handed out.
After this quest we walked slowly towards Tesco looking for more people. We performed a small quest here for a friend of a friend that involved Joe performing a hand stand...whoop. I still find it odd that despite being offered the chance to have anything done for them (such as carry the shopping for the day) people will still choose the trivial, lightly entertaining task instead.
We continued along the High Street until we approached the Mint Methodist Church where we noticed that there was a group packing up the church fete/sale. We originally passed the group until we decided that knights would certainly offer services to the Church so we approached them and asked if we could help. The quest was to help one stall pack up, this involved taking a couple of tables back into the church and carrying a large, heavy box inside as well (the latter job being given to Joe, naturally).
Having suitably exhausted ourselves we decided to head back to the Exeter Riddle Sculpture and stand for a little longer and then call it a day. Here we were only approached only once but unfortunately the request would have taken us a fair way out of the city center despite the woman's beliefs. Here we called it a day due to the unbelievable heat and massively inappropriate footwear (note to self: next time wear shoes without holes).

The Day's Thoughts:

I found it odd that despite there being many more people in the High Street than our first day of questing, less people approached us and showed interest. This may well have been because of the high concentration of street performers in the High Street meaning that the public may have become desensitised to the 'unusual' or 'misplaced'.

I also wondered if the environment we were operating in had any affect on the kind of request we received. For instance, the environment we were working in on Saturday was a highly commercial and consumer based area which would explain why many people believed we were asking for money in exchange for a quest. However, in the more relaxed environment of the Cathedral Green, people were asking mostly for entertainment requests such as songs or dances. I wondered what would happen if we took ourselves to areas like a beach or an industrial estate.

A relation to me (strangely enough bearing the same second name) had a theory about why our requests were mostly entertainment based. I shall quote directly:

"It's a very British thing to do, because people don't want to feel like they're making you go to a lot of trouble, also they may think that although you say anything you wouldn't do it if they suggested something like go to Scotland and bring me back a haggis"

(Some other Henderson, via Facebook)