The Dunedin Fringe Festival has been moving at a snail's pace for Port Chalmers "periquestrian'' Christopher Meech.
The freelance website designer has been travelling around the festival on the back of a super-sized snail.
"He's of the genus peri-fantastico. He's really quite friendly now and pretty easy to look after. He eats anything,'' he said yesterday, at the Port Chalmers home he and partner Bridget Ellis have converted into a snail sanctuary.
Meech said he had been surprised at the warm response to his snail steed.
"Everybody seems to really like him, especially children. They've been coming up and patting him,'' he grinned.
"It's something that's been lurking around, nagging in the back of my mind for a while, now. It's actually an old concept. There are 15th-century manuscripts with pictures of people riding around on giant snails. It's an old dream fantasy character.''
However, bringing the snail to the Fringe Festival had been "a long and arduous'' undertaking, Meech said.
"We had to go over to the West Coast, to a place called Happy Valley, to get him. It wasn't as easy as you might think. We had to sprinkle a big ring of salt around him to capture him,'' he recalled, wistfully.
"After we got him back home, it took quite a while to coax him out of his shell and then we started the process of breaking him in. His name is Barry.''
For safety reasons, Meech carries a whip when riding the snail, but you sense the pair have a close relationship.
"I only use the whip to induce a heightened sense of sensitivity in the snail. They have fairly thick skin and a strong central nervous system,'' he says, knowledgeably.
And snail-lovers will be pleased to know the enormous escargot will not be going out of the festival into the frying pan when it finishes its duties.
"We'll set him loose in the neighbourhood gardens once the Fringe Festival is over.''
Barry and Meech are back in action at the "Fringe on Sunday'' festival tomorrow, followed by appearances in the Octagon next Wednesday and Port Chalmers next Saturday.
"Fringe on Sunday'' is on from noon to 4pm tomorrow at the Otago Museum Reserve.
One of the best things about the festival is how it encourages normal people to do bizarre things.
By day, Fleur Casey promotes the cervical screening programme for Public Health South.
But at "Fringe on Sunday'' tomorrow, she will be on her hands and knees putting the Bic 10km pencil though its paces around the old Dunedin North Post Office.
"I wondered what a 10km drawing would look like. So I'll be inviting people to come down and draw or write something and then I'll be linking it all together,'' she said yesterday.
"But to be honest, I've done some calculations and I don't think we'll be able to use up all the pencil.''
One of the two international acts in this year's festival (the other is an Irish comedian - no, seriously), West Indian kora player Jali Buba Kuyateh, makes his eagerly-awaited appearance at the Otago Settlers Museum at 8pm today.
A cacophony of comedians pack up their jokes and skits tonight and head back to their funny hometowns.
Arthur Meek's On the conditions and possibilities of Helen Clark taking me as her young lover, Ben Hurley's Boom! and Jeremy Elwood's 12 Steps all finish up in the Hutton Theatre tonight.
Also taking bows today are Good Auld Bad Auld Days in the Playhouse Theatre, The Last Antigone in the Globe Theatre, The Murderous Mansion of Mr Uno in the Allen Hall and Little Shop of Horrors: Redubbed in the Fringe Lounge.
