or the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle experience

Yesterday, 12 October 2013, was the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle. This event has been running for a few years and is basically an excuse for people to dress up like whatever takes their fancy, rip up their outfit, cover themselves in fake blood and pale make-up and lurch around the city groaning. Everyone loves an excuse to dress up and zombies are really fun*.

I went shopping on Thursday for an outfit from an op-shop. I decided that pale colours would be best as they’d show up the blood more and the best outfit I could find was a full length cream dress in an empire style. As a result I went as zombie Jane Austen; here is a photo to prove it.

As much fun as this experience was, I have to say I now have an understanding of why celebrities sometimes get annoyed with their fans. For the period of the march, which was about 1.30pm till well got back to my friends place to clean off at about 5.30pm, we were surrounded by people wanting to take photos of us, and wanting to have photos with us.

I have no problem with this at all, I was dressed up in a way to attract attention and I understood the implied conditions that went along with it, however each photo opportunity too maybe a minute I discovered that unless you took a step or two between photos you couldn’t get anywhere! After four hours of shuffling and countless photos (literally hundreds and hundreds) I was tired, hungry, thirsty and just wanted to go home.

My companions were much more accommodating of their adoring fans than I would have been without them, as zombie Shakespeare and zombie Queen Elizabeth I, and I have a great respect for their ability to smile (or grimace) for the camera time after time after time. They were even chased down by excited photographers on numerous occasions. Without them I would not have been nearly as popular.

My fingers are still stained pink from the food dye but it was worth it to be able to dribble brains all over myself. In all I had a fantastic time and I will definitely go again, but next time I might be better prepared for the hundreds of people who lined the route snapping photos and for the amount of time and energy needed to pose for hundreds of photos with your adoring fans.

*not everyone likes dress-ups and certainly not everyone likes zombies. In particular there was one apparently devout Christian woman who was very perturbed by my tram ride home.