Words from a Lazy Gramophone

It might be the sweetcorn?!

2008-09-16T20:32:00.030+01:00

The summer eventually had to come to an end, at least the travelling at festivals did, and after 8 festivals, lots of cheap cider and plenty of weather we had finally arrived at Shambala 2008. This was the only festival that we had to travel north for, and it was being held on the part of a country estate in Northamptonshire. Despite rumours of it being grim up north, we arrived to some fine weather and were looking forward to a festival that I'd heard so many good things about. The previous year some of friends attended Shambala and put on a bit of a performance under the Lazy Gramophone name of excellence. This year some of them would be back, but this time just to work and have plenty of fun at the same time. Amy and myself were working for Green Stewards, three six hour shifts over the weekend leaving us plenty of time to enjoy ourselves. I was as excited about Shambala as I have been for an festival I have ever been to, I didn't care that I hadn't heard of most of the artists, I could just tell that his was going to be a weekend full of laughter and happy days.

The weather was a bit soggy the first night, and by this point only Amy and myself had arrived out of our group, we were expecting Danny, Phil and Esther to turn up the following afternoon, but it nothing serious had so we enjoyed spending most of the Thursday relaxing outside the tent knowing we had no shifts until 7am the next day. Of course, relaxing would have been a whole lot better if a dirty big lorry hadn't suddenly decided to parked itself right in front of our tent. Taking this as a sign to have a bit of an explore I decided to try out the compost toilets, which were really nice, albeit a little drafty. The Shambala site is pretty small, but there is still plenty packed in without it feeling too cramped. There's a beautiful lake just by one stage, unsuprinsgly called the Lakeside Stage which is also powered entirely by renewable energy.

Just away from here was a man made beach, with beach huts, hot tubs and a sports field. Among the activities to take part in were five-a-side football, crazy golf and a spot of cricket. There were also some great pubs, one of which Danny and Esther were working in that was more comfortable than 90 per cent of the pubs in Britain. Sofas, fire pits out side, a piano, and whats more a healthy selection of local ale. Ideal! One stage called the Dome looked like a giant football, and there was even a rumour of a secret Disco that only appeared very late at night. There was still a bit of work to be completed before the site was ready, and we were forced to retreat to our tent after some serious prolonged rain hit the site. Sat in the tent it literally felt like someone was pouring a bucket of water over the tent, but eventually it subsided and we were able to stretch our legs for a bit. Cue a phone call from Esther, they had arrived but were camped in the other crew camping on the opposite side of the site, this news brought another downpour, so we hid in our tent until things improved. Once things had settled down we all met up, decided that their campsite was much better, so rather than pack up we just threw everything in the tent and carried it across the whole site, bringing some strange looks - except from two bloke who were doing exactly the same thing but heading in the opposite direction!

We were all finally settled into our little patch of home, and after a couple of ciders Danny and Phil kindly offered to share some pasta that they were cooking. or some reason the pasta had a lue falmbe aura surrounding it, and it seemed to take an age to cook but in the end it all looked half decent with some sweetcorn and sausage added to bulk it out a little. Danny got to try the first helping, but after the first mouthful he looked slightly concerned, something didn't taste quite right. Complaining of a metallic flavour Phil tried some and then Esther, noone looking particularly pleased with the whole experience. Maybe it was the sweetcorn? Phil suggested, trying some from the tin he had opened. Danny had a couple more mouthfuls before Phil finally realised what he had done. In their haste to eat the pasta hadn't been cooked using water from a bottle that they had, but instead Phil had used some of his Gran's 30 year old vodka that he had distilled into a plastic bottle. It was concentrated, flambed, vodka pasta. By now noone was left standing due to laughing,, and although he tried one last mouthful, Danny decided it was best to throw it away. It was a hilarious start to the weekend, and I still laugh when I think of Phil blaming it on the sweetcorn!

So we spent the first night hanging out in the Kamikaze Kaberet tent, where Phil was going to be doing some walkaround stuff dressed as a geisha during the weekend, but for tonight we settled in with some good cider and a small stage invasion that saw Amy and Phil busting some shapes on stage. Sadly the photos of this have suspiciously disappeared from Amy's camera so I can't show you the evidence, but believe me it was a good night! I think the experience of the poor dinner left Phil a little hungry as at one point he appeared to be trying to eat a bauble tree:

With an early morning shift the next day we didn't have a particularly crazy night, but in the morning I still felt I'd had a good time. We had a pretty easy first shift patrolling a market area, and mostly we were just giving directions, though we did acquire an umbrella that was incredibly useful! I found it behind an amusing seaside photo board of the like that ou often see in Blackpool:

It amazed us that we never actually got around to buying an umbrella the entire time we had been travelling around the festivals. After we had done our shift we hooked up with Phil and decided to take part in a little crazy golf. Danny and Esther were working in the pub nearby, so we after playing a little golf we enjoyed a pint and spent the afternoon relaxing and just enjoying the festival atmosphere. Once Danny and Esther finished we took in some circus treats from the Kamikaze Kaberet tent, before exploring what we called 'The Wilderness'. This was essentially a woodland area set slightly aside from the main festival site that had a variety of art installations, wood carvings and best of all, netting suspended from the various tree that you could climb into. It was a perfect place to come after the music was done and spend a few years trying to scramble around the netting like a 5 year old.

The following day we were expected to work an afternoon shift which meant that we got a bit of lie in, but because Phil needed his make up sorting we didn't hang around for long, and Amy was busy helping to paint his head for his reverse geisha look:

However, once the look was finished, Phil was certainly in character:

The vast majority of Saturday was spent working in a small tent throughout the afternoon, though we did get to see some goood spoken word performances, and Esther joined us for a few hours to try and recover. Danny hadn't stirred, and ended spending the entire day in his tent sleeping. A classic case of going too hard too early at a festival! By the end of our shift we ready to watch some musci, and after a bit of tea we went and saw Dr Meaker who played a decent set on the main stage, and then we went to catch MC Xander play in the football stage. The only problem with this stage was its size, as it seemed like half the festival was trying to get inside. Xander still put on a good show with some wicked didgeredoo underneath his multi-layered beatboxing, and it had us all in a good mood for some dancing. After plenty of grooving in a nearby bar, we were taken to the secret disco by Phil, something that he had found the previous night. It was essentially a small tent, hidden away behind one of the other stages that kept going until the small hours of the morning. The interesting thing was it seem to collect only the most outrageous and brilliant costumed people that you had seen throughout the day. Needless to say it was great fun!

The next day everyone felt a little bit ropey, but the one thing that stuck in our mind's was that Amy, Danny and myself had managed to book a sit down meal at Malinkys. Somehow at around 4am we'd decided that a meal of roasted salmon and sugar snap peas was exactly what we would want the following night. Esther and Phil were both impressed, but Amy wasn't looking very well at all and ended up spending most of the day resting and sadly missed the meal. We were working the evening shift, finishing at midnight, but luckily there was still some music playing. I had been looking forward to seeing Smerrins Anti-Social Club since seeing them earlier in the season at Glastonbury. We even got to see a bit of the fire display, as we were working nearby.

Watching Smerrins play on the Lakeside Stage had to be the highlight of the festival as far as music was concerned. They had everyone jumping and seemed to have half the performers for the weekend on stage as they kept on bringing on special guests. After what seemed like an age they finally finished, but it was a brilliant act to sign off watching on our festival summer.

I'm sure it was a combination of things that made Shambala so good. The weather wasn't great, but with a umbrella (finally) things were pretty good. Fantastic company helped as well, and Danny, Esther and Phil provided us with such good entertainment that it would have been difficult to top Shambala even if it had fallen earlier on in the festival calendar. It was also a combination of a great atmosphere, loads of good but not particualrly well known bands, and the 'Wilderness' would have kept me entertained all weekend just by itself!

The best was definitely saved until last.

I am a cider drinker!

2008-09-16T20:32:00.016+01:00

Relieved to be away from the Bloom we only had a couple of days off before heading to Beautiful Days, our penultimate festival of the year, and our last working with Oxfam. This was going to be another first festival for, but it felt nice going to the south-west for a festival, somehow traveling that way always feels like going downhill.

We had been pretty fortunate and had been quick to respond to a message wanting people to work the early shift signing stewards in as they arrived on site. This was a bonus as it would mean getting one shift out of the way nice and early, hopefully giving us some time to enjoy the festival a bit more. However, we were once again put on the late shift on the Sunday, but with some begging we managed to get this changed to a Sunday afternoon shift finishing at 6pm. So although the typical summer weather was once again looking poor, I was expecting a much better state of affairs compared to Bloom.

Beautiful Days is held at Escot Park in Devon and is organised by The Levellers, who headline the festival every year. This was going to be the first time that Oxfam had done the stewarding for this festival so it was impressed on us that all eyes would be watching. The site itself was extremely beautiful, with the large manor house overlooking the festival which was set in the middle of a valley. My only slight concern was that water tends to run downhill, so if it did get torrential then it might get quite deep in water. The festival focuses on being a family based event, with a good kids field and entertainment, as well as having performers out amongst the crowd. Possibly the best selling point was the fantastically cheap, blow yer head off cider that was only around 2:50 a pint. This was extremely welcome considering until now a pint was costing anything from 3.50 and upwards. There are a couple of nice bars, and we revisited one of Glastonbury haunts from earlier in the year by going to the Bimble Inn that was situated just past all the stages in its own little hideaway.

The main stage is set just at the bottom of a nicely sloped hill that makes it pretty easy to get a good view even when it’s busy, and I was walking along the hill in the afternoon when I ended up bumping into someone I went to college with that I hadn’t seen for eight years. To be honest I’m amazed he recognised me as I used to have short hair at college, and by now my dreads were past my shoulders. I also managed to make another Scilly connection later on in the Bimble Inn when I ended up chatting to someone who knew the Metcalfs on St.Mary’s – or was that at Glastonbury? Looking back it’s difficult to separate one from the other!

Having the Friday day off was pretty good and we perused the stalls and enjoyed the cider, a little too much in my case so I ended up having an early night but Amy carried on enjoying herself. The music began the following day though, and keeping up with tradition The Levellers opened the festival with an acoustic set in the Big Red Tent that was full to capacity. They played a pretty decent set, I saw them last at Glastonbury a few years ago and was impressed but this didn’t quite grab me in the same way. In the end I came away feeling that if you’ve seen one Levellers gig you’ve probably seen them all. We actually spent a fair proportion of the day hanging around the Big Red Tent, Amy was enjoying practising her hula hoping to the Tofu Love Frogs and I was happy finding money on the floor – £25!

Later on in the evening we wandered across to watch Nouvelle Vague who I was intrigued to see live as I was unsure as to how their sound would translate to the stage and I was pleasantly surprised. Despite being tiny, the two female singers dominated the stage and worked every song to perfection, pinpointing the emotive aspects of each song brilliantly.

Saturday brought a revisit of the rain that had afflicted Bloom so badly the previous weekend and we bravely ventured out to see if the slopes of the valley had turned into a treacherous death slide. We actually made a sensible decision and took a slight detour from our campsite to walk along the road that ran down into the site. This turned out to be a good idea as the hill coming down from our part of campsite was strewn with straw in a desperate attempt to stop the ground from breaking up too quickly. Backstage had turned into something of a quagmire, the backstage bar had become even more of a refuge for the bands waiting around or having just come off stage. Yet despite the rain, everyone was looking like they were enjoying themselves and this was something that kept the festival running to a good atmosphere. The rain did relent and began to only come in showers as slowly the arena began to fill up again as people flitted from stage to stage to catch the next band. I would say that Beautiful Days definitely impressed me as a festival, despite not being particularly huge, it catered well for a variety of festival experiences; families were more than welcome, the alcohol was good a cheap, entertainment went well into the night, and the line up was diverse enough to attract age ranges from 7 months to 70. We had an night shift on the Saturday, both of us stewarding in the dance tent until the early hours, ears plugs supplied. I’ve never used ear plugs at a gig, they’re mandatory for health and safety if you’re working in a stage area, but I have to say how impressed I was that they could keep the clarity of the music, and you could still hear people talking right next to you. However, once you take them out everything suddenly feels so loud and you experience aural overload. Terry was our shift supervisor for the tent, and being a great bloke he let me have a 45minute break so I could go and watch Supergrass play on the main stage. I saw the end of their set, and I was suitably impressed. The crowd was loving it, and in the cold evening air you could see a steady haze of heat rising up from the crowd down near the front. I got to see them play ‘Caught By The Fuzz’, my favourite song of theirs, so I enjoyed my break and then went back to dancing/stewarding in the dance tent. It was all pretty much uneventful work, although I did end up having to look after a Scottish bloke who had taken three tabs of acid and was a little worse for wear. I had to escort him to the Bimble Inn where I did the very English thing of getting him a cup of tea and we sat down and chatted rubbish until my shift was up and it was time to slide back up the deadly hill by the Bimble Inn and make my way back to the tent.

Although the weather had improved considerably by the Sunday, the mud wasn't going to disappear anytime soon, and our last Oxfam shift of the summer was going to be working in the Kids field keeping an eye out for lost children and making sure tents didn't get overcrowded. This was a pretty easy job and we spent most of our shift playing with all the cool stuff that was going on, the giant hula hoops, and loads of drums and percussion instruments.

Also just off to the side of the Kids Field was the Fairy Love stall which sells a wide variety of tutus, fairy wings and glitter. They're at pretty much every festival and we always see them advertising the glitter wrestling but until Beautiful Days we had never witnessed the spectacle, so we made the most of our work time to go and watch two girls in bikinis get into a paddling pool full of glitter and wrestle around in it. Personally I didn't see the need for the pool when there was plenty of mud to be wrestling in but it was still quite funny to watch and I think Amy was slightly tempted to have a go!

I think that by this point in the summer season we had pretty much had enough of the mud, and we knew that we had one last festival left before we had to call it day so we made a wise decision to head straight back to Bristol after our shift on the Sunday and miss out on the last night. The other advantage of this would be that the carpark would hopefully not be too muddy so our chances of escaping would be much higher! So when we were finally relieved of our duties we grabbed another free dinner, watched a little bit of Idlewild in the rain and then packed our stuff and attempted to escape the mud. Amy was ready and waiting in the Polo and I was scouting out the best route through the mud and when we were ready Amy kept to the plan and we managed skid and slide through the mud until we were safely onto the road that would take us away from Beautiful Days.

Despite the weather Beautiful Days was a really good festival, with plenty of good bands, none of them particularly groundbreaking, but good music none the less. The atmosphere helped and everyone was smiling despite the mud and that's all you can ask for really. It would be a festival that I would probably return to, but maybe in ten years (if it's still going, and if it is I expect the Levellers will still be playing the same set) and I would just hope that it hasn't changed too much in that time. So with our penultimate festival behind us we were looking forward to getting to Shambala, heading north for a change up toward Northampton, and seeing out the summer season in style.

Gloom

2008-09-16T20:32:00.011+01:00

After having a mighty fine weekend at the Big Chill being entertained by the likes of the Might Boosh, we left in high spirits, and even though it rained a bit on the Sunday, we didn’t end up getting caught in a flood as we drove through Tewkesbury! Our next festival was a youngling on the circuit, its inception being in 2007. From what we could gather it was going to be like a smaller version of Glade, and the fact that it was only 45 minutes from Bristol made it all the more appetising.

Our trip to 2000 Trees earlier in the summer had made us realise how beautiful the Cotswolds were, and Bloom was going to be situated not far from that site, although we found the site quite difficult to find. After making the correct turning we managed to drive straight past the festival and into Cheltenham, but a quick phone call later to Oxfam put us on the right path and we rocked up to a damp site that looked like it would only get worse if the forecast weather came through. Initial impressions of the site were that it really was quite small, in fact the tents for the music were more the size of small catering tents and didn’t seem to live up to any notion of an electronic dance festival. The main stage was quite an interesting design and the awning struck out over the stage like an arrowhead. Well, it would have done except that the stage wasn’t built yet, and the festival was supposed to be opening the day after. It didn’t quite have the same feeling of organisation that all the other festivals we had been to had, even 2000trees was more set up at this stage of play. There were no catering facilities for staff arranged, no running water and it wasn’t even worth asking about the showers. I had a bad feeling about this.

We were rudely woken the following morning by the sound of a van parking right out side out tent. Opening the tent doors I peered out to be confronted by a bright pink catering van, around fifteen yards away that was going to be running its generators all day from breakfast at 7 until late at night. At least we could finally get some free food though! It was actually a lovely day, and we didn’t have any shifts to do, although once again we had be scheduled down to do the final shift on Sunday night 12am – 8am. For now though we were happy to enjoy some sunshine and instead of hanging around the festival we went out for a walk along part of the Cotswold Way. It was actually a perfect walk to go on as it basically circumnavigated the festival and we got see some good aerial views out across Cheltenham and into the distance. We even got to see a limestone rock formation called the Devil’s Chimney. According to Wikipedia the Devil used to chill out up here and throw rocks at the Sunday churchgoers, until in a surprising moment of religious violence resulted in the Christians stoning the Devil until he retreated back down the chimney. There was no smoke coming out the chimney on this day so all I can say is that the Devil can’t have been home.

The walk took us through some woods, where Amy and I found what looked like a little hobbit hole, either that or a tramp’s mansion, and we briefly got attacked by some wasps before retreating to a nearby pub for a few pints and some dinner. It was actually quite nice to get away from the festival for a few hours as over the last two months I was beginning to feel like I was living inside a festival cocoon.

Friday morning meant having to go to work, and we were supposed to be looking after the Buddha Café that was open 24hrs situated in the campsite. It didn’t sound like it would be too bad, the only problem was usually having to stop people from smoking inside and the guys tat ran it would probably give us some free tea. However, once we got there we were approached by Clive, one of the supervisors who was talking about deploying us as the café wasn’t open yet. We just so happened to mention that we’d parked cars at the Big Chill the week before and in the blink of an eye we found ourselves in the car park getting shouted at by aggro drivers. It became quite clear that no-one who had been assigned to the car park really understood what was expected of them so Amy and I had to take charge and get the team working properly. Eventually it was all running fine, and we only had one annoying person in our group who seemed convinced that he was the supervisor of our team. He even tried to report me back to HQ for being 5 minutes late from my break – I’m sorry John but before I turned up you didn’t even know what the front end of a car looked like so just Jog On! Towards the end of my shift I even had my obligatory Scilly moment when I helped Paul Simmons get his car parked.

Thankfully our shift parking cars finished eventually, and we pretty much filled the field we were working and Clive was very pleased with our work and thanked us enough times to make it worthwhile. Having the Friday evening off meant we could explore a bit of the festival, although it wouldn’t take long, and maybe see some good music. The arena was small enough to walk around in about fifteen minutes, but there were a couple of quirky bits of entertainment along the way, especially the games tent. They had a bicycle linked up to a projector screen that you could play Frogger on – cycling made you move forwards and turning the handlebars made you go left or right. They also had Asteroids, and Space Invaders, possibly one of the greatest arcade games ever! They had a bit of a fairground, with a big wheel that would have probably have given some great views during the day, but not much else in terms of entertainment aside from the music. It was a pretty cold evening and it was getting quite windy, one of the disadvantages of being on top a great big hill, but we still stuck around to try and watch Beardyman, a former UK beat box champion. It’s the second/third time I’ve attempted to watch a set of his and every time I’ve been extremely disappointed and this was no exception. There’s only so many times he can say “I am fucking Beardyman” before it gets a bit boring, yes I know who you are, now do something that impresses me. For my money MC Xander is twice the performer, and I’m sure there are many like him who are equally impressive, and one thing’s for sure I wont be going to see Beardyman ever again. The overriding atmosphere at Bloom felt a little underage, and it soon became apparent this was a smaller version of Glade in every aspect, age included. The rain started falling and feeling uninspired we swiftly retired to Bedfordshire.

Saturday brought some biblical weather, possibly an attempt to drown all the little kiddies who were pilled up and chewing cow pats. In fact it was raining so hard that we barely left the tent apart from running over to Pink Ladies van to grab some food and then retreating quickly back under canvas. We had to work until the early hours of the morning, and this time we did end up in the Buddha Café for a while trying in vain to stop people from smoking indoors. It was beginning to get pretty packed in the café as it was the only thing open after midnight, and because of the wind and rain everyone was trying to pile in. We also had to swap positions occasionally with people on the entrance gate to the arena and it was here that we got to see just how many people were trying to get in the festival for free. They had three security guards checking for wristbands and they were pulling people with fake bands over with alarming regularity. Punters were not allowed to take their own alcohol into the arena either, an attempt to encourage people to spend money behind the bar. This meant that punter were just throwing bags of booze over the Heras fencing into the arena before casually walking through the gates and then picking up their bags. We did briefly get posted down near the main stage during Roni Size’s set, but I left feeling slightly disappointed. The set at WOMAD had been really good, but here at Bloom none of the Reprazent seemed that interested, and because the weather was so bad there wasn’t even that much of a crowd so it all fell a little flat. The rain didn’t stop all night, and when we finished our shift we couldn’t wait to get dry and go to bed.

Sunday was a mild improvement on the wetness, but it was still blowing a gale, and by the time we got up to walk around most of the market and food stalls had gone. Pieminister, our favourite festival pie shop from Bristol, had left on Saturday night and other market stalls had been blown over in the wind. On the plus side I managed to get a free toasted sandwich by accident from a very busy sandwich van. Word on the ground was that many of traders were unhappy with the organiser for delaying the opening of the site for an afternoon, obviously cutting back on their trading time but still having to pay their employees. In the end most of the traders decided to cut their losses and go home on the Saturday night, or early Sunday morning. Thoroughly disenchanted by the whole Bloom weekend we spent much of Sunday chilling out in the tent reading and occasionally getting some food. The weather did improve slightly and we went out to watch Tunng who turned out to be the highlight of the weekend by a Cotswold mile. Tunng play highly original alt-folk that managed to seem as English as the weather we’d endured. There were plenty of toys being used on stage to create sounds, a wind-up bird in a cage, the percussionist playing wind chimes with his feet. The whole set was mesmerising, and the small crowd by the stage all enjoyed it massively. Amy decided to do some hula hoping for most of the set and one of the official photographers took the opportunity to take plenty of photos. I think the mud is still on the hula hoop!

Our final shift was working the 12am-8am and once again we were supposed to be in the Buddha Café, but low and behold it shut at midnight, so instead we got redeployed elsewhere. Amy got stuck out by a car park pointing people who were leaving in the right direction, but in the cold it didn’t offer much shelter. I was charged with making sure no one was trying to get in the Buddha Café, the positive aspect of this was getting a massive plate of free food and some tea from the guys who worked there. However, after an hour or so things became quiet and I was lucky enough to get posted on the tea buggy. Leigh, who was the head honcho with Oxfam for the event wanted to go to bed at 4am, so I was being left in charge of delivering tea to all the other stewards still working through the night. Brenda was Kawasaki Mule, and perfect for the muddy conditions and great fun to drive. I forgot to mention to Oxfam that I didn’t have a driving license and I subsequently spent a fun four hours pelting it around the festival site in the mud. Of course, my real duty was to deliver tea regularly, and the only downer of the night came when I turned up to the campsite and found out I’d just missed out on a race with the security guards in their vehicles. I’m sure Brenda would have won!

Eventually it was all over, and instead of grabbing a couple of hours kip before leaving we made the decision to get out of the site sharpish as the car park was only going to get muddier. We quickly packed our stuff away before trudging through the mud to car park. My last memory of Bloom 2008 will be seeing through into the back area of the Buddha Café and seeing the owner going absolutely ballistic at his staff, screaming at them and then kicking a bin at them. I think he summed up the weekend quite well.

I've Got 99 Problems but the Nazi's Aint One...

2008-08-04T18:22:00.004+01:00

Raising your expectations of a festival, or anything else for that matter, can sometimes backfire when it doesn't reach the heights of enjoyment that you originally thought it might. The Big Chill looked and sounded like a festival that I was going to enjoy, some good music, comedy and also interactive art installations. Plus it is all set on Deer Park, complete with multiple lakes, a castle overlooking the site, and this year would be host to a sports day on the Sunday. We were going to be working for a new company called DC Site Services parking cars, not the best work but it couldn't be that bad, could it?

Eastnor Castle lies a bit further east than Tewkesbury, the modern day Atlantis, and overlooks the Big Chill site, a large deer park in the shape of a sausage. Quite a long sausage. The Big Chill was all sold out, capacity is around 35000, and the weather looked as though it should stay reasonably dry for the weekend with only the occasional shower. However, we arrvied on Tuesday afternoon, quite early in the hope that we might be able to get an early shift working for DC. The advantage that this work would have is that we were getting paid, not much to be fair, but some cash is always good, especially as we were now half way through the season. Also with car parking they only require 50 per cent of their staff for Saturday and Sunday, so we were hoping to get a couple of days off to properly enjoy the festival. However, finding the DC headquarters was proving to be a tough call. I don't think I can overstate the disorganised nature of DC enough, it was something quite amazing for a company that operates at a variety of festivals throughout the summer. To begin with they were operating out of someone's tent, and then we found out there were no early shifts, so we'd arrived early for nothing. Eventually when we did have to register we had no clue where to go, no obvious HQ, and the only way we managed to find out was through some people we recognised from another festival. Then the decision over day and night shifts was all done on a first come first served basis, with no real organisation. I quickly came to the conclusion that DC stood for Disorganised Cowboys.

Shambles aside, the site at The Big Chill is beautiful, albeit a little thin. The bad thing is that the main North carpark is located a long way from the main camping grounds. Mind you, compared to Glastonbury it's nothing so it's not that bad, but I've gotten used to turning up early and parking right near where I'm camping! For the general public though I was having to tell people that it was a good ten minute walk to the nearest camping, longer if ou wanted to be closer to the arena. Thursday was our first day of parking, and it wasn't too bad on the whole as we were mainly just pointing people in the direction of some other stewards who were parking the cars as they had done it before. However, it's not rocket science and before long we were up in the firing line getting people to park their cars as close to each other as possible, whilst leaving a fire lane all the time. The hardest aspect of the job was stopping people from just driving off and parking where they liked. Unfortunately most people seem to leave their brains behind as soon as they get behind a wheel, and the amount of times people asked me if they could park a little closer got a little tiresome after a while. Most people were ok, but another tiresome comment was people who couldn't understand why the parking needs to be done properly and when we kept trying to tell them just responded with : "Just chill out man, it's supposed to be the Big Chill." Jog On.

So ou first 12 hour shift was not bad, but we ended up finishing over half an hour late as our cover didn't turn up on time, I can't say I was surprised at all, in fact I was just glad that they turned up full stop. One problem was that we wanted to work on the Friday too, but when we got back they said all the Friday shifts had been taken, all because we were late because they were late relieving us. Not impressed at all, Amy and me managed to arrange to turn up at midday in the hope that they might need some extra people. So after getting a early night we turned up again on the Friday lunchtime and were lucky enough to get a shift, which would mean another 50 quid in cash so see us through the festival season a little longer. It was another day of repetition, but we just about managed to survive the same old questions. The end of shift saw us being moved to a different carpark, in the East, and when we arrived it was a scene of carnage. Triple parked cars, car alarms going off, the works. I felt sorry for anyone turning up around midnight on the Friday as it was chaos of the highest order. Thankfully we were done, and after picking up our money we relaxed in the knowledge that we could enjoy the rest of weekend with no more work planned.

Saturday turned out nice and fine, and we went for a good stroll around the site getting to take in the sights for the first time. One of the good aspects of The Big Chill is the artistic elements to the festival as they have art installations at various points on site. They try to encourage the public to get involved with the festival instead being passive in order to get more out of the experience. There's a couple of pianos dotted around the site, one is sat on top of the hill overlooking the lakes and the arena. It's often around these places that you have the most fun, and one of the installations on the hill was the Angry House, by David Bickerstaff. Imagine your Dad's old allotment shed getting covered in radioactive goo and mutating. This would be the result, as it's a house that as you approach begins to get angry, the doors bang and it generally doesn't sound impressed. It's a bit like that spooky shed in Lost where Jakob lives. At night time over the hill there the Fake Moon, a large helium balloon that slowly travels across the night sky mimicating lunar activity. There's also an arts trail with a variety of different art installations, which was only accesible after 10pm. Fashion also gets a look in here, with an ethical fashion show, as well as the chance to dress up and take part in regular shows throughout the day. One mistake the organisers did make was not ordering enough programmes on lanyards, which meant having to carry around an A4 programme the whole time which was quite annoying. The programmes themselves were being sold across site by Big Issue vendors, and a nice touch was the organisers letting street buskers perform on stage at certain points during the day.

It was something of a shame having to work on the Friday, the money was always handy though, and I only missed out on two acts that I wanted to see: Roots Manuva (who I've seen before), and Thievery Corporation (a little more gutted at missing this). However, there was plenty else left to see and we watched some of The Irresistible Force on the open air stage, who had some really stunning AV work on the big screens as well as some great electronic music. The were followed by Shoreline, who probably fall into the category nu-folk, and we watched a little of this before taking a walk over to the Comedy Tent in anticipation of Bill Bailey. We wanted to get there early so we would actually get in the tent and turned up over an hour before he was due to go onstage only to realise that it was already full. There were hundreds of people outside desperate to get in, and security had to erect a fence to stop people from overcrowding the venue. It was a big error from the organisers putting Bill on such a small stage, The Mighty Boosh warranted a spot on the main stage, and Bill Bailey would have too. Unable to get inside we listened from on the grass, and fortunately we were sat next to the Big Chill Radio which was broadcasting the whole show. Mr Bailey was brilliant as usual with a great range of jokes and songs. He started by talking about Jay Z's performance at Glastonbury and how he covered Wonderwall by Oasis. This mixing of British music was something that Bill commented on and he proceeded to give his own interpretation of a hip hop version of the Dad's Army theme tune. Worth checking out on youtube if you have a funny bone! The rest of set was incredibly funn and he proved to be a resounding success and despite not getting inside, it was well worth turning up to listen to.

After Bill Bailey and some cider we went to check out a great act called the Hot 8 Brass Band from New Orleans. Playing on the open air stage these guys got plenty of people grooving in the late afternoon sun with a great mix of jazzy brass, and finishing with a superb cover of Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing. Probably one of the most talked about acts of the weekend was The Mighty Boosh, everyone I spoke to was going to watch them, and we were no exception. After getting some free food from the crew catering we walked back down the hill to the arena and it was already looking pretty busy.

They didn't disappoint, despite being quite clearly inebriated, and it was a funny set with some very amusing songs. Everyone in the audience seemed to enjoy it, including the people in Cheetah costumes right at the front. In fact the cheetahs were part of the walking entertainment as apparenty last year there were lots of zebras, and this year they brought in the cheetah's to cull them. It was quite funny watching the people dressed up in cheetah costumes stalking people on stilts dressed as zebras! After The Might Boosh we wandered for a while, checking out a DJ set from Coldcut for a bit before walking back over the main stage to watch Plaid who were going to be performing at one point with Random Dance, choereographed by Wayne McGregor. Their set was really good, and it culminated in a brilliant finale when the dancers came on stage, all dressed in white. They took the phrase "busting some shapes" to another level with an amazing performance that seemed to last forever. Dazzingly white, it was a mesmerising finish to a fantastic set, and we both left the stage feelig like we had seen a unique perfromance. A short stroll took us over to the Castle Stage where we watched the end of an African Tribute to James Brown, that included Pee Wee Ellis, James Brown's saxophonist. Although we only watched the end of the set, it looked like it had been a great show. There was a collection of African musicians on-stage playing a variety of instruments and everyone was having a good time. The night was finished up with some classic Mr Scruff pulling out a gret DJ set, and at one point I bumped into Lucy who worked in the Foredeck on Scilly, which just goes to show that even at 35,000 this was a small festival.

Sunday wasn't as fine, but it was good enough despite the occaowersional light shower, and we made it up to the Enchanted Gardens for 1pm so that Amy could take part in a Hula Hoop workshop. It proved successful and she managed to learn some new moves and in the meantime I had a lovely blueberry smoothie. We even bumped into a couple of people from Glade, some of the miniture hat people that we had a laugh with and we had a catch up with them for a while before taking a walk down to the croquet lawn. Just across the lake there was a large wooden structure built by a company called the World Famous, and later that evening they were going have a big fireworks display and burn the whole thing.

http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=35799556&postID=1026199885456772255

It was definitely on our list of must sees for the evening, but up until then we didn't get up to a great deal. We spent a couple of hours watching some comedy, and then we went to the Castle Stage to watch the Peatbog Fairies. These were a perfect act for a showery Sunday, playing an energetic set of Irish folk music that kept everyone dancing, and Amy hula hooping! We recharged our batteries with a thali from the Thali cafe before watching the Buzzcocks, who played pretty much non stop until the end of their set. They put in a decent enough set, predictably finishing with Ever Fallen In Love, and they had most of the aging punks in the audience jumping around. As it started getting darker we went down to the lakes to watch the fireworks and the The World Famous set fire to their creation. There was plenty of anticpation surrounding the bonfire, and quite a crowd had gathered and they were not to be let down at all. We were sat a good a good distance away and we could still feel the instense heat coming across the pond. The falmes licked high up into the night and I can honestly say that I've never seen a fire like it. The fireworks that accomapanied the burning were brilliant as well, not too many high altitude ones, but plenty small ones that exploded into a corkscrew down to the earth.

Needing to cool off somewhat we walked make over to the Castle Stage to watch Mum (pronounced Moom), though it was strangely empty. I've been a fan of Mum for a while now and I was looking forward to seeing what they would be like live as I had the feeling they might be a little too chilled out, even for The Big Chill. Fortunately I had nothing to worry about and they put in a top draw performance with some amazing visuals. They're simialr to Sigur Ros in many ways, but this performance was much more dance orientated than anything done by Sigur Ros. The variety of instruments played onstage was something else, and the female vocalist has an amazing voice; pretty much what you come to expect from any Icelandic band. As we walked away I commented to Amy that I felt we'd just seen the best band of the weekend. I turned out to be wrong.

The Bays are a group who can be best described as a improvisational dance act who don't record studio albums. Every live show is different and it means that you get some fantastic live dance music. However, whilst this is interesting enough, they were taking things to a whole new level with a collaboration with the Heritage Orchestra. With a composer onstage, as well as conducter, Orchestra, drummer, bass player and DJ, this was always going to be something different. Luckily for those of us who had no idea what to expect everything got explained before they came on stage. In front of the musicians were a bank of LCD screens, the conductor had one too, and the composer would stand by the side of the stage and compose music for them to play in real time. This then got displayed on their screens, and the conductor brought them in time etc. All of this whilst some guys freestyled a load of live dance music behind them. It has to be one of the most original performances that I've ever seen and I was completely captivated throughout the entire set. They moved through a variety of dance genres, from ambient to jungle, and all the time we could see on the big screens the composers writing music, the conductor running over to chat to him to receive instructions before running back and relaying it to the orchestra. It was a shortish set, around 45 minutes, but I was completely stunned by it. Totally unique and an unbelievebale finish to the weekend.

The next day we were still talking about The Bays and The Heritage Orchestra, and if you ever see these guys playing near you, buy a ticket as you will not be disappointed. We drove towards Tewkesbury, thankfully not resembling Atlantis, really taken with The Big Chill, despite the chaotic work that we'd had to do. I felt that I had not seen all this festival had to offer, and I would recommend The Big Chill to anyone who likes a good variety of dance music, and some artistic culture as well. The following week we would be heading to Bloom, a relatively new fesitval taking place not far from where 2000trees was. One thing was for certain, it would be hard for it to beat The Big Chill.

Bassewho?

2008-08-04T15:12:00.017+01:00

I'm melting! I think that was how I felt for most the weekend, a stark contrast compared to 2007 when you could have drowned in mud, but the only worry was that this could be the whole of the summer's weather condensed into one weekend! Of course, the weather is only a small part and I was eagerly anticipating WOMAD having only heard good things about the festival from my friends who went last year. Once again I hadn't really looked too closely at the line up beforehand, and I was looking forward to seeing a wide range of acts that I'd (hopefully) never heard of before.

Amy and I arrived on site on the Wednesday afternoon, giving a lift to a chap called Andy from Bristol in order to split the fuel cost, and it was already pretty warm. I was definitely glad that the walk from our staff parking to the campsite wasn't too far as it was directly up a massive hill. The camping areas for WOMAD are split away from the arena so there are two distinctive areas, which until this summer I'd never seen before, but the main difference with WOMAD is that between the campsite and the arena is a large arboretum. Now a dictionary definition for an arboretum is: a plot of land on which many different trees or shrubs are grown for study or display. Now I'm a great lover of trees, but there's trees and there 'trees!' The arboretum at the WOMAD site in Malmesbury is pretty amazing, with a whole variety of conifers, and a couple of stunning Sequoia's. Having never seen a sequoia before, despite knowing what to expect, I was slightly taken aback by the sheer size - and these were only little ones.

Having been briefed by Oxfam as to what our jobs would entail for the weekend we were in a pretty upbeat mood as we had been entrusted with the job of being Child Escort Team. Essentially our job was to roam around the arena and camping areas waiting for a call over the radio that a lost child had been found by a steward, then we would have to escort them to the found children tent. So basically this meant we could go anywhere in the arena and not be based in one position, as long as we could hear the radio. The only annoying thing was our shift patterns that left us doing the midnight until 8am shift in the early hours of Monday morning, but it would mean that we'd get to see plenty of the festival.

Thursday was a pretty sedate day, as we had no shifts, and we spent most of the day relaxing in the sun and wandering around the site getting our bearings. Although the arena was open, there was no music planned until later in the evening when Lee Scratch Perry would be performing. So we meandered around the arboretum for a while looking at all the healing tents and noticed that the 'Gong Shower' people from 2000trees were here, but they were now offering Gong Bath's - surround sound gong therapy! The line up was looking good too, plenty of acts that I'd never heard of, and I was looking forward to catching some new bands and having a good weekend. WOMAD has plenty of workshops too, you can learn flamenco,salsa, and a whole variety of drumming styles. In many ways WOMAD reminded me of Cornbury, it is a very middle class festival with middle aged women wearing 'traditional' African dresses with spear and shield prints of them. However, the atmosphere at WOMAD was completely different feeling much more relaxed and less like you were being force fed a festival experience.

Amongst the market stands we came across a great (and very cheap) book shop which meant I felt obliged to spend some money. I left with a few books, most notably a great book about the history of beer and the pub by a guy called Pete Brown. It made me laugh straight away and I ended up quoting to Amy from the book regularly as by trivial knowledge about the history of beer grew daily. It's called "A man walks into a pub..." a great title and it would make an excellent Christmas or birthday present for someone who likes a drop of ale - and there's plenty of them on Scilly.

One observation I made at WOMAD was related to the port-a-loos - this time being provided by the company DavLav. This particular toilet comes with a urinal 'funnel' inside the toilet, as well as your usual toilet, but what made me laugh was the health and safety message stuck on the inside: "Designed to be used by 10 or less people over the course of a 40hour week." I'm no maths genius, but these were surely going to be used by morning than 10 people each over 4 days? Having said this though, WOMAD has lay the claim down for the cleanest toilets in festival history. There was always toilet roll available, sanitising hand wash and they just all seemed permanently clean. We even had advise as to what should go in the toilets:

The Thursday evening saw Lee 'Scratch' Perry take to the stage in the Siam tent. The Jamaican reggae legend has recorded a huge number of records over the years, and the tent was packed out to see him perform. Kids were invading the disabled platforms and the expectation was pretty high, but in the end the sound just wasn't up to the job. The sound engineers should have had time to sort everything out as Mr Perry was late on stage, his flight to Bristol airport was delayed and he even came on stage with his suitcase. Feedback problems plagued the set, the drums took over any other instrument and the vocal levels were terrible. In the end I found it a bit of a disappointment, but we did make one discovery to cheer us up. The bar company at WOMAD make a surcharge on each pint you buy as a deposit on the card cups that they use. You collect the cups and then take them back to a recycling point and you get your deposit back for each cup you bring. Of course, not everyone remembers this and they leave their cups lying around, queuing a fight between us and the 8 year old kids as to who can grab the most cups to get our 10p a cup deposit!

Friday morning meant our first shift as Child Escort Team - I asked Oxfam if we could be called the Gobblers instead, but they didn't seem too keen on the idea. We had been kept up until late in the night by the girls in the tent next to us, and we quickly christened them Gossip Girl and Motor Mouth. I have never come across someone who can just talk non-stop for hours on end, and it wasn't even interesting stuff that she was talking about. So we were glad to get away from them for eight hours, and hopefully we'd have a pretty quiet shift with not too many children getting lost. It was certainly a slow start, so we de-camped to the excellent Tiny Tea Tent - a regular stall on the festival circuit and winner of some kind of green award at Glastonbury this year. Their stall is entirely solar powered and they serve up some good tea in solid mugs; always a bonus. So Amy and I sat down on their sofa for a while chatting to some of the girls working their, and listening to a group of kids sat by a table near to us. The main topic of conversation seemed to centre around vegetarian food, which the most rotund kid of the group (a seasoned eater by any one's standards) sweepingly claimed 'all tastes like cardboard'. We also learnt that his favourite dining establishment was Morrison's Cafe. As the morning got warmer our tubby friend rolled off into the distance with only heart disease and diabetes to worry about, whilst we went for a walkabout before the music started for the day.

We fancied checking out some tibetan monks who were doing a big performance on the open air stage and we were not disappointed at all. The Tashi Lhunpo Monks performed traditional song and chanting, along with performance dancing in full costumes. It was an ethereal sight, and some of the chants had interesting stories behind them that the monks spoke of before each performance. One story involved speaking with ancestors through music by using human bones as drumsticks, at least that's how I remember the story. It was still pretty mesmerising, and something that I was glad we watched.

We had a couple of minor call outs over the radio for us to retrieve some lost kids and take them over the found children tent, but both times the children were reunited before we even managed to take them anywhere. One kid in particular wouldn't leave to go to the tent until she had finished her chocolate muffin! We spent the majority of the rest of the shift mooching around and collecting badges from the campaign stands to add to our collection of Oxfam ones. I grabbed a couple of badges against supermarket expansion plans, one against war in general, and I also got a free breakfast bar from a vegetarian stall. All in all a successful first shift, and by the time we had clocked out and had some food we arrived back in the arena in time to catch the end of Toumani Diabate. I've seen Toumani play last year at Glastonbury, and he was excellent, in fact he also came on and played with Bjork as he featured on one song off her album Volta. He put in another good performance from what I gathered, what we heard was certainly excellent and he had his son on stage who is another excellent kora player, the instrument for which Diabate has his fame. After his set culminated we walked over to the Big Red Tent - not as big as it sounds, but big enough - to watch the Bedouin Jerry Can Band, who were complete entertainers and excellent at it. These guys were fantastic, playing old jerry cans, ammunition cases, basically anything left behind in the desert after conflicts. The were lead by a lecherous front man who got all the women in the audience going, and I think even Amy sang her approval at one point. This was uplifting music, a distinctive sound full of traditional and contemporary bedouin flavours.

After this we had a short break in the music to take part in a Salsa workshop. I wasn't too keen, but after trying some in Costa Rica Amy was very much up for it, so I succumbed, albeit a little anxious. However, I have to say that it turned out to be great fun, despite very tiring, and after a while we were managing to do pretty well at learning the steps and according to Amy we even had people watching us to learn how to do it. I can't verify this as I think I spent the whole time cracking up with laughter and it was definitely one of the funnier parts of the weekend.

After our dancing we returned to the Big Red Tent to find it filling quite rapidly with probably ever festival goer under 25 as the next act would be a Nathan 'Flutebox' Lee; a man who is beatboxing flautist. It was an intersting and original performance with plenty of collaborators, but I was more interested to note that towards the end of the set I could see Shlomo to the left of the stage. In fact within minutes he was on stage, and completely up-staged Flutebox Lee with a solo performance of a few songs. After missing Shlomo at Glastonbury I was glad to have finally seen something of him in action live. After this finished we wandered around catching bits and pieces of acts such as Speed Caravan, and Terakaft, but we were feeling pretty tired and we walked back through the stunning arboretum. At night they have a light show with music that goes on until 4am and tonight they had some kind giant inflatable turd that you could play with.

Attempting to lie in when the sun is blazing is pretty much an impossibility when living in a tent. Unable to handle the heat after 9am was becoming standard so we quickly moved to some shade in the arboretum where we snoozed, read the paper and hula hooped until it was time to catch a band called Babylone Circus who were an excellent French ska band, who despite the heat, managed to wake everyone from their lethargy and inject some dancing into the day. They were absolutely superb and are definitely worth checking out if you get the chance. I was doubly happy as I managed to get a free mexican bean burger as the lady gave me change for a tenner instead of a fiver - bonus. I was met later in the day by Simon Gibson, who had come to 2000trees, and had a free ticket to WOMAD and he brought cheap cider which was a nice respite from the 3.95 stuff we were buying from the bar. It's always good to see a familiar face, and we were also joined by one of Amy's friends from University, who we had to give a finger puppet to as she had missed out on Glade the previous week. Unfortunately our second shift beckoned, working from 4pm till midnight, but we were confident that we wouldn't have too much to deal with.

Of course this turned out to be completely untrue, as we had plenty of lost children to deal with, but prehaps the worse part of the day was when Amy lost her turtle necklace. This was something that she had bought when doing turtle conservation work in Parismina, Costa Rica. Pretty much irreplacable, unless she goes back, and it wasn't a high point of the afternoon. We reported it into lost property but the chances of it being returned, or even found, were pretty low and we went to watch some Roni Size to cheer ourselves up. Roni Size Reprazent have been doing a live tour this summer because of the remastered release of their Mercury Award winning New Forms. This was the first chance I'd had to see them and they were absolutely brilliant; a little early in the evening, but they were getting the evening going in style.

After Roni we checked out Jah Wobble, which was really good until we got called away by not one, but two, seperate cases of simultaneous lost children. By the time we had finished with the kids Jah Wobble had finished, which was a shame as the BBC Radio 3 stage, which was set in the arboretum had a great feel to it. The rest of the night mainly consisted of jungle and drum and bass, with bristol DJ TC performing on the Little Sicily stage, followed up by DJ Marky and Patife. Simon also managed to find some excellent samosas on sale right by the stage so we danced around a bit here for a while until our shift finished. We were expecting Asif Ali Khan to finish off the night with a performance in the Siam tent, but he couldn't make it and was replaced with the Sufi Women of the Islands. Mesmeric would be an appropriate word to use, although a little freaked out might be a good phrase as well. There was certainly something hypnotic about their set in the early hours in the morning, making you feel like you were in a dreamlike state, and in a good way. I'm still not sure which Islands exactly they were from, but it definitely wasn't Samson.

The final day of WOMAD carried on in terms of brilliant sunshine and sweaty tents so once again we found ourselves spending the Sunday morning in the shade of the beautiful trees, this time listening to the singing workshop, and reading the latest sports news in the Observer. We finally ventured into the arena to watch the American band Little Feat, who were pretty decent in a rock-a-billy, blues manner, and they had quite a following that helped get the afternoon going quite steadily. My only regret of the festival was to come when we missed Ernest Ranglin and Bassekou Kouyate so we could get some food. Just one of those things really, but we got back in time to check out the procession, which was a carnivalesque walk through the arena with plenty of interesting characters to look at.

Anyone who is familiar with our festival journies will know all about Amy's tiny straw boater, in fact it even has its own facebook group, but on the Sunday we finally someone with possibly the smallest hat ever, except for Leprechauns.

Small hats aside, we did manage to watch some of Justin Adams performance on the BBC Radio 3 stage, and also performed later on in the afternoon in the Gala Performance with a host of musicians from the entire weekend including Billy Cobham and Bassekou Kouyate. The Gala Performance was excellent, encompassing a wide variety of music, and all pretty much improvised due its nature. After this we caught some of Transglobal Underground before feeling a little unsure as to how to finish off the evening. I quite fancied the sound of GOCOO and GoRo, a Japanese drumming collective and a didgeredoo player. They have forty taiko drums on stage, and they certainly sounded like they'd be good. In the end they weren't good, they were fandabbidosi! One of the best performances I'd seen all summer, I just couldn't get over how powerful the drumming was, and the digeredoo just added to the the whole sound. The lighting and costume effects helped as the lead female drummer was almost shamanic with her ultra long black hair.

I shot this during the set and they were relentless from start to finish, providing probably the highlight of the festival for me. Unfortunately this meant the end of the festival us as we had to go to work for our final shift from midnight until 8am, which was nit a shift that we were looking forward to. We knew it would be quiet and that was the problem, but after three days of excellent music, a nice easy shift to finish with wasn't all that bad. We spent the majority of the night sauntering around the arboretum, but we did get some free food before the arena shut from one of the closing food stalls. Nothing much really happened, but we did get one last call from the radio at around 6am that a child had got lost going to the toilet in the morning. Funnily enough it turned out to be a young lad that had been lost a couple of days before, so we had a laugh with/at the kid for a bit before finishing at 8am in another morning of blazing sunshine.

WOMAD was a great festival, one that I enjoyed for its atmosphere, music, cleanliness of toilets and weather! The site itself at Charlton Park is incredibly picturesque and the arboretum was a great place to hang around and relax when the weather got a little hot. Despite not knowing many of the acts performing I watched a whole host of great performances and I would thoroughly recommend this festival to anyone who had an interest in music they extends beyond what you might hear on a daily basis. So it was with another day of sunshine that we left WOMAD before heading back to Bristol with thoughts of next festival, we were heading from the Big Heat to The Big Chill...

1pm? It's Tequila time!

2008-07-29T11:42:00.008+01:00

Summer weather is something that can never be replied upon - as evidenced by many of the summer festivals from last year that suffered from tempestuous conditions. Glastonbury was struck down with some bad weather, so WOMAD later in late July, but Glade Festival had some of the worse conditions of the summer. Two months rainfall in just a few hours meant that the opening acts had to wait as the stages had power problems. The emergency services were stopping people from coming to the festival as Aldermaston was under four foot of water, and potential festival goers were floating down the road refusing to leave their cars. A year has passed, and fingers were kept crossed for some fine weather for the weekend of July 17-20 - hopefully it would prove to be a return to some of the sunstroke weekends of Glades in the past.

One thing stood on our side though and that was knowing that we would be working inside as we were to be working behind the bar at the Origin Stage for Friday and Saturday afternoon. Amy and I were really looking forward to working for Peppermint Bars and the weather forecast was looking pretty good so all in all I was expecting a great festival. We had forgotten a map to the site but we knew the way, just about, but trying to find out where to sign in was a little more difficult. After going to gate one, we were then directed to gate two. We parked and queued to get our staff wristbands only to be told to go back over to gate one, where, eventually we got our bright red and yellow passes. They had to choose colours that clashed with my hair!

Finally arriving we spent a nice evening having a few beers with some of Amy's old friends, Paul and Slap, meeting new ones and generally getting our heads around the new layout to the site. The festival hadn't sold out, and in order to keep to budget some of the smaller tents had been merged with the larger ones to save money, not a bad idea really and it definitely worked. It was noticeably quieter on the Thursday than in previous years, though I had a feeling that this wouldn't be a bad thing as it would help to make the atmosphere a little more intimate, and I was looking forward to a good few days. We spent a rather sedate evening for a Thursday at Glade just having a few drinks before catching an early night in preparation for our first shift behind the bar the following day.

Although the idea of working at a festival might seem like an easy way to get a free ticket and being able to watch plenty of bands perform, it doesn't always work out so easy. Working for Oxfam can often mean being placed out near a car park a long way from being able to hear any music whatsoever. However, working for Peppermint Bars would bring some welcome comfort to that particular lottery, we knew exactly where we would be working, and that we'd be able to see plenty of Dj's play throughout Friday and Saturday afternoon at the Origin Stage. This is the outdoor psytrance stage with a brilliant sound system provided by Funktion One. They tested the speakers each morning by playing a recording of Formula One cars racing by and it was amusing each day to see people walking by the stage to be suddenly startled by the roar of a race car streaming from one corner of the dance floor to the other. We were going to be fortunate enough to be positioned with a great view looking back over the dance floor towards the Origin Stage enabling us to enjoy watching everyone dancing as soon as the music would begin. The Origin Stage is always packed, every year no matter what the weather from as soon as the music starts at 12pm, until it stops much later in the evening.

Amy and I were both looking forward to work, it's not difficult serving beer at a festival as you don't even have to operate the till; just take the order and the money, tell the cashier what the order was, give the customer the change and their drinks. The Origin Bar isn't one of the busiest bars and this means that you can always have a good bit of a chat with the customers and have a bit of a laugh while you work. Amy was happy because we got to see an artist called Slack Baba, not that she'd ever heard of him, she just found the name amusing! Our shift ran from 1130am to 630pm, but for most of it we were having a dance and a chat with the various drinkers who kept rocking up. Glade operates a no under 18 policy on its ticket holders, which is actually quite nice and makes serving much easier as one of the main issues that I've seen over the course of the summer is the amount of under age drinking. Not so much from alcohol that they've brought with them, but drinks bought at the festival. So not having to worry about IDing people would make things much better and meant we could focus on the music and having a laugh. We had plenty of amusing customers come up to the bar throughout the day, a couple of my favourites were two South African guys who insisted that they had to drink triple Bacardi and Cokes – not cheap at around nine pounds a drink! Amy had her fair share of customers too, and she was wearing her small straw boater which drew comments from pretty much everyone that she served. Her original story was that it had shrunk in the wash, but this later changed into a story involving the Rabbit Hole (the open mike tent), some cookies, and outgrowing the hat. Another welcome addition to our day came when Paul stopped by the bar to give us some presents. Two knitted finger puppets! Amy got a little red riding hood, and got a fox. Paul already had a monkey he had named Malcolm, there was also a Shrek (that Slap thought was Yoda) and a Kermit. The majority of the shift went by pretty quickly, but as with most jobs it was always the last hour that dragged on and we eventually finished up, getting our two free drinks before heading off for our meal that was included with work.

The psytrance had been pretty good for most of the day, it seemed more varied than most psytrance is, but after seven hours we needed something different and we were looking forward to heading out in the evening to listen to some breaks and catch Pendulum headline the Glade Stage. One of the advantages of Glade is that all the tents are pretty close together, yet you never get a crossover of music due to the quality of the sound systems. This means that you can save your energy for dancing instead of having to walk for ages just to get to the next tent, plus with the camping area so close it makes it easy to head back to the tent quickly if you've forgotten something. Most of what we wanted to check out on the Friday was happening in the Breaksday Tent and the Glade, so we wandered down around 830pm towards the Breaksday to watch a bit of the Drummatic Twins, before Noisia came on. Noisia are a Dutch trio whose music is mostly based in the Drum n Bass genre, and they have recently released a mix CD on the well known FabricLive label. Their set started pretty slowly, but they took things up a gear after half an hour and they played some great stuff with some really good samples. It seems that this summer everyone is remixing, or sampling, The Prodigy and we've been hearing a variety of songs all summer. Noisia were no exception and they had the whole place going when they pulled out a remix of No Good (Start the Dance).

By the time they had finished we were wanting more and we walked over to the Glade Stage next door to check out Pendulum. I've seen Pendulum a couple of times before, doing a DJ set as well as live, and I was looking forward to seeing them again. They started off strongly enough, playing a good mix of tracks off their new album, as well as Hold Your Colour, but they peaked far too soon in my opinion when they remixed The Prodigy's (who else!) Voodoo People. This remix is full on, brilliant and savagely strong when performed with a live band, but the problem was it was so good that they never reached those heights again. The rest of the set seemed a little self-indulgent and uninspiring as they just seemed to be lead by a sweaty, overweight man who just wanted the crowd to bow down to him every thirty seconds. I spent most of the second half of the set watching someone who kept doing the devil horns with her hand, but I couldn't work out if she had a really disproportionate little finger, or if she'd had part of it amputated. I'm still not sure.

It was shortly after Pendulum that my night took a turn for the worse when I lost Fantastic Mr Fox off my finger after we sat down for a breather. Amy and I had lost the others so we flitted from tent to tent for a while, drinking our ciders until we walked through the Glade Stage again and I found Mr Fox straight away, two hours after I had lost him. We went to the Pussy Parlue, a 1920s Speigeltent that hosts burlesque dancing and cocktails to celebrate and met up with our friends before eventually calling it a night with the nagging fact that we had to work again the next day.

The Saturday was looking like it was going to be a good sunny day, despite the wind, and I was quite happy to be under cover where the sun couldn't burn me! We were much busier on the Saturday afternoon, we reasoned that maybe everyone had drunk the booze that they had brought in with them so they were having to frequent the bar more often. But after having my breakfast, some amazing sausages from a stall called Sausage Fest, I felt good enough to last the day and deal with the festival going public. I had to laugh at a bunch of young lads who came to the bar at one point clinging onto their empty cans of Stella:

“What can I get you?” I asked.
“Got any Stella?” mumbled one of them,
“Just Red Stripe I'm afraid,”
“Oh, forget it then,” and then they shuffled off again.

The psytrance on the second day was nowhere near as good as on the Friday, it seemed to lack some imagination that the Djs on the previous day had, and by the end of the shift I was pretty glad to be getting my free drinks and my food before concentrating on enjoying the rest of the weekend now that we had nothing else to worry about.

Glade Festival for me isn't just about the music, it has a great atmosphere and the festival goers are some of the best I've ever come across at a festival. It's a festival that is as much about the people as anything else, and there's always someone to chat to or something interesting to watch. We had a selection of Ents this year who were parading around the site, and there were also two dinosaurs – a converted beetle that was a Triceratops, and a Land Rover Stegosaurus. We met plenty of great people on the Friday, and we were to meet many more on the Saturday as we had a full night of music and dancing ahead of us.

We spent most of the early evening in the Breaksday Tent with the Stanton Warriors from Bristol who are some of the most respected breaks acts around today. The got the evening off to a good start playing a great set before we headed into the Overkill tent to watch Autechre who were reasonably good, but to be honest I was expecting something a little better from such a well respected act and I felt that they fell a little flat. After this we spent sometime in the Breaksday and walking around a bit chatting to people. We met two girls who Amy had served earlier on in the day who also had small hats, and we also spoke to another girl who wished we could all hark back to the bygone days of Victorian romance where in order to speak to a suitor you'd have to send a message through seven aunts and a scullery maid. I think I put my foot in it though when I told her that her dress was orange as opposed to red. We bumped into our hat friends again later on but we had to leave as I saw a messed up a guy with the freakiest eye I have ever seen. His was semi-passed out with one eye closed, but the other was half open but rolled back in his head darting from side to side. Not good! With dawn approaching we had a few nice cups of chai down at Chai Wallahs, before sitting in the ID Spiral for a a while until the need for bed came round, and we finally retired for the night at around 5am.

Glade Sundays are usually a relaxed affair as the full throttle antics of the previous few days slowly begin to catch up with everyone. There was only a couple of artists that I wanted to catch on the Sunday, with Red Snapper being the first and seeing as they weren't on until 3pm we could lounge around for a bit down at the Rabbit Hole and back at camp. Red Snapper were excellent down on the Glade Stage, playing some great music with their jazzy, hip hop based tunes. The only downside of the set was the lack of any vocalist for some of the songs that needed it, which was a small downer but ultimately it was a great set. After this we checked out the Breaks Tent with Tayo providing the tunes until we grabbed an enchilada for dinner before going to the Glade stage for the final act of the evening with The Orb. The Orb are a legendary British group in the electronic scene, bringing ambient house music to the masses in the nineties and they would surely be ideal end to a great festival.

Of course they didn't disappoint at all, starting with a Star Trek sample to ease us in, they then played a solid set with some of their classic songs such as Little Fluffy Clouds before leaving the stage to the strains of 'Dream a Little Dream of Me' (I think!). It was a fine way to finish off the music, and we spent much of the rest of the evening having a few drinks in the Pussy Parlure, watching some guys attempt to break dance before heading back to the tent for a final few beers and some games of Badger, Fox, Rabbit (Paper, Scissor, Stone with animals).

The whole weekend had been a great festival, a real bonus compared to last year's mud bath, but attendance figures were still down – the festival didn't sell out – yet everyone had a smile on their faces despite it being a Monday. It was another sunny day, yet we were all content with a weekend well spent and after saying our goodbyes Amy and I set off back towards Bristol. Glade Festival is so different to all the other festivals that I've been to and that is something that for me makes it incredible unique. It is a very hectic festival and you do feel exhausted by the time Monday comes around, but it's a good feeling with plenty of new good memories (the ones you can remember anyway), and I always come away from Glade having met more people than any other festival I go to. However, it always comes to an end, and sometimes that end comes just in time before your mind turns to Angel Delight. I must have been close to that point as I became slightly confused when we drove through Aldermaston on the Monday,

“We should phone Paul and stop at this pub for a Sunday lunch!” I said excitedly,
“James, it's Monday,” replied Amy, laughing at me.

What do Band of Horses sound like?

2008-07-16T20:42:00.009+01:00

Arranging work for 2000trees could not have been easier and more relaxed than it was. The laid back attitude of the organisers was top notch, and I have been looking forward to this festival for a while, especially after the previous weekend's entertainment at Cornbury. I needed reminding that good music, and a great atmosphere was happening at festivals all over the country. Driving through the Cotswolds to Upcote farm in the sunshine was a good introduction, the hand written blackboards with direction as we got closer raised my hopes even more, and one look at the site and I was convinced that 2000trees was going to be a unique festival.

We arrived on the Thursday, after originally ditching our plan to turn up a day earlier after we experienced some heavy rain for around 24 hours. The guys on site said it was different on the farm, they had downed tools on the Wednesday and had decamped to the acoustic lounge until the early hours where they were drinking vodka hoping that the rain would soon stop. It hadn't disappeared completely, we still had the occasional shower on the Thursday, but the site was OK despite being a little squidgey underfoot. Immediate impressions of the site was just how small it was, it would probably only take 3-4 minutes to walk from the bottom of the site to the top, and that includes all the camping area. There's two lovely little ponds to the right of the site that a couple of swans seemed quite happy playing around in, and we were camped in the crew and band area just beyond this. The site was pretty quiet on the Thursday, as the gates were only open to those who had bought early tickets, and there wasn't a great deal going on apart from the open mic night later that evening; the winner getting a half hour spot on the acoustic stage on the Friday morning. Amy and I didn't have to start our first of our two four shifts until 11pm that night, so we relaxed in the fantastic Leaf Lounge.

The Leaf Lounge was the acoustic stage for the weekend, and the open mic night kicked off with plenty of decent acts that we stayed around to watch. They ranged from cover songs, to originals, and the performances as a whole were of a fairly decent standard. One of the stand out performances came from a guy called Simon, who sang some amusing song about is ex-girlfriend who was into crystal divination. He was only matched by another guy called Sasha who also sang some very witty songs, but due to the swearing in both of them it was going to be unlikely that either would win the 1230 slot the following day. There were a few other good acts, one guy played around with a loop sampler to recreate a full band sound, his best song actually turned out to be a harmony version of 'In The Jungle'. In the end first place was awarded to a lady called Polly, who had some really songs who sounded like an acoustic Bjork, so she won a chance to take the stage at 1230 the next afternoon, coming on after Frank Turner opened the festival.

Amy and I had to do a four hour shift making sure no one was trying to get into the acoustic tent between 11pm and 3am. Not too difficult, and the to begin with quite amusing, as we were entertained by some musician playing with a guy called Tony Reid who were all from Liverpool. One guy called Simon was particularly amusing as he kept going on about how Muesli sounded like a town that had a violence problem, I think he just had a breakfast cereal fixation. He kept saying, "It's going off in Muesli man!" and then he made the bold statement that we should all "fuck Coco Pops, Wheetabix is where it's at!" They were pretty funny guys and made the first couple of hours go by pretty fast, but the remaining two hours dragged on and we spent most of it sat in the doorway of the leaf lounge chatting to Rob, one of the organiser about the festival and how it got started. They were just a bunch of mates who used to go to Reading Festival every year but got fed up with it and decided that they could do a better job. So they started 2000trees last year and found it attracted a good crowd, and enthusiastic crowd (of around 1000), and so they felt like they were onto a good thing so they made the site larger and it was looking like it was going to be just as successful.

One of the cool things that I liked about the festival was that I hadn't heard of 99 per cent of the band playing, but the organisers had put together a really good program to the music that gave really good reviews of what each band was like, and who they sound like. It certainly helped to work out which bands that you might like, but one guy we had been told we shouldn't miss was Frank Turner, who was going to being opening the festival. He didn't disappoint at all, and the Leaf Lounge was packed as he started playing a collection of his acoustic songs that had the whole tent singing along. He was also booked down to play on the Saturday night as well, and he decided that we should have a private joke for those who were going to come along to his Saturday show. He was going to ask the crowd who we thought Band of Horses sounded like, and we were to reply 'Coldplay!". His set very excellent and it would be worth checking out his myspace page to hear some his tunes. After Frank Turner finished most of the tent vacated, but we fancied hanging around for a few more hours checking out some of the acoustic bands and chilling on one of the straw bale sofas. After Frank we watched a repeat of the evening before's set from Polly who had won the open mic night, so I grabbed us a couple of ciders, brilliantly called Badger's Bottom. A pint of badger was only 3 pound, and 6.5 per cent, a good festival drink! Joe Summers played next with one of his friends who played some electric guitar underneath to add some ambient sounds to his songs. I was really impressed with Joe, his songs were like an English Conor Oberst, and with the electric guitar his tunes had a really good sound.

After Joe Summers we caught a totally original band called The Smerkins play who were like a reggae morris band playing hymns and songs such as Scarborough Fair. They had a couple of guys on djembes, one young dreadlock guy on flute and bass, and a dude playing a melodian. They played some great tracks and gave a really good feel good atmosphere to the tent during their set. They're probably a band that you'll never see, but if on the off chance you do see them on a bill somewhere, check them out! In total contrast after The Smerkins we had Oxygen Thief on stage who played acoustic heavy metal tracks. His voice was really good, but his tunes just didn't work, for me anyway, on the guitar. They would be fine with a band, but although he played the guitar really well, the overall sound just didn't translate well. After this we were feeling the Badger getting to us a bit, so we went back to the tent for some food, knowing that my friends Simon and Wendy would be turning up later. It was a shame they couldn't have made it on the previous day as we both reckoned that Simon would have won the open mic night easily.

After our break we went for a wander around, checked out the main stage for a bit, had a look at the cool tree sculpture and went to the Greenhouse stage area where they had a cool space for people to do some graffiti during the course of the weekend. We watched these guys for a while before heading back down to our favoured Leaf Lounge for some more acoustic acts, most notably looking forward to a guy called James Yuill. The best, and most apt, quote I have read to describe his sound was that he sounds like "Nick Drake, if he were alive, signed to Warp Records." This is pretty accurate and he was one of the best acts I was to see all weekend. His set didn't last too long as he had to set up his laptop and keyboards, and his acoustic guitars and mandolin, but it was worth every minute. He's playing at Latitude, and again at Bloom, so I'm making sure I catch him at that festival.

We stayed around for the next few acts and I was in a dilemma as to whether or not to watch 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster, or Beans on Toast - whom I had been assured was rather excellent. In the end the Badger made my decision and I couldn't be bothered to move down to the main stage so we stuck around in the Leaf Lounge for Mr Beans and we weren't let down in any way whatsoever. His set was full of wit and irony, good tunes and the crowd were energised and excited throughout. At one point a blow up doll appeared from nowhere and ended up crowd surfing around the lounge, then for the last two songs Beans on Toast was joined on stage by Frank Turner, and Mr Beans proceeded to do a mammoth crowd surf around the entire lounge before being returned back to the stage. It was a great set and really lifted the roof off the place, and we left the Leaf Lounge into the night with smiles on faces and cider in our belly's.

After Mr Beans had finished we met up with Simon and Wendy again and went for a few more drinks down by the main stage. It was here that I was accosted by a bloke who started to tell me how much he had enjoyed my set and wanted to know where I was going travelling next. Not wanting to let the chap down I told him I was off to India for the winter after playing at a few more festivals this summer, though I'm not sure he believed me or not! A few more ciders later and I staggered off across the ponds with Amy to go to sleep and wait for another day of quality music.

I wasn't feeling 100 per cent on the Saturday, but at least I didn't have to get up early like Amy to do stewarding shift, so I had a bit of a lie in until the guys from Smerkins, who were camped next to us, started an impromtu jam session just outside our tent. The sun was shining though, so it was quite nice with the tent open just listening to the music, an ideal start to the day. I eventually went down to the Leaf Lounge to meet Si and Wendy, leaving Amy to snooze and catch up on some sleep, and I arrived for the start of Natalie Ross, who was my first disappointment of the festival. She had a pretty good voice, but I found her chat inbetween songs quite irritating, and her guitar play was pretty basic. Wendy stayed in the tent, but Si and myself went outside in the sun for a beer instead, much more relaxing! There were a few acts that we had earmarked for the day, Lazy Habits, The Anomalies, Two Skies and Future of The Left. The sun was also out in fits and starts which made us spend much of the erly afternoon relaxing outside down by the mainstage, which hadn't got too muddy so far despite some of the occasional showers. Amy came and joined us, accompanied with her hula hoop, and we spent much of the afternoon watching bands play on the main stage. Lazy Habits were a really good beats hip hop band who were perfect for the afternoon, with a good brass section that actually elevated them above the norm, and a decent crowd who helped create an upbeat atmosphere despite the burgeoning mud.

We made for pies later in the day at the legendary Pieminister stand and in the background we were listening to the Anomalies play onstage, and they did an excellent piece of freestyling on stage when they did an entire song about things that people were throwing on stage during the song. It was an excellent moment, doubled by the great pies. The sun was hanging around for a while longer so we span some poi, drank some cider until Frank Turner made his second appearence of the festival and we all shouted 'Coldplay!' in response to his question. It was another good set, though I felt without his band his set was much better, and the crowd was smaller than I expected, probably because it had started raining lighly. However, it was good enough and those there sang along loud enough, hanging around until Future of the Left followed him. These guys were a pretty decent rock band, not outstanding, but good drunken rock and I did enjoy listening to them enough to not retire to the Leaf Lounge. However, we did go to the Leaf Lounge to watch Two Skies who have the ability to sound exactly like the new Radiohead album. It was absolutely uncanny! It was almost like someone had put on 'In Raindows' in the Leaf Lounge, but they were great even if they did sound a little too similar to Radiohead to enable them to stand out on their own.

It was around this point that the worse moment of the festival occurred. They ran out of Badgers Bottom. We tried both bars but they were equally dry so we had to revert to Petermans lager, which although a reasonable substitute, didn't quite have the kick you in the face aspect that Badger did. So we ambled back down to the main stage for the final act called Art Brut, who we found a bit underwhelming, even drunk I wasn't that taken and Si and Wendy crashed out during their set and as soon as they finished Amy and I managed to make our way to our tent and call it a night.

The festival was shutting down on the Sunday, and although it was the best weather that we had all weekend, we made the decision to leave around mid morning to get back to Bristol and relax for the rest of the day. Despite the mud, the site still looked fantastic in the sun and it is without a great venue. The guys who run it focus quite hard on recycling and keeping the site as clean as possible and I have to say it was probablt the tidiest site I have ever seen at a festival. The weekend had given us some mixed weather, but the music on the whole had been of a high quality and I felt lucky to have seen so many up and coming bands. I'm sure the vast majority wont make it 'big time' but that's not always so bad, as it means they'll keep earning something of a living from music and playing some fantastic festivals such as 2000trees.

If you get the chance next year, please go to 2000trees, support this cool festival that has the right ideas at its heart and if you can't go, try and tell someone else about it. I have so many good things to say about the festival, chatting away to musicians at every turn, Badgers Bottom, the Leaf Lounge was a good a venue as I've been in for acoustic music, the ponds, the graffiti wall and the people who attended. There was so much that came together to make this a good weekend and I just felt glad that we had somehow found out about this wicked little festival.

And so from the sublime to the insane we head to Glade this weekend to work behind the bar down near the psy-trance stage. It should be a great weekend, it could be a swamp (like last year), or we could get sun stroke. I'll be sure to let you know.

Until next time, stay classy

Don't need a weatherman...

2008-07-09T11:12:00.007+01:00

When you visit a new festival for the first time it's hard to have some kind of pre-conceived idea as to what it's going to be like. The small amount of research that I had done for Cornbury revealed to me that it would probably be some kind of cross between a farmers market, and a music festival. The reality was something else, something much stranger, and I can honestly that I have never been to a festival quite like this, and I don't expect to be going to another one soon. For those of you familiar with the Isles of Scilly, a good summary would be to imagine if Tresco Estate organised a music festival and you wouldn't be far off what Cornbury Music Festival is like.

I had only ever heard vaguely of Cornbury Festival until this summer, and this was to be the first festival that we would be working as stewards for Oxfam. I seem to remember back when we were deciding which festivals to do we ended up choosing this one because there wasn't much else going on during this particular weekend, and so it was because of this that we found ourselves at Cornbury Park, near Charlbury Oxfordshire. Cornbury Park originally hosted a country fayre way back in 1796, growing so rapidly in popularity that by 1830 it had to be temporarily suspended, a bit like a Glastonbury of the 19th century. It re-opened between 1845 and 1856, attracting crowds of around 50,000 and eventually these large numbers caused the festival to shut down despite no recorded accidents or crimes reported. In its current incarnation the festival re-opened in 2003 on the same site marketed as a family friendly festival 'with a twist'. It turns out that 'twist' is white picket fences and Pimms.

The drive up to Cornbury took us through some very picturesque villages with a variety of names around the basis of "on-Thames" or "on-Water", and passed a particularly attractive looking pub that was located next to a canal with many narrow boats tied up alongside. However, despite these archetypal village images there were a few interesting sights to be seen; kebab shops and tatooists slowly working their way into middle England, along with highly fashionable tapas restaurants. Tattoos in particular now are no longer the preserve of the working class, and they have been well and truly accepted by all classes across the land, with sporting heroes being common exponents of getting inked. As for kebab shops, well wherever there's a pub, there's a need for a kebaby!

Getting to the park was simple enough, but finding the entrance proved a little more difficult, the sign posts directing traffic the long way around the park in order to get to the entrance. The reason behind this was to divert traffic from Charlbury, but it got us quite confused, and we even turned around at one point unsure if we were heading in the right direction. Eventually, however, we arrived on site into a surrounding of beautiful old trees in the late evening sunshine. When you work for Oxfam you get the advantage of staff camping, along with showers and a great catering van called Nuts Cafe. For each shift that you work you get a free meal ticket, and the quantity was ideal, I didn't want to go hungry! The staff campsite was pretty small, I think I heard that there were around 125 stewards for this festival, and there was wide age range of stewards camping. Although preconceptions might be that stewards is for the younger crowd only, there were plenty of older stewards at Cornbury, many of whom had been doing it for years. One woman we spoke to got into stewarding after her daughter convinced her to do it, though she said that if Glastonbury had been wet again this year she would have happily left the festival, lost her deposit and never worked for Oxfam again! We got to Cornbury on the Wednesday, the day before the gates opened, and all the stewards made themselves comfortable - one group had 'Swan Lake' playing quite loudly!

The first day of gates opening saw us assigned to working in the Campsite Welfare tent for the weekend, and we spent the first three hours sat in the sun while we waited for the tent to be erected. There's some funny guys working for Oxfam, one guy we called the 'Cool Man' who was about 20 and just wouldn't keep going on about "At Glastonbury it was done like this, and, at Glade we all did this" etc etc - Jog On! We also had the Mullet Man who was a supervising steward. We had seen him the previous day helping a young woman put up her tent trying to chat her up with his black, luxurious mullet swinging in the breeze. Fortunately neither of these guys was involved with our shifts, we were working 10am - 1800 on the Thursday, 1800 - 0200 on Saturday, and 0200 - 1000 on the Monday. I think they give everyone one shift for each part of the day, and our work in welfare would mostly be looking after lost property and lost children. We were based right next to the enclosed family camping site, and we spent most of the afternoon watching families make multiple trips to their 4x4s to get the kitchen sink out of the boot. How on earth they even manage to get all the equipment into their cars in the first place was beyond me, but I can honestly say that I've never seen such a large collection of massive tents in one place in my life. The forecast wasn't looking particularly good, and I was beginning to wonder how they would cope if got at all muddy.

The weather on the Friday started off pretty reasonable, but it was one of those days when the weather couldn't make up its mind, one minute it was too warm, so you'd take some clothes off, and then it would get cooler and start spitting with rain. However, one thing I was certain of and that was that it would definitely rain later on in the evening. The campsite and the arena are separate at Cornbury, so entrance to the site was delayed slightly on the Friday but eventually we were let in around 1130 as we queued along with giant child's buggies, chairs, tables and everything else your average family needs for an afternoon at a festival. The walk over to the arena was very serene, taking you down between two large lakes complete with ducks and locals fly fishing, and you pop up the other side of the hill into what can best be described as the front garden of Cornbury Park Estate. First impressions of the main site were just how small it is, probably no bigger than the Garrison on the Isles of Scilly, and you can find that you've covered all there is to see in around fifteen minutes. There's three stages on site, the main stage, the second stage - which on the Saturday is sponsored by Word magazine, and on the Sunday is the Oxford Folk Festival - and the final stage is called the Riverside stage whose dance area is littered with hay bales.

We watched the opening set of the main stage from a performer called Maria Illet who won a competition to appear on the main stage at Cornbury. At the time I wasn't aware of this, and I think I might have been a bit harsh in my judgement, thinking at the time that she had less stage presence than sea bass, but perhaps the occasion just got on top of her a bit. Her singing was pretty weak, and she had a real problem filling the stage with sound, all in all a below par performance that was most likely down to nerves. After a couple of songs we left to go to the Word Stage and watch a reggae band called The Beat, who were pretty decent. They got most of tweed dancing away in what sunshine there was, and they played a bit of an extended set due to the eagerness of the crowd. We chilled out listening to some reggae while I read the Guardian (ooo how middle class!) before heading back over to the main stage for a while where we caught part of set by Imelda May who had a bit of a Celtic twang to her sound, and was accompanied onstage by a guy playing a double bass, always good in my opinion. She a class above Maria Illet in terms of confidence and performance and just about held her own on the main stage. The area in front of the main stage is quite large, and I was confused as to why they had acts on who couldn't fill the space. That's not to say that a solo performer couldn't do it, but these bookings just didn't have the quality to stand up well on the main stage.

I think we were both a bit bored so we went for a another wander and had a look around the fairground which was where all the 'cool kids' were hanging out drinking Strongbow. Cornbury may not have the illicit drug use that many festivals have, but there was a large amount of under age drinking on, and pretty much every kid over 13 had a few cans stuffed away in their back pockets. After the fairground ADHD got to us we checked out the 'hippy' corner of the festival where there was a stall selling chai and also doing free drumming workshops. I had to laugh watching the workshops going on, there were the two teachers teaching a group of chicks in posh frocks all 'slumming' it with the hippies tapping gently away on their djembes carefully in case they broke a nail. Mind you if they had broken a nail they could have always visited the Powder Room. Yep, there was a Powder Room which was a giant trailer where festival goers could visit and get their nails done, have a hair cut, a wash, make up, the works. Unreal.

As this was going on we noticed a few morris dancers walk past, so we followed them over towards the Riverside Stage where we were greeted by two gaggles of dancers. One dressed in the traditional morris attire, the other looking like a home counties version of the American band Kiss. The dances were pretty good, there was even a bloke dancing with a giant cheese hat on, it was surreal to say the least!

Quite confused by the whole thing, we left to go back to the campsite and get some food. Now one of Amy's pet peeves for a while has been Kanye West style sunglasses, for those of you who don't know what I mean, here's picture:

I think the afternoon's bizarreness had got to Amy and she confronted one bloke as he walked past in what can be described as her posh voice:
"Excuse me, but can you see much with those glasses on young man?"
"Umm, not really,"replied the young man,
"Then what's the point?" argued Amy. To this he had no answer, and he shuffled off, possibly slightly embarrassed at being harassed by a girl with dreadlocks about fashion tips.

So it was eventually time to go to work at six, and we were lucky to have a pretty quiet evening. Because our welfare tent was pretty quiet, Amy and I had no supervisor so we spent most of the shift doing crosswords and colouring in books (Aged 3+). It did start raining during our shift, and we both felt pretty lucky that we were working inside unlike the rest of the stewards who might just be sitting in the rain for eight hours. Because of our position in terms of dryness and being in the middle of the campsite, we had plenty of other stewards popping in to say hi and have a cup of tea. One supervisor told us a funny story about Glastonbury the week before when during the early hours of the morning one of the stewards called over the radio that a pregnant cat had turned up near their post and was going into labour and he wanted to know what to do! I did overhear two young girls obviously having a problem with the weather in their drunkenness when one turned to the other and said "Can you work out which way the wind is blowing?". I never did find out if they solved their meteorological conundrum. The rest of the shift was reasonably uneventful until around 1am when a call came over the radio:
"This is the Oxbox(Oxfam HQ), could we get some first aid up here please. Um, I don't know how to put this, but one of our Supervisor has severe chafing in a personal area." Brilliant!

The rest of that shift went easily enough and my only regret of the Saturday was not getting the chance to see Paul Simon, who headlined on the main stage that night. However, after chatting to a few people who saw hi they said it was a bit of a sad performance, that he was clearly past his peak. Though I expect that most of the crowd enjoed him anyway it's always a bit depressing when you see someone who is a legend in decline. I remember seeing Brian Wilson at Glastonbury on his Smile tour, and I think the tour by that time had got to him a little, and although he was really good, I think his excellent band carried him a fair bit that day.

The final day of music, and the weather started ok, and Amy and I had the day off until the early hours when we had to complete our final shift, so we wanted to attempt to enjoy the second day of music. We got down to the arena to watch a guy called Tom Baxter and his band perform on the main stage. My instant impressions were that he seemed like a diet version of Dave Matthews. His band were actually really good with an excellent drummer and a good violinist, but Tom Baxter was totally upstaged by them. He seemed to love his voice a little too much, even for a front man, and I really felt that although the audience was impressed, if he re-worked his vocals the performance could have been much better. On the Sunday the 2nd stage became the the venue for the Oxford Folk Festival, and after starting a little late we went over to watch a latin/ska band called Jaume Toujours who were half decent. They had an accordian playing front mand who had an annoying habit of shouting "SKASKASKASKA!" every twenty seconds. I think he was trying to remind himself what ska music should actually sound like. After they finished an American singer called Tift Merrit came on who had a really good voice but the band's sound was really bassy so it sounded like the badn was too big for her. She came across as trying to sound a bit too much like Sheryl Crow, at least that's what her band were trying to sound like, but she didn't have the voice to match its sound.

And then came the rain.

and the rain.

more rain.

From five o'clock on Sunday it began to absolutely pour down with rain, heavy unrelenting rain. Just in time for 10cc's set which didn't really manage to raise the crowd much. At Glastonbury there's flags everywhere, but at Cornbury it was giant golf umbrellas. The umbrellas certainly kept the rain off those who had them, but for rest of us we had to put up with getting poked in the eye by the corners by them, and having any view of the stage blocked by someone holding one straight in your face. Still I just about managed to catch a few of 10cc's classic tunes, which sounded pretty good, but in the rain they didn't keep me very warm. We were going to hang around for KT Tunstall, but instead sheltered under the Ecover tent and payed there game inside on their computer where you had to hang washing on a line before seagulls crapped on it. I think I got to level 4. The Folk Stage was next to the Ecover tent and there was a really good Irish Folk/Salsa band called Salsa Cetica who were exceptionally good musicians, and probably the best band we saw all weekend. It was just a shame that the weather was so bad, but Amy braved the rain for a bit to go and do a few jigs before showing me some basic salsa moves.

By now we were both pretty wet, it was getting cold and with the 2am shift on our minds we decided to skip on Crowded House and get a few hours sleep before work. I can't say I was paticularly gutted that I was missing the last of the music, in fact I was quite glad to escape the vacuous atmosphere of the arena and get back to some sembalance of reality at the Oxfam camp. Work that night was pretty easy, and boring, and wet for those not inside. It rained non-stop through the night, and I glad that we were lucky enough to be inside, in fact at one point we had nine of the fifteen stewards on duty that night in the welfare tent drinking tea. There was plenty of more crossword attempts and Amy and Hena (who was working in the tent with us) dedicated themselves to colouring in as many pictures as possible in the eight hour shift.

The rain finally subsided around ten in the morning, just as our shift was finishing and we did a quick pack away before driving off site as quick as the polo would take us. I can without a doubt say this was one of the strangest festivals that I've ever experience, and although I went to it knowing a little of what it was like, I never expected it to be quite so upper class. There were missing girls called Tiara, a double decker Pimms bus, and a VIP area (not for artist or anything, just people who wanted to spend more on their ticket and feel important) with a white picket fence and bouncers. I would never go to this festival again, personally it's just not my idea of fun at all. It was exactly like taking the August visitors to Tresco and placing them at a music festival, with middle of the road music and giant umbrellas. Jolly rah rah!

This weekend takes us to 2000trees, a small festival of 2000 people, in the top ten small music festivals of 2007 and despite the current forecast not being great, I can't wait. Until then, stay classy.

That's so funny I don't even know how to laugh!

2008-07-02T12:52:00.009+01:00

Usually in the run up to Glastonbury I spend an inordinate amount of time studying weather forecasts, line ups and wondering what flavour of Super Noodles we should be taking. However, the small fact of having to work at this year's Glastonbury made my preparations seem slightly low key. I had none of the usual anticipation that I usually have, and this year I remained remarkably blase about the weather, it always seems to rain at some point, I reasoned, so why worry about it?

Arriving on site this year early was certainly different compared to rocking up on a Wednesday lunchtime with thousands of other people in the heat and queuing for hours at the train station, and then again at Pedestrian Gate A. Tuesday afternoon felt much more civilised, it was still warm but cruising in the Polo listening to the Raconteurs felt like a much more relaxed experience. When you normally turn up on a Wednesday, or whenever, it can be hard to get a grasp of just how much behind the scenes work has gone on. There's around 37,000 workers at Glastonbury, and most have these people have been turning up from the previous Saturday helping build stalls, stages and just preparing for one of the best festivals on the planet.

Amy and I spent much of Tuesday evening wandering around the site, checking out some of the new additions such as the extended area above the tipi village, and the replacement for Lost Vagueness - Shangri-La. On first inspection the Shangri La doesn't appear much different to its previous incarnation, with the themes seemingly quite similar. There's a 50s style diner and dance floor, a tilted disco designed to make you feel a little more unbalanced than is natural plus a SlumberRave - dressing gown optional. It's very unusual walking around the huge site with so few people around, each of the camping grounds seem outrageously big with no tents in them and it's hard to comprehend that within 24 hours all these fields will be full of people all ready for 5 days of hedonism. In the mean time though Amy and I planned an early night, with a romantic dinner consisting of chicken Super Noodles (an old favourite), and a couple of glasses of Sainsbury's Strong Dry Cider. Classy.

Wednesday morning began for both us with some short meetings regarding our work. Amy was going to be working for the Green Police which basically involves educating the Glastonbury public about the effects that pissing in hedges and littering has not just on the environment, but how it can also have an effect on Glastonbury's future. Amy's training brief in the morning consists of learning facts and figures that they can use on patrol to help get their message across. Apparently Glastonbury Festival is closely monitored by the Environment Agency and they check the water supply in the rivers that flow through the site for contamination. Apparently around 5-6 years ago approximately 6000 fish were found dead in one stream and this was a contributing factor to problems with renewing the license for the following year.

My job on the other hand wasn't going to be quite as important, stewarding the Kings Meadow field, otherwise known as the Stone Circle, would certainly be a different kettle of fish. My shifts for the weekend appeared not to be too bad, 2am-8am Thursday morning, 2pm-8pm Saturday afternoon, and 2am to 8am Monday morning. Not too bad, though I wasn't too impressed by that Monday morning shift and if my memory of any previous Glastonbury served me well I would be serverely jaded come the early hours of Monday. But there was plenty of time before then, and once my basic training was over and done with I concenrated on hooking up with one of my Glastonbury friends from last year who works up at the Festival Medical Services, James Gibbons, who even came over to Scilly last year in September.

With thoughts of having to work in the early hours of the next morning I wasn't too sure how to approach to following hours, should I try and stay awake, or should I get some rest for a couple of hours. I left Amy with her Green Police friends, met up with James and his friends before setting up my second tent down at Pennard Hill. Amy's camping ground was up near the farm, which would basically place me at the opposite end of the site to where I would be working. To save on walking time I intended to set up a second tent in the field next to the Stone Circle and leave some warm clothes there for the evening shifts so I didn't have to travel too far. So once all set up and ready for the next few days an obligatory trip to the cider bus was required. The cider bus is literally that, a coverted double decker bus that houses many cider casks, and will dispense some of Burrow Hill's finest cider for a small fee. If you're feeling a bit cold they will even add some brandy to your glass, though the demand for this doesn't seem too great. The cider bus is a great place to watch the world go by, with al sorts gathering for some appley goodness. Myself, James and Layla got accosted by one girl who just wouldn't stop going on about how much she hated the toilets. She was stating the obvious a bit here, and she just would not stop moaning about them, she believed the reason for this was because no toilet paper was being handed out at the gates this year. Quite how this works out I'm not too sure. Eventually, though, she left and was replaced by an absolute great character under the name of Roiston who has been coming to the festival for 20 years and not only was his costume fantastic, his entourage also handed out little bags of haribo to us all!

After a few more swift pints of cider Amy suggested that I might want to get a couple of hours sleep before starting work, probably a good idea really as anyone who knows me would say I can have something of a problem staying awake when I've had a couple to drink. So I decided to make the one sensible decision of the weekend and get a couple of hours sleep before my early morning shift at 2am. Fortunately so far the weather had been pretty good and the only thing I was worrying about was how cold it might be due to the clear skies. I even managed to make myself up a flask of organic espresso coffee that Amy had brought back from Costa Rica. I've got to say, this coffee is rocket fuel and is so tasty it can be easy to drink a lot of it, but it will keep you up for days!

Stewarding up at the Kings Meadow basically involves just making sure everyone up there is safe, and most specifically, not climbing up the 20foot wooden Dragon that dominates the left hand side of the field. You might think something like this would prove a nightmare to look after, but most people seem pretty relaxed about it, and during the whole 6 hours not one person even attempts to scale it. I must say I was quite disappointed! We work in teams of four, and take it in two person teams to look after the Dragon, while the other two keep the fire stoked at the bottom of the field near the entrance. The vast majority of the shift goes pretty easily, with only a few eventful conversations. At one point I was accosted by two eastern european girls who mistook me for a policeman and kept stroking my face and telling me how cute I was. Once I explained to them that I wasn't a policeman they seemed to lose interest and just ran off giggling to one another. Once the sun started to come up, quite early around 5am, we strolled around the field a bit more looking for lost property and chatting to people. We found a few wallets, one guy I met handed in a wallet with £210 pounds in it, a very honest man. I picked up a mobile phone, plus someone else found a wallet which we took back to HQ before stoking up the fire once more because even though it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day we were having a very cold morning. During one of my regular walks out to the Dragon I came across a couple of very interesting Mancunians, one of which was very passionate about his views on the litter on the festival site. Now that it was daylight you could see just how much rubbish people had left behind up at the Stone Circle. There were crushed paper cups everywhere, cans on the floor and dotted around the field were burnt circle where people had made fires to keep warm during the night. My Manc friend took it upon himself to launch himself into an impassioned speech:

"Why do they need all these fires? The firefighters must be pissed off. All these fucking hippies, they're talking shit. Fighting nature, that's what everyone's doing, you can't win. Fucking fires, it's not on. Look at this rubbish too, if I was Michael Eavis I wouldn't stand for it. You see this bottle here, Jakobs Creek in here, seven quid a bottle, proper class. I've had this in my hand all night, and you knwo what? When I done I'll put it in a bin," at this point he turned around and addressed the entire field and shouted " All you cunts! Clean up this fucking rubbish!" and with this he turned around and stormed off out the field.

It's always the case with any job that you do that the last hour or so is always he longest, but with this job I didn't mind because I probably laughed more in the final hour than I did all night. The fire that we had kept going was a gathering point for everyone who was leaving the field, and we had a good collection of characters for the end of our shift. We had a few musicians, one playing guitar and another on a Melodica who were really good at playing some quality tunes. Apart from their gathering of friends we were also joined by a silent chap called Jake, and a young lad with multicoloured microphone hair called Barnabald, or Barnaby for short. After meeting Barnaby he told me how he would like to be an actor, but he couldn't remember lines very well, a bit of a problem I suggested, but he didn't seem to think so. Another favoured topic of his was clothes, and how he felt we should all feel comfortable enough to run around naked, and how he felt we shouldn't feel embarassed as a society to see naked bodies. I also learned that his favourite colour was blue, and his attempts to take people on at a game of mercy only brought more laughter. I can honestly say that I've never met anyone quite like Barnabald, and he only confirmed this by announcing that he was a hopping race champion. He went on to prove this as we arranged a hopping race at the bottom of the field, which, to our amazement, he duly won. Finally though, my shift came to an end, Barnabald and co departed, though I did leave the enigmatic Jake standing by the fire gathering his 'chi' before breaking his silence with the occasional giggle. By this point it was early morning, and I needed some sleep before some of music began later that Thursday.

There's normally something of a Scillonian contingent at Glastonbury - last year we had Eldred Bandfield, Mike and Lou Knappman, Ant and Ade Robson, Dr Vic plus myself and others. This year sees a few less, and some who appeared out of nowhere. Mike and Lou were still going, and I met up them briefly on Thursday, and then when I bumped into them later on in the weekend they said that they'd bumped into Dr Ranulph Hessing(pissed up at 10am) and Erica Hicks (working), Amy saw Natalie Graham, but unusally for me I met nobody from Scilly that I didn't knwo was there. Unimpressed. Still, maybe they saw me at some point running around grinning!

Thursday was an esygoing day, with not much happening, though I did hear a rather crap cover version of Prodigy's Outta Space being played down in the Leftfield. last year we saw Seasick Steve play at the Leftfield on a Thursday afternoon, I even got to shake his hand which was nice (and dirty). This year the Levellers were playing a set at 2300, but from previous experience I felt this would probably be too busy so I knew I was going to miss it. I spent most of the day hanging around with James down at the Park Stage drinking my cider, and watching the cast of Alice in Wonderland play croquet with members of the public. Once Amy finished her Green Policing for the day, she only had to do a couple of hours, we had some music for the evening down on paper. We were going to watch DJ Yoda do an AV set in the Silent World at the Dance Village. The spread of the Silent Disco has now reached other parts of Glastonbury, giving punters the chance to listen to sets on wireless headphones whilst not disturbing any sleeping residents. By early evening though the rain had started, and it was not relenting whatsoever. Before I left I decided to check the forecast at metcheck.com who had informed me that we could expect some rain in the early hours of Friday, and using my Radio Scilly Weatherman knowledge, I suspected that this was the weather arriving early. Of course, once the rain begins to fall it gets muddy very quickly, and then every avaialbe covered arena fills up faster than you can say "portaloo". Our plans to watch DJ Yoda were scuppered by queues, partially due to the rain, and also because all the Silent venues are space limited due to the headsets. However, we did get to see one of my highlights of the festival, Smerins Anti-Social Club. These guys are from Bristol, and we only dropped by because our Bristol friends were going to see them, and they were excellent. Check out their website here. Their blend of live dance music was good enough to get the pacjed crowd going in the Dance Lounge, and although we weren't able to see the band due to the crowd, the music did appear to be emanating from a giant pink ball suspended in the ceiling. The band were excellent, and were even joined onstage by MC Xander, a guy we had seen at Glade last year who is also excellent. It being a Thursday night, we actually made another sensible choice and called it an evening due to the rain. After all, the actual music hadn't even begun yet.

Early Friday morning gave us a few more brief showers, though nothing too serious, and the rest of the day wasn't too bad for weather. Cloudy, with a chilly breeze, though there was only the occasional light shower - nothing as bad as previous years, and the ground wasn't even that muddy really, there were still green patches! Amy got up early to start her Green Police duties, but I had no work to do until the following day, so I decided to catch up on my sleep to try and get my body clock back to normal. I managed to wake up hear a little of Kate Nash singing about lemons, but it nothing special enough to make me want to get up, so I ended up sleeping in for a couple more hours before making any real start to my day. I went for a bit of a wander around, grabbed myself a cider and thought about maybe having a pie for lunch, but instead I thought I'd wait until later and get something from the Green Fields with my free meal ticket. One advantage that I had over Amy was that my meal tickets got me good food, not the school dinners that they were handing out in the Oxfam tent!

I ended up catching up with Amy later on at Alabama 3 who were performing on the Jazz World Stage. I've seen them a few times before and their set was as tight and predictable as ever. They certainly have a distinctive sound, and are always good to see even if you've caught them a few times before. Amy and her mate went off to get changed from their GP gear and I sauntered around until meeting them at the Pyramid Stage to catch some of the Gossip's set. Not a band I particularly like, but Beth Ditto is certainly a brilliant entertainer. She works the crowd really well, and this set is one of the surprise highlights for me, I would recommened them to anyone going to a festival who has a gap in their personal line up for the day. She wasn't enough, however, to make me miss Gideon Conn who was playing at the Bandstand, a small stage about 10 foot across that is located in th middle of the Market area. It's a good place to catch random acts, but after hearing of Gideon Conn through Ben Morton-Clark I really wanted to check these guys out. After a few problems getting the sound sorted (dodgy cable), they started and were brilliant from start to finish. Gideon wore a great Father Ted t shirt which won me over befor he started, and he proceeded to play a great set with his band. Amy turned up after the Gossip and really got into it, and she confessed to me after the festival was all over that she thought that this was her highlight of the weekend! Gideon Conn finished up in the crowd stretched out as far as his microphone would let him, before signing copies of their EP at the front of the stage. Brilliant.

The Fun Lovin' Criminals were up next over at the Jazz World, and they performed a really good set, full of all their hits and generally they were pretty good, though I have to say that by the end I was getting itchy feet to head elsewhere, though where I wanted to go I wasn't sure. It was probably the hunger because after their set we walked to the Buddhafield Cafe where I could get my free dinner and replenish my system before heading down towards the Dance Village. we hadn't made many plans really as to what we wanted to see at the end of the day, with nothing really catching my eye. The choice was between Fatboy Slim, who manages to play every year but I've never seen him, or goto Kings of Leon, who I knew Amy really wanted to see. After spending a bit of time down at the Dance Village, mainly at the G Stage, which is called the Origin Stage at Glade, dancing to some great tunes and then trudging round to the Pyramid Stage for the Kings of Leon, and after squeezing our through the crowds we found ourselves a nice spot half way the hill. I found their set a little unbalanced, the first half an hour was pretty mediocre, never really picking up any pace and I felt like they were a band a little out of their depth. However, they raised their game for the second half of their set and produced a worthwhile performance - 3 out of 5 stars.

The best parts about Glastonbury Festival for me usually happen after all the main stages have shut down and people head for other areas. We opted for Shangri La, and the Disco Diner, where we finally met up with James and our Bristol friends where we danced for a good few hours until aroudn 4am when Amy and I went to watch the sunrise before returning to our tents, with Amy moaning about having to get up for work, and me content with a lie in until 2pm.

In the past I've always found that Saurday's are my favourite days/nights at Glastonbury, you can usually find a good selection of bands that you want to catch right from the start. Howeer, having to work this year made things a little different. I was gutted that I was going to miss Shlomo and Music Through Unconventional Means on the Park Stage, but it wasn't the end of the world, and my shift good all the same. With the sunshine beating down I spent a great afternoon up at the Kings Meadow drinking cider whilst chatting to little kids that the Dragon has to chained down or he'll fly away! It was a great shift, and nice to sit down and relax for an afternoon before enjoying the night ahead. As soon as I finished my shift at 8pm I grabbed some food before heading down towards the Park Stage to catch MGMT. I really like the Park Stage, it's like an ampitheatre and it can create a really intimate setting. Last year's performance from Lou Rhodes was one of my highlights of the festival and I was really looking forward to wathcing psycadelic rockers MGMT. They seemed to have a slight sound level problem to begin with, as the vocal levels were completely screwed, but after the first couple of songs they found a compromise and the rest of the set completely rocked. Har Mar Superstar joined them on stage at once point, and by the time they played Time To Pretend everyone was loving them. It was a cracking set and I expect next year will see them performing on the Other Stage late friday evening. After MGMT I was getting considerably more excited as the one band I had come here to see were up - Massive Attack headlining the Other Stage.

I had even asked for time off especially to see these guys from Bristol, it was the one thing that I didn't want to miss, and I was not disappointed in one bit. THey played some storming tracks, some delicate ones, and just generally played a delectable selection of beats and visuals. There was a great performance of 'Teardrop', and they put in Unfinished Sympathy during the encore as well as geting in a fair political messages along the way. For me this was a brilliant set, definitely one of the best I've seen at Glastonbury ever and even watching it back on the BBC site online I get chills thinking about what it felt like to be in that crowd. Unbelievable.

By the time Massive Attack had finished sometime after midnight I was in a good mood to say the least, and we bimbled down to the Bimble Inn at the Park Stage for some dancing and laughter until the early hours, enjoy ourselves in a classic Glastonbury Saturday night way.

So the final day of the festival crept up inexorably upon us. It always comes around too soon, but it's not always bad as there's always some great music to make the tiring minds and bodies feel a little better. Sunday afternoon on the Pyramid is usually reserved for some 'classic' acts, but this year I headed down to the Jazz World for a Pieminister (the best pies ever) while relaxing in the sun. Probably the main highlight for me of the festival is being able to sit/lie down whenever you feel like it, keeping the pain of 'festival back' somewhat subdued. We spent most of Sunday relaxing, watching a very talented diabolo guy dancing away in the sun and listening to some Eddy Grant. Amy wasn't feeling too great after work and went for a snooze and a lie down whilst I went and watched Goldfrapp on the Pyramid stage. She put on a great set, perfect for early on a Sunday evening with her amazing vocals and fantastic music. She even had some pole dancers on stage at one point, ideal. Once recovered, Amy and I jollyed on down to the John Peel Stage to watch Spiritualized, a band I had last seen with Jeremy around six years ago. It seemed odd to me that I was watching them perform in what is essentially the New Bands Tent, but I guess they have their reasons. Their set was pretty good, Jason Pierce's vocal were excellent, and they are excellent at creating a wall of sound that is so forceful, yet you can still pick out each instrument. Again, it was odd watching them on this stage after seeing them last play on the Other Stage, they may have even headlined it, but I'm sure they'll be back higher up the bill once more.

So to the final big act of the weekend, and Groove Armada was the choice of the evening. They didn't dissappoint, playing a good selection of their greatest hits, all to a intricate laser show. They were great, but the best news came to me just before they started when I found out that Spain had won the Euro 2008 Championships, netting me 60 quid in the Galley sweepstake. This led me to try chant "Fernado! Fernado Torres!" to whoever would listen! Of course this made the Groove Armada set all the more better!

I only had a couple of hours until starting work for the 2am to 8am shift, so we went to the Bimble Inn where we met with some friends again, and I left them to it and went to work - which proved to be something of a blur! Amy and the guys all went to the Silent Disco for a bit, something that I was extremely jealous of, but Amy was good enough to come down to the Stone Circle for a couple of hours until the sun came up. After Amy left I spent the rest of my shift walking around chatting to people until 8am finally came and I could officially goto bed. By now the sun was pounding down and I went back to tent number two and slept among the pile of bodies that belonged to my friends.

Monday, inevitably, brings the hangover. It's been postponed for five days, but ultimately it catches up with you in the end. Amy had caught a cold, everyone looked pretty frazzled, and after saying our goodbyes our friends left for Bristol while Amy and myself relaxed for a bit before making our departure later in the evening. The worse part of my weekend? Getting sunburned eyelids. The best bit? Everything else.

Once again, regardless of weather, line ups, naysayers etc, it turned out to be a fantastic festival. It may be getting more and more corporate, but there is still something special about Glastonbury Festival. This isn't to say that other festivals don't have this, I'm sure they do, but Glastonbury still sets the bar.

I still believe that probably the best way to describe how you feel throughout the festival was summed up by one of my best mates years ago. He said

"The thing with Glastonbury is that you're always on the edge of something, you may never find it, and that makes the search all the more interesting, but every now and then you stumble around the right corner and everything becomes clear."

Until Cornbury, stay Classy

Cello? Is there anybody in there?

2008-06-23T15:28:00.004+01:00

Well I've finally left the Isles of Scilly to spend my summer on the mainland travelling around 9 different festivals. It could be a long summer! The first few days away have been reasonably eventful, involving moving house via public transport, and attending a Cello and Piano Recital, not quite up there with Glastonbury, but more on that in a bit!

Having been a part of Radio Scilly since August last year I'm quite sad to say goodbye, I've had some great times, some stressful times, and plenty of early mornings! The experience itself has been great, and the response that I've had from people around the Islands about my work for the station has certainly helped plump my ego to a degree. Although most people who know would probably say that I'm quite outgoing, in reality I'm actually quite quiet when I'm around groups of people. However, I'm always listening and absorbing interesting stories! I think I've been able to develop my journalistic skills quite a bit over the last 9 months, and I look back to when I started and I think how clueless I was back then about interviewing people. Now I feel quite confident about it, especially that I can get all the right information out of people. Sometimes without them realising!

Being given the responsibilities of looking after the station and presenting the morning show ahs been something that was a good challenge, and probably gave me some of the best memories from the job. It was always great when people came up to me in the street and said how much they enjoyed the show - it made the early mornings worth it!

So now to Bristol, and a summer of festivals that includes the following, possibly in order: Glastonbury, Cornbury, 2000trees, Glade, WOMAD, Big Chill, Bloom, Beautiful Days, Shambala. Something like that anyway! Of course I'll be updating my blog after each festival letting you all know what the mud/bands/work was like. IF you want to skp ahead to my thoughts on this then go right ahead and ignore my review of the Cello and Piano Recital that I went to!

The first stop before Glastonbury though was to attend a Cello and Piano Recital with Amy and her family. Amy's Dad owns a cello made by the John Betts school c.1820 and has loaned it to the Guildhall School of Music. So with five of us in the car we zoomed down to Shepton Mallet for the performance.

We went to a pub when we arrived called the Bell, it reminded me of the pub from Withnail and I - "We want the finest wines available to humanity, and we want them here, and we want them now" Lovely old barmaid who looked like you squeeze cider out from her face, she didn't appreciate us ordering coffees! There was a beauty old boy sat by the bar who said hello to everyone who went to the bar, I asked him how he was doing, but got no reply, I think he was already saying hello to the next person. So tearing ourselves away from the pub we headed to church to listen to Alice Dixon on the cello, and Bojana Dimkovic on the piano.

The cello is certainly an attractive instrument, and having never seen one played first hand I was looking forward to the performance and I can honestly say that I was not disappointed one bit. .

The first piece by Ernest Bloch entitled 'Prayer' from 'Jewish Life', was dark, brooding and emotional. The interchange between piano and cello was very good, and I felt that this piece was instantly arresting, even though perhaps a little too melancholic for an opening piece.

This was followed by 12 variations on a theme from Handel's 'Judas Maccabeus' composed by Beethoven. A lengthy piece, again with masterful exchange between piano and cello, and the melody of this piece really came through in the performance from the cello giving it vibrancy and an energetic quality.

The final selction before the interval was solo piano piece composed by John Ireland called 'Moon Glade' and 'Scarlet Ceremonies'. This was a great individual performance from the pianist Bojana Dimkovic whose showmanship behind the keys stood out as much as her playing, which was exceptional. She finished with a flourish that typified her performance, then stood and smiled to the audience before retiring behind a large oak door at the back of the church.

After the break we were treated to the final two pieces of the evening, the first being a technically difficult piece by Henri Dutilleux which on performance looked incredibly hard to play. This piece seemed chosen to demonstrate the technical ability required to play such a composition. There were times the cello was being played with back of the bow, strings were being plucked, and at times the strings were being played in way that many rock guitarist would have admired. Melodically it was at polar opposites to the Beethoven piece, but nonetheless it was enjoyable and was a spectacle of intricacy.

The final piece of the night brought piano and cello together again for Bohuslav Martinu's variations on a theme of Rossini. Taken from Rossini's opera 'Moses in Europe' this compostion involved some interesting interjections between the cellist and pianist. The pace and rhythm of this piece was interesting to follow and I enjoyed the interplay between the two instruments as the pace varied before finishing empahtically.

And just like that it was all over and we drove home, with the car smelling of sweat peas that were given to us by Amy's Gran and Grandad.

As I write this now it's just after half four on Monday afternoon, and in 24 hours I'll be at Pilton Farm enjoyed the start of Glastonbury 2008. It'll be interesting to experience it from the perspective of working, which is something that I've never had to do before, however it should be good fun working up at the sacred space chatting to random mash heads making sure they're all ok. Mind you it could be me that needs reassuring! I'm most looking forward to (hopefully) seeing Massive Attack and also Shlomo's Music Through Unconventional Means. Apart from these two I guess I'll just wait and see what happens, always the best way I think!

So drop by again this time next week to find out how it all went!

It's been a while

2008-02-02T10:58:00.000Z

Watched the new series of Jools Holland last, mainly because Radiohead were due to appear on it, and after hearing their new album, and watching their freee new years eve footage of live performances, I was interested to see how they'd come across. Also on the show was Cat Power, aka Chan Marshall, an artist who has a great voice and is a great talent.

The show itself was reasonably good, I was actually struck at how easy and undemanding the questions are that Jools Holland asks the guest that he interviews. He never really got much from his guests last night, and I thought the questions were pretty basic really. Maybe it's the news journalist in me that's started to come out recently!

Radiohead opened the show with Bodysnatchers, a great tune, though a friend of mine who isn't much of Radiohead fan wasn't impressed with Thom Yorke's 'singing', as he put it. What I like about watching Radiohead live is how they translate from the album onto the stage in terms of their music.

The other performances on the show were pretty good. I thought Feist was surprisingly good. I wasn't expecting much, and after hearing her album stuff I wasn't overally bothered by her, but live she was excellent. Cat Power, however, was the the complete opposite. I think I read a live review of one of her recent shows in the Guardian that didn't give an overly gracious review of her show, despite the jounro being a big fan. I have to say that from watching last night's show I would agree that journalist. Chan Marshall has always been something of a reclusive performer, sometimes walking off stage half way through songs unable to carry on. Not any more though, as she was completely over the top with her performance. It was an extremely extroverted performance that belied what I know about her past. The band behind her didn't help either, they drowned her voice and the songs sounded weak and unsure of where they were going. I listened to her new album, Jukebox, on the way to work this morning and I have to concede that the album versions are far better than the live versions. Everything is toned down slightly, and Chan's voice, which is fantastic becomes the really star. This all opposed to her Jools Holland performace which just seemed to be trying too hard. I'd give Cat Power a D.

Radiohead played a couple more songs, Wierd Fishes, and 15 Steps, which were both excellent, and it just made hope more that they'll be playing at Glastonbury this year. It seems a Glasto cliche to have Radiohead in the mixer, but it would be incredible for me at least!

I've given my voice a rest now, time to get back on the Radio!

Smallest League in the World

2007-12-06T08:53:00.001Z

If you know the faces it makes it so much more enjoyable! Especially some of the commentary "It's just not Mavers' day!"

And Hickie trying not to laugh as cycles past on his bike. Nicely shot though.

Altjiranga mitjina

2007-05-10T12:52:00.000+01:00

I have always been able to remember dreams. When I was at school I was always the only person in our class who ever seemed to talk about what I had dreamt about, noone else seemed to remember them, or they were not interested in their dreams at all. I'm not especially interested in dream interpretation, I've had books bought for me before, and I've read Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. It's not the meaning that I am really interested in, but the experience itself, the feeling of being in another world.

From a while back I can remember the fragment of dream which inspired me to write this post. I dreamt that I was a medium, but instead of receiving messages from beyond the grave at a seance, or something similar, I was receiving them through my dreams. In my dream I was going to sleep, and when I was dreaming within my dream ghosts would come to me and tell me things that I needed to pass on to the living. That's pretty much all I can remember from that one, but it intrigued me because of the fact that I was dreaming within my dream. Almost as two separate realities were being created. Maybe in my "dream's dream" I could have had a normal dream, instead of ghost visiting me. All sorts of mind boggling alternatives exist.

More recently my dreams have felt more related to my life. I've had countless dreams about Glastonbury Festival recently, and I've even had a couple of dreams about computer games that I like. In fact just a couple of nights ago I had one of those rare moments when you wake up and you're able to re-enter your dream from where you woke up from. I managed to do this 6 or 7 times that night. It was pretty weird, but it was a very cool dream!

I find nighttime quite an inspirational place in general, or maybe it's just being in bed that does it. I come up with lots of ideas for stories whilst I'm lying in bed, most come to me in the morning, but occasionally I'll have a dream that will inspire enough to write it down in case I forget it. All too often I've been in the familiar situation where you're convinced you'll remember what you've just dreamt, only to forget it by the morning.

The last thing I'm going to mention is deja vu, which is something which happens to all of us, well I imagine it does. Quite often I'll have recurring deja vu, where I might have had deja vu six months ago over something, then I'll have the same feeling again over a similar situation. However, the feeling doesn't relate to what happened 6 months ago, but to feeling of deja vu I had back then. Confusing? It also often feels like I may have dreamt the situation that I'm having deja vu about. I quite like deja vu as it makes me think lots about crazy possibilities within existence, which is always good to spin your mind out a bit on a Monday morning!

All this writing's made me feel tired now. Time for lunch!

Zig a zig ah!

2007-04-30T17:37:00.000+01:00

Perhaps I've been getting too engrossed lately trying to deconstruct song lyrics, but even before I started my novel, I still thought the Sugababes were never the most profound lyricists. I was stood waiting for the bus this morning, late again, and after Chris Moyles said how one of the Sugababes had spent the night in the nick for alleged assault he played one of their most recent songs, and I was reminded how much I hated this one particular lyric.

In comes from the song 'Easy', and contains this line "Hey Mr Postman, where's the post for my mailbox?" I'm guessing it is an attempt at alluding towards a subtle sexual subtext. But frankly it's just shit. One guy on a fan site called the lyric 'epic'! I mean, come on it doesn't even scan well. I'm surprised they didn't sing something about the milkman taking the cream from their milk, or some other equally poor metaphor. The song was co-written with Californian 'rock' band Orson, and I use the term 'rock' loosely as I imagine that Keane are probably also described as a rock band, tar them all with the same brush. I read a better description of Orson that called them "indie-types, but lets face it, they're about as indie as Steps." Accurate description methinks.

As for example's of their genius, well you don't have look too far. Check out this Dylanesque stanza:

There's no line for you and me
'Cause tonight we're V.I.P.
(I know somebody at the door)

Wow, I mean, I'm gobsmacked lads. Don't worry, it gets even better:

Just look at me, Silly Me,
I'm as happy as can be-
I got a girl who thinks I rock.
And tomorrow there's no school,
So lets go drink some more Red Bull,
And not get home 'till about 6:00.

6pm lads? Really rocking it up there. I'm now going to attempt to defend lyrics like this, but only a little bit mind you.

I think the main thing is that although song lyrics are poetry, they only tell half the story without the rhythm and melody to go behind them. Usually at the end of the day what determines the popularity of the song is its ability to catch your ear and hook you into song. Like it or hate it, it's this infectiousness that all pop records strive for, and lets face it, I don't think they're planning on challenging for a place in the Rock and Roll Fall of Fame. So my defense for these lyrics is that they are not supposed to be read silently, they are supposed to be heard, a bit like Shakespeare in many ways, though don't think for one second I'm comparing Orson or the Sugababes to Shakespeare.

This is not to say that some of my favourite bands and artists haven't produced some clangers, and drug induced lyrics often provide some of the most ridiculous lyrics of all time, but - in the words of Mark E Everett - I can't remember what my selective memory won't let me. I think at the end of the day what makes a truly bad lyric is when it stands out from within a song and something inside you makes you think 'hang on, that was really shit,' and this is when there the distinction needs to be made. There are good songs with bad lyrics, and bad songs with good lyrics, but when the correct combination is made then you get that musical rarity - a great song.

Nicely toasted

2007-04-24T10:13:00.000+01:00

I really like toast. But it has to be toasted exactly right, too burnt and it's just wrong, not enough and it's just, well, bread. The word itself derives from the Latin tostare, meaning to "roast". But our modern use of the word comes from the old French word around 1398 and literally means, "to brown with heat". Enough history though, toast is great, end of story. So yesterday I was making myself a spot of lunch, I was having a fried egg and mushroom sandwich since you ask, and I like to toast my bread for my sandwich. The main reason for this is that when you're using a filling like an egg, which obviously has a liquid centre, plain bread can often break up under the pressure of the egg yolk. Some might say the bread just soaks it up, I say "No! Soggy bread is wrong!"

So I've put the toast in the toaster, my mushroom are done and my egg is just finishing itself off. Now I have quite a cheap(Argos) frying pan, it's non stick that isn't that non stick, so I'm delicately trying to free the egg from the grasp of the pan when I hear the toast ejaculate from its fiery pit. Unfortunately this excites me so much that I create a slight tear in my yolk, and yellowy goodness begins to spread over the pan. Thinking quickly I abandon the egg, goto the toaster, throw the toast on a plate and spin round with said plate back to the frying pan. As I do so I hear the sound of one of the pieces of toast fall off my plate, 'no worries' I think, I'll retrieve it in a minute.

So I manage to free the egg, get it on my toast with the mushrooms and I now go to get the other bit of toast. I search all around the toast. No toast. I look to the floor. No toast. I even went out into the hallway. No toast. I was beginning to get a little concerned for two reasons, one, my egg and mushrooms were getting cold, and two, that was the last of the good bread as I only had end pieces left. Things were getting serious.

After standing in the middle of the kitchen I decided my only option was to think like the toast. Maybe then I could find out where it had gone. So I stood by where I had last seen the errant slice, and imagined myself flying off the plate as I had spun around. Crouching onto the floor I examined the surrounding area. No toast. So I did the experiment again, maybe it hit a cupboard, went in the opposite direction and ended up in an open drawer. But, alas, no toast.

It had seemed that the toast had been swallowed up by a black hole and transported into the fifth dimension. Just my luck. Begrudgingly I took an end piece and ate my sandwich thinking about my lost slice and how lonely it must be. Mind you, I'm not a fan of cold toast anyway, so maybe it was for the best.

Grow Bikes

2007-04-18T18:42:00.000+01:00

Does it just happen to me, or do you always find yourself stuck behind the slowest person ever when queuing at a supermarket checkout? In fact, this only seems to happen to me in Co-Ops, not Tesco's or Asda. Maybe people who shop at the Coey just can't find their way to bigger supermarkets. Just yesterday I was doing a bit of shopping, relatively pain free I must say, although they had run out of courgettes which was a bit annoying. But I went to pay, and at this Co-Op they only ever seem to have two tills running despite having around 20 check outs, and I had to make a quick decision as to which till to go to. There was a guy who had a fair bit stacked up on the conveyor belt on till one, but till two just had a guy with a motorbike helmet on and a few bottles of beer.

Of course, I made the mistake of taking till number two. Motorbike guy only had four bottle of lager, and a bottle of wine, but then when he was about to pay he suddenly decided that he wanted to get a grow bag for his tomatoes. He was obviously having problems seeing properly out of his helmet as he kept having to move his directly towards anything he wanted to look at. Anyway, he struggled to pick up a grow bag and gave it to the cashier. She added it to his bill, and he carried on trying to put his bottles in a carrier bag. Not as easy as it sounds it would turn out. The first bag he picked up he accidentally threw into the air, and after frantically swatting it around with his flailing arms, it fell to the floor and he opted to get a new one. Once the bottles were safely in, he decided they should be double bagged. By this time around three other people had gone through check out one, and because I had already put all my food on the conveyor, I couldn't move.

Well, he finally had his bottles safely doubled bagged, which I suppose was sensible really, but what I was more interested in was seeing how he was going to drive off with his grow bag. As he left, the cashier gave me a shake of the head and a sarky comment that only those disillusioned with public service can do. I paid quickly, and went outside to see my motorbike helmet mad sat on his moped. He had the grow bag half on his seat, with the rest dropping down to where his feet would normally go, and he was resting his feet on the bag. I stood at watched him slowly leaving the car park, he was even swaying as he went and I couldn't help but laugh as I saw him trundle around the corner, sat on a grow bag with a load of booze in his carrier bag swerving all over the road. I wonder what stories my next Co-Op trip will entail.

Trundling along

2007-04-18T17:01:00.000+01:00

I can't believe it was almost a year since I ran a marathon, and the small amount of running that I've done since have made that day seem even further away. Training was pretty hard going at times, motivation was the main bugbear of my preparation. Running in the winter when it's cold and wet, and often dark, was no fun at all, but once spring set in I actually found myself able to enjoy my runs a bit more.

Of course I can still remember running in the snow in Oxford during March, including running from Oxford to Wheatly and back in the pouring rain, along the main road. Not the most idyllic of runs! I had a fair amount of self doubt, mostly around three weeks before the final date, as at that point you know that you can't really improve any more as you've run out of time.

The hardest thing to train for is psychological strength, the ability to just keep your legs moving, or to create goals whilst you're running and each time you achieve one you feel good. To a degree this kind of mental strength is something that comes naturally, but it is possible to train for this, and you can also get the strength on the day from people supporting you.

I still remember the reason why I wanted to run the marathon, and I'll admit I did for almost entirely selfish reasons. I wanted to show a lot of people wrong, to prove I could do it and do it well, I wanted people to be surprised that James "who is always having a pint in the pub" could run a marathon. The thing was though, once I started training, no one doubted me, and my initial motivation changed: now I didn't want to fail those people who had faith in me.

The race itself was a bit of blur really. Yes I can remember certain moments, but the vast majority of the race holds no particular memory for me. I remember starting and thinking that I would start slightly slower than my pace, to save my energy and just run comfortably and try and forget about the other runners around me. This strategy worked, and I felt good for almost the entire race. The best advice I received though, came from a friend on the other side of the world, and although I laughed at him at the time (it was a comment I totally expected from him), it was a phrase that I kept thinking whenever I felt tired: "Your body is a machine"

It sounds silly, but every time I thought this I pushed any tiredness or pain to the back of my mind and just concentrated on keeping my legs going, just keep working them.

All of these things helped me through, as well as all the people supporting me on the day, and in the end I finished with a time of 4hours 2mins, not sure about the seconds, but I was a little gutted not to break 4 hours. Maybe another time.

So fast forward a year and I'm sat at my computer instead of going for a short run just to keep on top of things. But another run looms not far away, the Bristol Half Marathon in September. I'll start training for this in about a months time, and I know that everything I learned from my previous training will come in useful, and I look forward to crossing that finish line again, complete with bottle of Stella in my hand!

This little piggy...

2007-03-12T12:49:00.000Z

The ginger haired Tamworth is a rare pig that is slowly beginning to gain recognition as having the tastiest meat of all the porcine breeds. The Tamworth stands apart from other pigs, with its long neck and legs, and characteristic ginger hair, this is a pig that has more in common with wild boar as opposed to most other farmed pigs. The exceptional quality of the meat comes from the fact that the Tamworth is able to achieve a high body mass, without too much fat, that makes this breed a good 'dual purpose' pig, one that is ideal for pork meat and good bacon.

The name comes from the town of Tamworth in Staffordshire, where Sir Robert Peel began cross breeding his Tamworth stock with some pigs called Irish Grazers that he brought in from Ireland. Despite the obvious commercial quality of Tamworth meant, it is surprising to learn that the breed is classified as rare and critical. There are numbers of Tamworth in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, but they are still given a high priority of conservation by breeding societies in each country.

Tamworth pigs are not only known for their good meat however, in 1998 they were at the centre of a media circus that lasted for a week. Showing their boisterous, playful nature, two young Tamworth pigs escaped from an lorry as it was being unloaded by squeezing through a fence, and subsequently swimming across the River Avon before escaping into the undergrowth. They evaded their pursuers for a week, and in doing so they captured the hearts of the country, and in the end the pigs were saved from the slaughterhouse by a national newspaper, who paid off their owner in return for exclusive rights to the story. Such was the interest in this case that the BBC decided to dramatise the events, and it eventually became a 60 minute movie that premièred in April 2004.
Despite this brief foray into the entertainment industry, possibly the most coveted pigs in England are bred at a farm in Levisham, North Yorshire . The owner is Timothy Wilson, who co-owns the company Ginger Pig, one of the most well respected meat producers in Britain. He began breeding Tamworth pigs in the early 90s, and soon found himself with more meat than he really cared for, and so he got a butcher to teach him sausage making, read some cookery books and began making and selling his own meat products. He favours Tamworths because he 'likes big things, and the Tamworth is the biggest', and because of the quality of this meat he is now the primary supplier of meat to the River Café.

The Ginger Pig initially started selling their sausages at the Borough Market in London, and after their sausages proved an instant hit they eventually set up a stand at the market. Once joined by chef Paul Hughes, the Ginger Pig soon became recognised throughout the land as an producer of the finest meat products, and they now have their own butchers shop to accompany their market stand.

Despite the small numbers of the ginger Tamworth, there seems to be a genuine love for this breed of pig. They are friendly animals to keep, showing a good nature towards humans, and they are also excellent grazing animals are are very efficient at clearing overgrown land. The added bonus of their excellent meat makes them a good breed of pig to rear, and hopefully in the future more farmers will realise the various benefits that owning Tamworths can have. The ginger pig is considered to be the 'aristocrat' of the porcine world, and it would be a great loss to farming and agriculture if this breed were allowed to slowly die out.

The Perrantide Approaches

2007-02-25T18:44:00.000Z

Cornwall is a county where its people are renowned for their great sense of pride, a strong cultural identity that can be seen in towns and villages across the county. But as St Piran's Day approaches once again, there seems to be a distinct lack of celebrations going on across Cornwall during the week leading up to the 5th of March. Of course there are the usual events occurring, the St Piran Play in Perranporth and the procession in Truro, but these events are only the tip of the festivities that could be much more widespread.

During recent years Cornwall's popularity has increased to the extent where the counties' image has become big business, and the iconic flag of St Piran is a strong brand image for Cornwall. It would be in the interest of the public sector to see that there is great marketability behind the celebration of St Piran, and that it would not only encourage spending from within the existing population of Cornwall, but it would also encourage tourists to visit the county during the shoulder season month of March. The need within the tourism industry to diversify their market in order to make promote an all year round industry would surely make St Piran's Day an obvious starting point due to its ready to sell image.

In Falmouth this year there is very little happening during the 'Perrantide' – the week leading up to St Piran's Day – yet Falmouth is one of the main economic areas in southern Cornwall. Keven, who has been running the Cornish Store on Falmouth's high street for nearly three years believes that St Pirans Day, and the sense of being Cornish is often something that is “celebrated more away from Cornwall”. Essentially this is how the large celebration of St Patrick's Day would have started, with the Irish contingent across the world spreading the remembrance of their patron saint, to such an extent that the English now celebrate this more than their own patron saint.

“It's not celebrated enough” said Keven, “the council need to help promote it, because it it's organised people will attend”. There is the constant problem within Cornwall of the 'dreckly attitude' that means that locals will usually wait for someone else to take the reins, and if that doesn't happen then they don't do anything to themselves to change the situation. However, like Keven said, if it is organised then the Cornish can prove as dedicated and motivated as anyone in the country when it comes to organising some top class festivities.

Both the private, and public sectors need to start realising just how much a date such as St Piran's Day can help promote their business and the region in general. Cornwall has a ready made, marketable brand that is just waiting to be used to its full potential and until then St Piran's Day will only be celebrated by the dedicated few, as opposed to the willing masses.

Diabolus in Musica

2007-02-19T11:22:00.000Z

The rise of the MP3 player has meant that song playlists have become part of our everyday life, with vast selections of music available right at our fingertips. One of the beautiful things about music is its ability to evoke strong emotions within the listener, it can trigger old memories, it can rouse the passion inside, and it can cover a heart with clouds. Its universal appeal means that everyone will find themselves influenced and affected by a song at some point in their life. But when you have the ability to change lives, and indeed the world, how much can music reveal about the lives and actions of some of the world's most influential figures?

Recognised in a BBC poll to be the greatest-ever Britain, Winston Churchill galvanised a country when it was needed most. His steely resolve in the face of the overwhelming pressure faced from the opposing forces in the Second World War made him a figure of inspiration to the citizens of Briton. Churchill's strength and patriotism is clearly visible in the song 'Battle Hymn of The Republic', a song played at his funeral, and one that supposedly brought a tear to Churchill's eye whenever he heard it. A fervently patriotic song, it was have had a strong resonance with Churchill during the war, and with lyrics such as “let us die to make men free” there can be little doubt that this song would have inspired Churchill in times of trouble.
On the other side of the English Channel, Hitler was well known to be a fan of the composer Robert Wagner, not just his music, but also his anti-semitic writings that the Nazi Party used in their own propaganda. Many of Wagner's opera extensively use the tritone, a musical interval that spans three whole tones. In medieval times, this musical characteristic was called the Devil's Interval, because of the dissonance created by this sound. It creates dark and atmospheric music, the kind of music that typifies the way that Hitler slowly, but inexorably brought most of Europe under his power. While it is foolish to say that Hitler only liked Wagner because of the supposed 'evil' connotations behind his music, it is not unreasonable to say that Hitler enjoyed Wagner so much that he let his music and beliefs become an essential part of the Nazi movement.

Richard Nixon was to be one of the first contemporary leaders who openly embraced popular music and showed an interest in playing music himself; Nixon was a proficient pianist, even appearing on the Jack Parr Tonight Show. Nixon appeared to have a keen desire to be seen as a President who was looked at with the same admiration as musicians, and he used his musical abilities to try and raise his public profile. Yet these acts only served to create a caricature of the President, and it can be clear to say that his musical ambition and interest only hindered his image, and had a detrimental effect on his political career.

The current President, George Bush, is known to listen to his iPod whilst out cycling on his ranch in Texas. His own musical tastes reveal a safe, middle of road selection, with no black artists, no genre less than 25 years old, and no world music. Bush has a well documented past of misplaced words and confused sentences, and his unchallenging, simple music tastes reflect the thought process of the man himself. His cycling partner claims it's music to “get over the next hill", and sometimes when watching Bush in action, it seems that this is all he is ever trying to do.

Although music can often have an influence on the character of the listener, it should also be recognised that maybe the listener has chosen that type of music because they see their own personality within that music. Music will always have a place in society, affecting the man on the street, to the man in the Oval Office, and the world is all the more interesting for it. But every now and then it can be interesting to speculate on whether Hitler might have turned out differently if he'd listened more to Debussy as opposed to Wagner.

Where's my plunger?

2007-02-16T01:21:00.000Z

Writer's block. It's something that most writer's complain of at some point in their life. I think this can be quite hard to explain to some people, I've only found it a problem when I have to be creative with my writing, as opposed to writing something like an essay. Perhaps though, 'block' is the wrong word to use, maybe 'struggle' or probably more likely 'procrastination'. No one can procrastinate quite like a writer.

Whenever I seem to be suffering from the supposed "writer's block", I always notice how effective I can be at actually avoiding writing all altogether. I'll read newspapers, check my email for the fifteenth time, look on YouTube, then check my email again. I'm beginning to get worryingly good at it. In fact, this blog entry is just another attempt to avoid my work, but the problem is is that I just can't ignore my work, it has to be done.

I was actually hoping in some small way that maybe by writing this now it might free up my mind a bit and get the juices flowing again as it were. I think the main cure is to just keep attacking the page, no matter what. I have been literally forcing myself to keep writing, and chastising myself when I my focus veers from my work. It's slowly working, after all, writing isn't supposed to be easy, if it was then anyone could write a novel.

Perhaps it's the discipline that I lack, the ability to remain undistracted for longer than two minutes is something that I wish I had. I do think that the struggle can be linked to a lack of faith in one's work, the low self-esteem. All this adds up and weighs on the mind in the form of depression and anxiety, only serving to stifle further writing even more. Quite often I hit a standstill purely because I think everything I write is worthless, but then I try to make myself carry on with the reasoning that, yes it may be worthless, but get it on paper and then maybe you can turn it into something worthwhile.

It's like Phillip Pullman says, the ideas are easy "it's writing the book. That's the difficult thing, the thing that takes time and energy and the discipline."

Bootiful Earrings

2007-02-12T11:40:00.000Z

When I was young I seemed to lack the simple ability to look after my pets. My first set of goldfish died within two days, and my rabbit only lasted around six months – instead of telling me that he had died, my Dad said that he had run away,causing me to have nightmares for years that Champ would have been attacked by a pack of hungry rats. The memory of these animals still remains with me, but they were never around long enough for me to form any lasting attachment that makes me want to preserve their memory in any solid shape or form.

Yet a process that was originally pioneered in America seems to be attracting some interest from bereaved pet owners in the UK. Recently a Westcountry woman, Sue Rogers, had the remains of her two dogs, and her cat made into blue-tinted diamond. Costing over £3,000 it is certainly not a cheap process, but it does mean that she has a unique diamond to remind her of her lost pets.

I was first alerted to this technique on an advert for a well known vodka company, a story of how even an ugly man can be turned into a “girl's best friend” if he has his remains turned into a diamond. At the time I did not even realise that this was a real process, but companies such as LifeGem offer this exact service to the general public. However, watching the advert makes me think that maybe the money would have been better spent buying a bottle of vodka and having a good wake instead.

The main interesting aspect of this process is the possibility that any animal that has been cremated, as long as it has a skeleton or hair, can be turned into a diamond. I immediately thought of the recent poultry culls that have happened in Suffolk, and the 160,000 birds that were gassed. What should be done with the carcases? Couldn't the Government invest in a diamond producing plant, and then they could recycle the cremated birds and have an exportable resource in return. They could then use this money to compensate the farmers, who I'm sure would be very grateful for the money (although maybe they would rather have the diamonds instead).

On an international scale the Government could even claim that they also helping to combat the illegal trade of diamonds that causes so much blood shed in Africa. By creating our own diamonds, companies can obtain the stones from legitimately controlled sources, thereby reducing the amount of illegally traded diamonds within the industry.

Sue Rogers and her diamond cat and dogs, show just what can be possible by utilising cutting edge technology and 200g of animal ash. If the Government wants to make the best of a bad situation then maybe looking at carbon processing will provide with an answer as to how to turn a health hazard into something truly “bootiful”.

Rat Island

2007-01-30T16:41:00.000Z

Well I survived the computer incident. Just.So now I have the means again to regularly feed my Guardian Online addiction. I was interested to read an article in the environment section about mass tourism in the Galapagos Islands. My earlier blog entry about Lonesome George made my eyes pay attention to this article, and I was interested to see that a rat had been found on the island this week. Nothing special there you may say, but not being indigenous to the islands, there has been cause for concern.

The allegation are currently aimed toward the MV Discovery, a cruise ship with a capacity of around 500 tourists. Arriving from Panama, it could easily have provided safe passage for the rat, which would have then disembarked for a tour of the island. There is the argument that this is just a coincidence, and indeed it could very easily be just that. But what cannot be ignored is that with the increase in tourism, it is highly likely that there will be a wide range of ecological effects on the islands.

1968 was the year that the Galápagos National Park Service was established, and they set themselves the task of creating a working tourism framework, that would protect the islands, but open them up to the undoubted interest of nature lovers around the world. They placed restrictions on the number of visitors allowed on each arriving boat, plus the requirement of a qualified guide for every twenty visitors.

The Galápagos National Park Service were the forerunners of eco-tourism, realising the need to maintain a balance between conservation and tourism. However, the situation now places the islands themselves in a very precarious situation. This huge rise in visitors will place a strain on their existing facilities, not just having an effect on the wildlife, but also on the experience of those people genuinely interested in the islands. The average EasyCruise passenger is not going be passionately interested in the islands as a whole, instead it's just a whistle stop tour; hurried photo opportunities in order to back in time for the lobster dinner and cabaret.

The Galápagos need tourism, no doubts there, but at what price? Their tourism needs to focus on sustainability, and needs to find the balance that it had kept so well until recently. Without this the islands will surely succumb to idle feet pushing back the hedges even further, and before long irreparable damage will have been done. This is a modern day problem that has spread to many delicately beautiful, eco-tourism destinations; the danger is that by losing sight of what makes these places so special we run the likely possibility that we will crush them with our crowds.

James' bane

2007-01-16T12:31:00.000Z

Just going to start off by saying that this is the second time I've written this blog entry. Microsoft Shitty Explorer (not using this by choice I might add) just erased my last entry due to its crap Popup blocking system. OK i should have saved a draft, so I guess it's my fault, but just give me a break here. Why is there a need to refresh automatically, surely it would have the same rules if I just had to click on what I wanted to open again and it would work. A pox on you Microsoft, you and your software.

So my entry went something like this. I have always found that over the years that through having a geekish interest in computors, I have found more and more ways to become frustrated with them. Despite an above average ability when it comes to computer related problems, I find that there are just new and different problems which the average user probably never encounters - nor would they want to.

My most recent anatagonism has come in form of trying to install Windoze XP on my brand new PC. Basically, the laptop that I hd borrowed to take to Uni slowly died, and so I needed a new computer. My Mac was getting on in years, and although I love Macs, I felt a PC might be a better all round option for me. At least until I have more money and can afford a beautiful, stable, excellent Mac once again.

Being reasonably confident, I decided to buy my components for my PC separately as it would enable me to end up with the kind of computer that I acutally wanted, as opposed to a cheap run around. So everything arrived, nice and shiny, and I couldn't wait to get everything working so I could play Half Life 2 online...I mean do some important Uni work!

Problem 1: Accidentally bought the wrong RAM. Schoolboy error, but it was no big deal as I had another 512mb that was compatible, so at least I could get up and running. A quick chat with the nice people at Novatech, and they told me to post it back and I'll get the suitable replacement. Ideal.

Problem 2: So I put everything together, power up and begin to install Windoze. Shouldn't be too dificult, the format goes fine, but I start getting error messages relating to the copying of files over to the installation folder. Well maybe they're not important file, I think, so I skip them and carry on.

Problem 3 I reach the installation stage, everything goes fine. Install is done and it's saving the settings. I get to the last minute of the install, and the system reboots. Hmm, I'm sure it wasn't supposed to do that. I'm dismayed to then find that my computer is locked in a perpetual loop of crashing and rebooting. So not the easy task I expected.

For the next two days I tried a variation of installation technique, tricks and clever things. None of which worked. In despair I finally concluded that it must just be the disk, as it's the same files every install that are failing to copy. So a quick call later and a very good friend of mine has another copy in the post for me.

So now I'm waiting for that to arrive. In fact it may already be at home waiting for me. But I've started reading various posts on Tech forums, all suggesting that there can be other reasons for this error arising. Motherboard problems, faulty RAM and doggy CD drives. Oh joy. So now I'm stressing that it could be something much worse, and all this is happening in the week before I have to hand in all my work, which is currently sat on a laptop hard drive that I need to plug into my new computer so I can get the data off it. I'm sure it'll all work, it's just a little worrying right now. How will this drama end? Possibly in burning flames with a PC through the window.

If only I had bought a Mac...

Ahoy there!

2007-01-04T18:09:00.000Z

I still find it absolutely unbelievable that the RNLI is still supported by the generous donations of the public. It's a service that saves untold numbers of lives every year; more often than not these lives are of young children who find themselves inadvertently in trouble in the summertime. It's important to recognise that the RNLI do not just patrol beaches in their RIB's, but they also risk storm and tempest many miles from land, risking their lives in order to save those in dire circumstances. There's is a service that is often overlooked in the public eye, but in the quiet of night they are always prepared to leave their beds and face the storm outside.

I just can understand that the RNLI is not a publicly subsidised service like the police or the fire brigade. Although, having said that maybe the season the volunteers are so dedicated and respected is because they choose to give up their own free time in order to provide this life saving service. Sometimes charitable generosity can provide much more than taxable income prised from our hands. The financial cost of keeping the crew trained and the lifeboats running are truly staggering, running costs are at around £120 million, with £24 million going on expenditure towards boat investment, equipment and shoreworks in order to maintain their efficiency. It cost around £1000 a year to train each volunteer crew member, and for each time an all weather lifeboat is launched, it costs an estimated £5,580 just to send her out.

At least now, thanks to programmes such as the BBC's Seaside Rescue, public awareness of the general scope of the RNLI's activities are being recognised. Fundraising totals are increasing every year, but consider this compared to fact that Children In Need this year raised half of the RNLI's total fundraising income in one night, compared to over the course of the year. I can't help but feel that the RNLI is being grossly overlooked by the public at large. More and more people holiday by the seaside, and all these people like to take advantage of the sea during the summer months. Yet due to factors such as poor equipment and education on sailing boats, or just a plain lack of common sense, these are the people who are facing life threatening situations. More often than not these casualties are young children, and the RNLI rescues on average, four children from the sea everyday.

I'm not suggesting that the RNLI is necessarily a more important service than any other, just than it appears to be woefully underfunded for the service that it provides. When the firemen went on strike a few years ago over pay disputes I felt no sympathy for them whatsoever. Fair enough, they probably do deserve a pay rise for the excellent service that they provide, but 40 per cent? And to go on strike for 8 days leaving parts of the country dangerously under covered in terms of fire protection. Imagine if the RNLI went on strike? Who could cover for them effectively? Hardly anyone in the entire country, there is no way you can teach someone how to skipper a Severn class lifeboat in fifteen foot swell and force eight winds and come alongside a stricken fishing boat in just a few weeks.

The difference between RNLI volunteers and those in other areas of the public service is that the empathy often felt between those being rescued and those on board the lifeboat. Many of the lifeboat crew have their livings linked to the sea, due to the very nature of the job a keen interest in the sea is required, and there is always the knowledge in the back of any seafarers mind that the RNLI are always there if the worst should happen. The fact of the matter is that anything can happen at sea, it does not matter how experienced you are, and the crew and skippers of these lifeboats understand this, it could happen to them, and it's just as likely to happen to you.

I have an incredible amount of respect for those who serve around the country, giving up their free time, in order give those at sea some peace of mind. It is something I would love to be do myself, but in my mind I do not think I have the fortitude to do so. So instead I will continue to support the lifeboat from the shore, confident to know that when I'm at sea, if the worst should happen, I'll have some of the most dedicated and courageous people in the UK there ready to support me.

Visit the RNLI Website for more details.

Chicken Soup For The Cold

2007-01-04T10:30:00.000Z

As much as I like to enjoy myself over the festive season, I always end up feeling worse off during the first week or so in January. I would probably bet that over the last four or five years I've managed to run my body down into a cold every year; I never learn of course. Restless nights, then struggling to get up in the morning, and I always need to get up in order to either go to work, or get Uni work done. I wasn't surprised to see picture in the Guardian yesterday of empty streets and offices in London, a direct result of the first sick days of the year being taken, and Scilly was no different.

According to my Dad the town hall was nothing but a ghostly cavern, devoid of the electronic hum of computer monitors and clicking keyboards. I'm sure some of these absences, here and in the capital are absolutely genuine, but after having plenty of relaxing time off over Christmas and New Year, it can often be hard to drag oneself back into the working routine, especially when you only have January to look forward too. It's possibly my least favourite month of the year. It's always cold, it's long, and still too close to the winter equinox that there is no significantly obvious change to the length of the days, in fact the it doesn't stay light any later in the day, it just gets lighter earlier. Not much use when you're still sleeping - mind you I guess the farmers will be a bit happier for it.

My one consoling January fact? It's National Soup Month in America. Maybe if they eat more soup and less steroid pumped cows they might be able to lose some weight. Mind you I expect their soup probably has chips and jam in it.

Well I might join our American bosom buddies and have some chicken soup for lunch, after all if the Ancient Egyptians thought it could cure colds, then maybe they were onto something. The actual scientific proof of chicken soup helping colds is pretty thin on the ground; a study did suggest that the nutrients and vitamins often contained in chicken soup might help slow the activity of white blood cells, which would act as an anti-inflammatory, hypothetically leading to a temporary ease from illness. However, any likely benefit from soup in general probably comes from steam from the soup getting into the nasal passages and acting as a natural decongestant.

That's good enough for me though, I'm in danger of inhaling my keyboard at the rate that I'm sniffing. Stay healthy, eat soup.

Achive Your Resolution In '07 - Free Report Shows You How!

2007-01-02T13:40:00.000Z

Well I guess this is the usual time for both reflection and looking forward to the oncoming new year. The tired corpse of 2006 has now been put to rest and millions of people are already breaking their new year resolutions. I'm not normally one for resolutions, I don't have anything that I want to give up really. Although there are a few things I want to achieve this year, so maybe my resolution should be aimed at trying to achieve these goals. Seems sensible.

A quick google of New Year Resolutions reveals the sponsored results to be full of Loan companies claiming to help you fix your debt, anti-smoking companies, lifestyle coaches, affordable counselling and claims of being able to change the world this year with our company. As with most things in life, these companies are quick to exploit those aiming for the quick easy fix to their lives, and those with New Year's hangovers often look to others to help as opposed to helping themselves. I'm not totally cynical though, some things such as giving up smoking often requires external help, and if this helps them stop then I'm all for it.

The most popular resolutions are always the ones that we are most familiar with. Stopping smoking, losing weight, drinking less etc. But there are few resolutions that are more centred around giving and helping others more. Maybe that's what we all need to be thinking of more at this time of year. The supposed message of Christmas has long since disappeared under the gloss of crass commercialism, but maybe with some extra focus then the New Year could become a popular image for making a difference in the world. Whether this is done by giving money to charity, volunteer work or something as simple as planting a tree, these are surely more worthwhile endeavours in the long term. Someone can easily lose weight, improve their fitness, and help a charity by doing something like running a marathon. It's no easy feat, but the rewards are incredibly good and the achievement itself is a pretty big thing.

So for this year I'm planning on paying more attention to the three 'R's - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. I want to put more effort into growing my own vegetables this year in an effort to eat more good food. Also I want to keep working hard towards my MA, and pushing my writing even further than before. Shouldn't be too hard.

Blydhen Nowydh Da

Things ending in 'olly'

2006-12-19T15:48:00.000Z

Ho, ho, ho. Or so it goes. Clinically obese, he gorges on sherry and mince pies, whilst being chauffeured around by his host of reindeer. He doesn't even make the bloody presents! Those elves need to form a union, take industrial action. I bet he stops off at McDonalds on his trip around the world, after all, McDonald's employees are people too. I'm sure the fat man tries hard to lose weight, but then he is an anthropomorphic personifaction, given shape by the belief we have in his appeareance. Poor bloke doesn't really stand much chance in losing much weight does he?

What is it with Christmas adverts? I must have seen the same ad for Lockets three times within an hour today. My New Year's resolution is to never buy Lockets again. Christmas adverts in general are sickeningly kitsch, so covered in syrup that it amazes me that anyone can even consider buying that product. The marketing power that comes with Christmas is so great that even the image of Santa (have you ever noticed that Santa is an anagram of Satan?) is corporately whored by megacorps such as Coca-Cola. These images become so subconsciously ingrained into our psyche that we never even realise it's happened. It's the ultimate subliminal marketing strategy. If someone were to ask me what the first image that comes into my head when the word Christmas is mentioned, and it would be that of a Coca-Cola advert. Either the Polar bears drinking coke, or the legion of gas guzzling, environment choking, trucks, dutifully delivering thousands of litres of the sugar infested drink to small children everywhere. It wouldn't be Christmas without Coke.

Bring on New Year.

He's her lobster!

2006-12-15T09:58:00.000Z

Learnt a bit about lobsters yesterday. They are not my favourite crustacean, crabs win that one, but nevertheless they are pretty tasty! Walking around the local produce market yesterday, I stopped by the shellfish stall and the fisherman behind it was talking about how old one particular lobster was. I always thought it was about 10 years per lb, and this lobster was around 1 3/4lbs, around 14/5 years old apparently. We were then treated to an overview of exactly how a lobster grows from being an egg desperatly clutching to its mother's tail, to eventually star in a Beastie Boys music video.

Apparently a female lobster will hold around 40,000 eggs until they hatch, all originally black in colour. The main difference between a male and female lobster is the protecting ridges that run down the tail of the lobster. These triangular shaped ridges, higher on females than males, protect the eggs as they are clustered along the underside of the lobster's tail. Once the time to hatch arrives, the eggs will turn a reddy-brown colour, if caught at this time it is not unusual for fisherman to throw the lobster back in order to let the eggs hatch.

Once born, the miniscule hatchlings will visciously fight each other for survival in a true survival of the fittest battle. There is around a 23 per cent initial survival rate for the small lobsters, and once the first few days of fighting are over they will settle under sea bed, or under rocks, filter feeding as they slowly begin to grow. Lobster younger than five years old are rarely found in pots, if they are then it is usually due to some fluke of tide that they managed to find themselves caught. Of course fishing law states that undesized lobsters need to be put back if they are under 87mm.

Lobster can be cooked and eaten in a variety of different ways, but I think my favourite is possibly just a bit of lobster in a roll with some salad. Proper job. Supposedly the eggs can be used to mix with sauces, and the fisherman I was talking to said that he sometimes grabs the eggs and puts them in his cheese and pickle sandwiches when he's out on the water, though I think he was joking with that comment!

“If you work on a lobster boat, sneaking up behind someone and pinching him is probably a joke that gets old real fast.”

June in December

2006-12-06T16:51:00.000Z

Ok, so this is the last post I do on food for a while, but this is mainly so that I remember the name of a little delicacy that I ate yesterday afternoon. Dolma, or dolmades, are a small snack food that are wrapped in a grape leaf. They can contain meat, or pretty much anything, but the ones that I have always had mostly consisted of rice inside. Usually I'm at Uni on a Tuesday, but yesterday I was able to drop into town because we only had tutorials instead of lectures. The main reason was to see my girlfriend for lunch, but I ended up with the extra bonus of seeing these lovely grape leaf parcels for sale on a stall at the farmer's market.

I've had dolmades twice before, the last time was when I was helping a friend do some building, and his wife came back from the recently opened Deli with many small tubs of fine food - one of which contained a couple of dolmades. My first time was at Glastonbury 2005, and my god they tasted like the best thing I had ever eaten. It had been so hot on the Thursday, this was before the torrential downpour on Friday, and I remember we were all trying not too move too much in order to reduce sweating. Along came a lovely old fella who had a basket full of goodies. On closer inspection we saw these little green things, and the dude recommended them, he said we would find them very refreshing. I think he gave us one for free so we could taste it, and upon doing so I think we all bought two or three each. He wasn't wrong! They are coated in olive oil, and contained rice, pine nuts and other herbs (nothing illegal I don't think), and were an instant refreshment in the stagnant summer heat. We never saw him again, but if so I would have definitely bought some more.

So I was very happy to find out, after 18 months, what they were actually called. Actually, after I bought a tub I had only walked 400 yards before forgetting what they were called again - thank the Gods for Google! It was a lovely moment finding these at the farmer's market, on a stall full of what looked like incredibly tasty types of Mediterranean food. They all looked good, but it was the dolmades that I wanted. It made me realise just how excellent farmer's markets can be. They give an opportunity for local food producers to showcase and sell their food, on a scale and marketability that they can't always afford. What I liked about this stand though, was that it was taking locally sourced food, but creating food that is culturally different to our own. I love trying as many varied types of food as I can, and I was pleased to able to revisit that hot afternoon in Pilton in a single bit of a dolmade.

If you fancy trying them yourself and can't find anywhere that sells them, here's a tasty recipe. Making dolmades

The greatest thing

2006-12-04T15:31:00.000Z

I wonder why certain fish love bread? Mullet like bread, so do trout, but is it any particular type of bread? Do they only go for wholemeal, or are they more fond of naan; do coeliac fish exist? Ducks are also partial to a bit of bread, and there are kids up and down the land who have probably fed ducks at some point in their past. Bread appears to be enjoyed by many different species, but in recent years it has been slowly pushed away by many people, usually those on some pseudo scientific diet, cooked up by some woman who claims to be a doctor, yet has never received any accredited qualification.

I really like bread, all types, and especially the different spreads that you can put on it - except marmite! The history of bread probably dates back to around Neolithic times, and many early civilisation such as the Sumerians would have eaten bread as part of their diet. There are historical reports of the Gauls skimming the foam off the top of fermenting beer to use to make lighter type of bread, and other ancient civilisations reportedly used a wine bed method to create yeast for leavening bread.

It's important to expand the view that bread extends well beyond that of the loaf. There are the obvious variations of rolls, baguettes and bagels. But the basic recipe for bread extends to the making of pizzas, tortillas, pretzels and many more delicious eateries. I don't think I would ever voluntarily stop eating bread, and I feel bad for those people who can't actually eat due to medical conditions. How can you even begin to resist the smell of freshly baked bread, especially if you bang a couple of bit of bacon in too with some pepper and brown sauce.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to the kitchen...

My kingdom for a kebab!

2006-11-28T14:01:00.000Z

Have you ever eaten a kebab sober? I have, it was a sobering experience. I used to live by the kebab when i was at college, I used to say hi to the guys who worked there whenever I saw them in the street. When I left I got my picture taken behind the counter with the giant knife and had a go at cutting the leg. Ah, the good old days. Actually, they weren't that great, neither the kebabs, nor the days.

I hate McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, not just because of what they represent, but because their food is just absolute shit. But, hypocritically, I really have no problems in eating meat that closely resembles flesh off a first degree burns victim. Stick a bit of chili sauce on it, and Bob's your monkey's Uncle. I have yet to regress to the state of eating kebabs sober, and I can confidently say that I think those days are definitely locked in cupboard at the bottom of the Atlantic. My main problem is that I'm now back on the mainland; it's just all to easy to go to the kebab after you've had a few pints and you got a case of kebab cravings. I've not done too badly so far, in fact I think I've only had three kebabs since I've been here, and over two months that's not a bad average. I've even curbed my desire to go for the cheap, donner in a bap option; a meal for the truly inebriated.

I never ate too many at Uni...actually I have to confess that I had one or two in the first year...ok, and the second year too. But I moved on to burgers pretty quickly, and by the time the third year came round, our kebaby was doing pizzas, which were actually bloody good. I accidentally weaned myself off the donner at this point because I almost always went to the kebaby with my good mate Dave, who, being vegetarian, was never really up for some reconstituted lamb. So we used to share a mushroom pizza, and at the same price as a donner kebab, it was well worth the money.

Of all the various kebab establishments that i have frequented there's one place in particular that serves up truly poetic kebabs - Radjdhani's in Southampton. It's a mythical place that I've never seen with sober eyes, but every kebab I have ever had from there has been sublime. Apparently they make the claim to be the best kebab house in Southampton, and I would fully agree with this statement. Their toxic orange sauce is just unreal, I've no idea what it is, but I don't really care; just don't get it on your clothes as it'll never come off.

So I now find myself on the cusp of kebab life again, but somehow I don't think I'll be reverting to those days of old. The kebab will remain a purely drunken liaison, and I'm sure I'll be waking up in the morning, regretting it as I pick the final remnants from my teeth. Lovely.

The image at the top was taken from a great website advertising a kebaby in Surrey. Please have a look, it's hilarious. They have 35 years experience in cooking kebabs, they have a pretty decent menu, at reasonable prices; make sure you check out the pictures of the establishment, in particular the shady character on the second page not looking happy that he's just had his picture taken. Click the link below, it's their motto!

YOU HAVE TRY THE REST NOW TRY THE BEST

A dog goes...

2006-11-26T22:09:00.000Z

Last Easter I finally got my lazy self around to hijacking a section of my Dad's allotment. She's a decent size, so he could spare a little bit of ground for my fledgling gardening requirements. I had helped Dad a fair bit on and off in the past, so I had some clue about growing your own veg, but I never realised just how much care and attention it actually takes to do it successfully.

I actually really enjoyed the process of preparing the plot, planting everything, and in some cases growing stuff at home before transplanting it to the garden. I grew plenty of radish, some lettuce, carrots, peppers, cucumber, chillis, and various herbs; not all were successful however! It was an insanely dry summer, and most of our lettuce died due to the heat and dehydration. Yet despite this intial set back, I now feel even more passiontely about growing my own food. I am in the process of acquiring an allotment of my own, and hopefully next summer this will prove more successful after the learning of this year.

But there are now so many other opportunities that this hobby has opened for me. I've recently found out about WWOOFing - World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms - which is a great organisation that allows people to visit organic farms all over the world, and gives free accommodation and food in return for some farm work. It seems to me to be a great way to explore a country, find out about places that are well removed from the tourist trail and learn more about sustainable living.

I'm very taken with going to Canada to do some WWOOFing, some friends are moving out there, and they know plenty of people and they have work themselves that needs doing. From what they tell me Canada sounds like an incredibly beautiful place, lots of trees, which is great! For now though, this is just another idea placed along with all the others I seem to be collecting at the moment. For now I'm still happy growing my radish.

Silly Mid-On

2006-11-25T11:42:00.000Z

The scenes of jubilation and celebration that captured the hearts of the nation seem a distant memory now for anyone following England's defense of the Ashes in Australia. It was never going to be easy, and a series of injuries, mental and physical, have made the team selection that much tougher for Duncan Fletcher. Yet there has to be some optimism, but traditionally this is something English supporters throw away the instant things start to go wrong. This fickle nature is somewhat endemic of England, and therefore it eventually finds it way into the minds of those people playing the game; whether it be Cricket, Football or Rugby. Fortunately though, I believe that England's cricketers can overcome this sentiment, that they have the mental fortitude to overcome this first stumbling block. After all, it's easy to forget that we lost the first test at Lords in 2005, yet we showed the strength and ability to overturn this result and eventually win in style.

The series garnered its name in 1882, after England - the dominant force in cricket - lost in a shock defeat to Australia at the Oval. The Sporting Times subsequently ran an obituary in their paper announcing:

Touring almost constantly at the time, the English team went out to Australia only a short while after their loss at the Oval. This became well known as the Quest to Regain the Ashes. It was a tight contest, but England prevailed winning the third test in Sydney to finish the series 2-1. The Ashes themselves are reputed to have been created by a Lady Clarke from Melbourne, after the England team took part in a social match at their palatial home in Sunbury, before the series had even begun. It was here that Lady Clarke arranged for a cricketing item to be burnt and placed in a small ceramic urn. It is still unknown what that item is, but the opinion is that it was either a bail, or a the cover of a cricket ball. This was then presented to the England captain Ivo Bligh, though he later received a velvet bag to contain the urn after England had won the third test match.

The act of playing for the Ashes actually died out over the years, and it wasn't until around twenty five years later that the legend was revived and the contest between the two sides has been known as the Ashes ever since. The Ashes have been dominated by Australia since the seventies, with England only winning a handful of series. 2005 saw possibly the most spectacular test match series ever, each match running on a knife edge with the results going down to the wire in each case. The final match proved to be something of an anticlimax in the end as England played the game to achieve a draw and win the series 2-1.

That series gave England their first series win over Australia since 1987, and along with it the belief that they had the strength to finally compete with Australia at the highest level of test cricket. Despite the injuries that have forced some of that team to drop out of this Ashes tour, there are still some of those players left who showed the kind of attitude that the Australians themselves pride themselves upon. The aggressive bowling of Harmison, the power of Flintoff, and the confidence of Pieterson. These are three players who, no matter what, are going to be vital in the outcome of this winter's Ashes. They have already proved at home that they have the ability to be the best in the world and now is the time - with their backs against the wall - to step forward and lead England onward and defend the Ashes with everything they have.

The trees, the trees!

2006-11-24T15:49:00.000Z

The seasonal cycle slowly slumbers on, as autumn begins to recede and the varicose fingers of winter grasp the country; slowly choking until spring skips back over the hill. For now, in Cornwall, autumn is holding on for dear life, the results are a great swathe of burnt trees spread all over the surrounding countryside.

Last sunday looking across the river towards the Roseland I couldn't help but be struck by just how beautiful everything looked. Whilst waiting for the ferry I found myself lost, staring at the Technicolour trees that covered the hillside. The wind was funnelling up the river and pushing the trees back and forth, giving the impression that the hillside was breathing. The hypnotic, psychadelic dance of the leaves left me entranced; speachless at nature's beauty.

Crossing the Fal proved another eye opener, as looking downstream it was evident that trees were even overhanging the lip of the bank, branches stretching out like veins towards the water. For as far as I could see there was no other penetration through the woodland canope. It made me feel like the Fellowship travelling along the Anduin in those small Elven boats. For a second I forgot this world; technology, global warming, terrorism, 4x4's, fast food, capitalism, selfishness and greed. It was a sense of feeling more for the natural elements of this life than the materials we surround ourselves with everyday.

If only everyone could stop once in a while and find that same sense of wonderment. I felt like nothing and everything. I felt privilged to be alive.

Time is an illusion

2006-10-28T21:46:00.001+01:00

I have been alive for 777,824,940 seconds! Although this is untrue now. every second slips by into the past as we continually strive for the future. I remember reading somewhere once a quotation from a man who said "There is no point hoping for the future, as it will never arrive, just as the past cannot be changed. The only hope is to live in present, as no one can escape this moment, at least not until death." I might have read this somewhere, though it's just as likely that I made this up. More than likely I imagine.

Time feels like a typically human attribute given to a property over which we have no control. Inexorably linked, forever aging, it's something to be fought and resisted. Or at least that's what cosmetic companies want you to believe. SciFi fans dreaming over the space/time continuum, and how we can manipulate the fifth dimension. We spend so much of our lives concerned with the many aspects of time that most of us don't even take the opportunity to consider what is really important.

Of course I could go on for a while discussing existentialism and other philosophical opinions, but now's not the time. Instead I'll leave you with a quotation about time, one I haven't made up:

"Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And, it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you wanna be one with eternity, do you want to be in heaven?' And, we're all saying, 'Nooo thank you, not just yet.' And so time, is actually just this constant saying 'No' to God's invitation... Behind the phenomenal difference there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from the 'No' to the 'Yes.' All of life is like, 'No thank you, No thank you, No thank you.' And then, ultimately, it's, 'Yes I give in, Yes I accept, Yes I embrace.' I mean, that's the journey. Everyone gets to the 'Yes' in the end, right?" Richard Linklater - "Waking Life"

Khalepa ta kala

2006-10-24T11:22:00.000+01:00

The Greeks did it in style, they made a bad day on Eastenders look like a drop in the ocean. I remember studying the Classical Example during my second year at university and really enjoying the Greek plays that we had to read. The Bacchae was written by Euripdes in around 400BC, and won him a posthumous first prize in an ancient Greek literary contest, called the Dionysia. The play itself tells of how the god Dionysus takes revenge against the city of Thebes after he is exiled by Pentheus, his cousin and unbelieving that Dionysus is really a deity. The eventual outcome of Dionysus's revenge is brutal and murderous; Pentheus is decapitated by his own mother, and he turns Pentheus's father and wife into snakes. It beats Eastenders any day.

It wasn't until a couple of years later that I ended up revisiting the themes involved in The Bacchae, in a book called The Secret History by Donna Tartt. The story follows Richard Papen, who has just started at University in Vermont, and his group of five friends who are all reading ancient Greek.

The narrative devices used by Donna Tartt are very interesting, and serve a useful purpose in creating the relationship betweenm the narrator, Richard, and the reader. The use of the homodiegetic 'I' in The Secret History, opens up the theme of confession in the character of Richard. It draws the reader into the thoughts of our narrator, and the use of time highlights the fact that Richard is trying to make sense of his own actions through his narration. The narrator uses the prologue to make his confession of being partially responsible for the murder of Bunny, one of his classmates. Despite seemingly giving away the crux of the story immediately, what it does instead is set up the sense of fatality that follows the narrators story. I brings back the Greek idea of the Fates, and how destiny is preordained and it is the story of how the characters reach that point which becomes the main point of interest.

Donna Tartt uses the narrative to create a sense of separation between the narrtor, and 'his' character. Richard looks back, disbelieving of the events that took place as he tries to make sense of it all. The reader is constantly reminded that Richard is recalling his experiences from a more reasoned viewpoint in the occasional narrative moments of "I suppose that..." and "Now I see that..." These devices help to bring the reader closer into the mind of Richard and his perspective, and what is even more interesting, is that the reader begins to understand the reasoning behind Bunny's murder. Through the use of the prologue, and through Richard's narrative, the reader begin to understand why Bunny had to be murdered by his friends, and it becomes very easy to agree with those reasons.

I mentioned at the beginning of this novel's affliation with the classics, indeed there are many latin and Greek words inserted into the dialogue and the narrative. What I enjoyed most about this novel is the way that Tartt draws the reader into the mysterious world of ancient Greece through the main characters. The use of idiolect help to create an 'otherworldly' feel, Henry in particular seems so obsessed by this world that it only ever appears fully alive when he is immeresed in its philosophy and traditions. It is the attraction to this beautiful, mysterious world that eventually causes the defining moments within the story, enabling the characters to become murderers by leaving "the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime".

Although on the surface The Secret History might appear to be just another college campus tale of murder and deceit, it delves much deeper than that. The themes invoked by the main characters bring up many of the questions raised by the Greek playwrights of old, and the reader genuinely feels drawn into this ancient world. Ulimately it is the attraction of this world that bring about the downfall of the characters involved, and each fatal flaw wins through; it is a place where beauty is harsh.

Trolley Ghosts

2006-10-20T16:33:00.000+01:00

A few years ago, whilst I was travelling I ended having to sleep in Madrid airport for two nights whilst I waited for my ride to turn up. This is actually the end of a far more entertaining story, involving dwarves, ant infestations, and an epic tale of the wait for Brioche day. However, this is not the moment for these things to be discussed, despite the passage of time my demons in Madrid have yet to be exorcised.

It had all seemed simple to begin with. I was confident, even if the guy I was travelling with wasn't. "It'll be easy," I said. "Its an international airport and there'll be good seats." Never in all my life have I known time to pass so slowly. Perhaps some background is necessary here, we were only waiting in Madrid because the other guy we were travelling with was driving our camper van up from Cadiz to pick us up from Madrid. For some bizarre reason it was cheaper for two of us to fly to Madrid, and for one of us to travel with the van on the ferry back from the Canaries. Twisted economics if you ask me, but who were we to argue, money was short after spending ten months travelling around Europe. So it was these circumstance that led me to spend over 50 hours in an airport with just my best friend and four cheese and chorizo sandwiches to keep me going.

The obvious metaphor for airports is like being in limbo, its the dragging of time whilst you await your holiday heaven or hell. It certainly has the effect of thinning time out, and after a while you begin to feel as if this 'thinning' is having an effect on you as well; like butter spread over too much toast (as Bilbo would say). Surreal moments just stroll along all the time to say hello, eccentric characters and situation just seem to happen naturally at airports. At least they do to me.

We originally arrived late at night, and our first plan was to have a quick tour of the three terminals. Now Madrid airport has opened another terminal, it was being built whilst we were there, and this has opened up a whole new luxury area for travelling English hobos. The most comfortable area for night seemed to be at the end of Terminal 1, and this proved popular as we shared it with a few other stranded passengers for the night. I didn't actually find the airport floor too uncomfortable, in fact I slept pretty well. Actually, this is a lie. I would have slept well if it wasn't for the tannoy announcement every fifteen minutes reminding us to keep hold of our luggage at all times. I eventually gave up trying to sleep sometime in the early morning, and upon visiting the toilets I noticed that the facilities had needle dispensers in the cubicles. For insulin injections or heroin I guess, though I didn't inspect any closer.

Sleep deprivation and too much cheese was beginning to have an hallucinatory effect on my thought process. No longer was illiterate in Spanish, I could understand all the announcements, read all the posters, and then to top it off someone spoke to me and I understood her. It wasn't until my mate replied to the question that I realised she was speaking English after all. So for a few minutes we sat and diligently watched her luggage whilst she went to the toilet, presumably not to jack up on heroin. The only hope that kept me going was the knowledge that in two days we'd be back in England, and on our way home for a big welcome return and a weekend of fun at a music festival. Our ferry at Calais was booked, and now all we needed to do was wait for the van turn up.

At about ten in the morning I found myself observing a group of excited young Frenchmen. Dressed smartly, they were all gathered around in the arrivals lounge drinking white wine in copious amounts. Before long they started singing, it actually sounded like football chants, but before I could and join in with a shout of "Allez le bleu!" I found myself staring at another poor selection of cards in another game of shithead. By now the game had worn thin, in fact it had worn thin four months ago, but when it rains and you live in a van there's not much else to do; except painting by numbers of course.

For some reason I began thinking about the use of capital punishment during Roman times. I had been staring at the man with Serial Killer Eyes at the time. He was in his late forties, shabbily dressed in an old suit, dishevelled would be the cliched description. He would stand up for a few minutes and then perform a circular inspection of his surroundings. Not seeing whatever it was he was searching, he would sit down again, his head hanging and eyes locked on the floor. This carried on for about an hour or so, until, finally he left and was never seen again. Strangely enough, some time later, a woman entered arrivals dressed in knee length boots, short skirt and blood red lipstick. These scenes played out before me in a cinematic way, I was feeling so detached from reality that I wasn't sure what was going on. Smoking a Lucky Strike, she stood right by where Serial Killer Eyes had been, and remained there for a good fifteen minutes. Checking her phone, taking a drag, checking her phone, looking in the mirror, taking a drag, tapping her foot, muttering under her breath, taking a drag, and, checking her phone. Finally she seemed to give up and left as swiftly as she had arrived. My friend and I looked at each other, and we both knew we didn't need to discuss the possible scenarios that were playing out in our heads. Apparently the punishment for parricide in ancient Rome was to whip the guilty party, then place them in a sack with a dog, a cock, a viper, an ape, and then thrown into the sea. If no sea was available, then they would be burnt alive.

Our second night started with concern that there was a blatant disregard for the tannoy announcements going on in Terminal 1. We had gone to where we had slept the previous night, but after a few minutes the small number of people who had been there promptly disappeared. All that remained was my mate, myself, and a lone bag placed on top of one of the check-in desks. The security cameras were all focused on the bag, and we began to discuss whether or not we might get to see one of those bomb disposal robots come round the corner. But we were to be disappointed, instead it was stern looking security guard who came to the rescue, and after inspecting the bag for some time he began to stare intently in our direction. We swiftly moved downstairs.

Long after my friend had gone to sleep I sat and watched the silent night workers of the airport. The constant business of cleaning was always occurring, sweeping rubbish from every part of the floor, needles dispensaries needed emptying, and trolleys needed relocating. At around 2am I could see a snaking movement in the distance weaving towards me. The glare of the lights gave the airport a hazy atmosphere, but as he approached I could see that it was a man pushing a long collection of trolleys. He passed me by, his face had a resigned sad look to it, and his eyes gave the impression of inevitability; there will always be trolleys to collect and move around. He quietly shuffled away, looking as if he had been left behind, forever cursed to haunt the airport terminal.

It was finally our last day at Barajas Aeropuerto, with some luck our driver would turn up after lunchtime and we could be getting on with the serious business of covering the distance to Calais. My first chuckle of day came when I was watching a young boy being carried by his mother. She was attempting to rush to the toilets with her son, but it ended up being to little too late, and the boy was sick all down her. The best part was that he had tried classic 'hold it in with my hands' trick, resulting in the vomit spreading down his arms instead. This incident kept me smiling for a while, though I was starting to realise that lunchtime had been and gone, and our van still hadn't arrived. A quick phone call and all was revealed that he might be late, more like nine he said. G-R-E-A-T.

Appearing suddenly, deus ex machine, was a young Spanish girl who proceeded to swear with such brilliance I couldn't help be impressed. Her use of the word 'fucking' was exceptional, and after her splenetic outburst at the lack of email facilities in the airport she calmed down enough to invite us to a party in Lisbon. It was a moment when that fork in the road appears and which way are you going to go. Tempting as it was, our sensibilities rose to the surface and we turned down the offer for the prospect of spending another few hours waiting for our elusive chariot.

The clock struck nine, and we knew the van would be finally arriving, our hopes were high, but the ever present tannoy announcements seemed destined to play with our fragile minds. The alerting beeps kept making us think that an announcement was being made directly to us to inform us that the van had arrived. Vacating the building to escape the madness, we sat outside on trolley and soon received the phone call we had waiting days for. Sure enough, our van, Sandy, rolled around the corner sounding like a Royal Enfield Bullet. Apparently the exhaust had just fallen off, so now we had to cover one thousand miles in thirty six hours, unable to go over fifty five miles an hour. It would certainly be more interesting than sitting in an airport for any moment longer and we spluttered away from the terminal, focused on the new challenge ahead. Behind us, a shadow from the dark emerged, silently took control of our trolley and steered it off into the distance.

80 Years of Solitude

2006-10-18T18:07:00.000+01:00

In 1831, an unpaid gentleman's companion set out on a voyage that would lead to some of the most dramatic discoveries in the field of science. The voyage was only supposed to last two years, yet after five years the research taken in areas such as anthropology, botany, geology, biology and ecology helped Charles Darwin to become one of the most eminent scientists of his time. The discoveries he made during his time on the HMS Beagle led to the eventual publication of the Origin of Species. This study, considered heretical and highly controversial by many leading people at the time, ultimately proved to be one the most important scientific studies in human history.

Darwin has been commemorated in many ways since his death in 1882, an Australian city is named after him, his face is on a ten pound note and he came fourth in a poll of the Greatest Britons that have ever lived. On the Galápagos Islands where Darwin did much of his work there now exists the Charles Darwin Research Station, which is dedicated to the conservation of the ecosystem of Galápagos.

The most famous resident of the Charles Darwin Research Station is an ancient tortoise of the sub species Geochelone elephantopus abingdoni , one of eleven types of tortoise found on the islands. Found on the island of Pinta in 1971 by hunters trying to eradicate the goat problem on the island, he is the last of his kind and now lives by the melancholic name of 'Lonesome George'. There have been concerted attempts to get George to mate with other female tortoises, Geochelone elephantopus becki, which are the closest to his race, in the hope that some of George's genes would pass down into future generations. However, despite his best efforts, there has yet to have been any eggs produced from this breeding program, puzzling the scientists who are studying him.

Yet there is still a small possibility that there could be other Pinta Tortoises alive on the island, as any small tortoise could have easily been overlooked when George was removed. Yet more problems lie in the way of any potential happiness for George, as the island's vegetation has regrown to such an extent after the goat cull that it is incredibly difficult to navigate around Pinta. There is an team currently implentmenting the first stages of restoring the island, but hope for George remains slim and it is becoming increasingly likely that he will die the last of his kind.

It was announced this week that the Charles Darwin Research Station plan to introduce the Española tortoise - George's closest relative - to replace George as Pinta's dominant herbivore. This is an effort to restore some balance to the vegetative state of the island, yet it is the first time conservationists have tried to replace one species with another.

Thanks to instituitions such as the Charles Darwin Research Station there are great efforts being made to protect these incredible islands. Their mission statement is:

To provide knowledge and support to ensure the conservation of the environment and biodiversity of the Galapagos Archipelago through scientific research and complementary actions

Through this, hopefully, they can prevent another species ending up like George, spending his life alone.

Hap e's

2006-10-16T10:44:00.000+01:00

I'm sure in the past I've drank many bottles, can and pints of Heineken, but I've never paid much attention to the label itself. I suppose living in a consumer world we are all subject to the power of marketing, to even the smallest degree. The attention to detail that goes into creating a brand, or a logo is phenomenal, and not surprising considering the profits that can be at stake. Much of modern day brand power is about convincing the consumer that they will be better off with their particular product.

This does not just extend to physical appearance, but also the well being of the consumer. Yogurts that have 'good' bacteria to help digestion, or cereals that will make you feel more awake in the morning. It even extends back to the days of Guinness adverts in the 30s and 40s proclaiming "Guinness For Strength" and other iconic images of that advertising era.

I had never seen anything that had struck me like the Guinness adverts since, but the other day whilst making a cup of tea (fair trade of course, to calm my ethical conscience) I read the back of an empty Heineken bottler in our kitchen.

"Why do the e's in our logo appear to smiling? It's because only pure water, hops and malted barley go into our beer. We simply believe natural tastes better."

Sure enough, the e's are smiling at me! I had to laugh, because the instant connection I made in my head was to the drug ecstasy, surely not something Heineken would not want to be affiliated with.

After some research I found that this marketing ploy was first implemented by Alfred Heineken in 1951, after he had spent two years working in the sales department for Heineken in America. He learnt the importance of advertising, and on his return to Amsterdam he set out making some the most influential changes to the brand of Heineken that had ever been seen. He turned the brand colour to green, and created the combination of the red star, banner and a hop vine. But most importantly to me, he tilted the e's in the name Heineken backwards slightly to give them the appearance of smiling. He lived by the motto "I don't sell beer, I sell warmth."

Before finding this out I would have assumed that this marketing ploy had occurred recently, not over fifty years ago and its a testament to the vision of the man that he was able to understand the need for creative advertising. Living in a world now saturated by consumable products, the need for ever productive advertising is driving companies to make greater and greater claims in their attempts to convince the consumer of the superiority of their brand. Alfred Heineken was one step ahead during his time, but he spelt out an accurate prophesy for the modern age when he said:

"In the end life is all about advertising."