Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
Matt, Kate and I powered down to Wales on Thursday in the little red mini, our roof rack piled with unfeasible amounts of luggage. Four and a half hours later and we pulled into Green Man, the sweetest little festival this side of the Atlantic!
We joined up with Anna and Glynn, Katy and Kim, Jossy and Pete, and Matt and Sally, and Emma and Dave! Woo! And loads of other people were around too.
The weather was alternating between showers and sunshine, and we were greeted by a luscious, bright and full rainbow.
Matt and I were using the new tent we’ve purchased with Al. It’s massive! With an outer chamber where you can stand up. You could get the mini in there!
John S was spending the week nearby, in his parent’s cottage, which overlooks the festival, so we all trooped up to his for a lovely dinner and beds and hot showers for our first night. Naughty, but nice.
Friday morning we stumbled upon the opening druidic blessing ceremony for the festival. They were a great little crew the druids. Particularly this one in the photo, whose weathered sun tanned face, long white hair and white robe combined with big biker boots filled me with great confidence in his spiritual credentials.
We all sang druidic-style together the unutterable name of god: I-A-O. Apparently, ‘I’ can represent the sun, ‘A’ the earth, and ‘O’ the complete circle of the sky, a giant act of cosmic love making! It sounds great anyhow, the progression through the three vowels makes for a more moving sound than the ‘om’ mantra for example.
We saw lots of great bands: I enjoyed the folky We Aeronauts, the epic indie rock of British Sea Power, the delicate strumming of Bon Iver, and the gentle songs of Emma Tricca. Noah and the Whale played mostly songs from their new album, it’s a different sound, not least because there’s no female backing vocals, some great epic songs there though.
Jarvis Cocker was great, partly because I had taken mephedrone and was feeling pretty loved up, but mostly because he’s a great showman and really went for it up on stage, entertaining and energising us like the rock slut that he is!
We hung out in the warm and atmospheric Chai Wallah tent on Saturday night, and met up with Ian, the woody Rebecca, Martin and Sophie, dancing around to dancy beats while various smells drifted around the tent courtesy of the ‘Aroma DJ’!
We’re going to go next year – come! And bring all your children. It’s like a little family friendly anarchist commune over there, you’ll love it!
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, August 17th, 2009
Matt has got us a second hand old-style mini – it’s tiny! Great fun. Like driving a go-kart, he says.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
I’ve been reading up today on the sorry affair of the last minute cancellation of the Big Green Gathering festival. It seems to be an unpleasant case of the police putting pressure on local council bureaucracies to disrupt and force the closure of a public gathering they don’t like, timed at the last minute so that the organisers would lose about as much money as possible.
Sod the bastards! It probably wasn’t even for public order reasons, but because the Big Green Gathering is a big rallying point for environmental activists, both for organising and networking, and fundraising for campaigns. Even as the grassroots UK environmental movement is going from strength to strength, the police are cracking down harder and harder against ‘eco-terrorism’ or whatever they like to call principled activity to force political action to save the planet.
George Monbiot has the best restrained analysis of the situation, including this marvellous paragraph about organising big events in general, which really resonates with the shit I have to go through at work to put on public campaigning events…
Today you must apply for a licence and spend months of your life filling in forms and liaising with the various responsible authorities. There are good reasons for this: it ensures that no one is crushed to death and that local people aren’t harried by intolerable noise and disruption. There are also bad reasons: the controlling, snooping, curtain-twitching state tendencies which insist that all spontanaeity be planned six months in advance, that no one can ever take her top off or smoke homegrown weed or get a little bit outrageous – even within a festival site – for fear of offending some tight-arsed busybody in desperate need of a life.
I think I’m becoming increasingly libertarian in an enjoyably grouchy way as I reach my mid to late early middle age…
Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
Steve C is down in London this week, so lots of us got together for a trip to the marvellous phenomenon that is Feeling Gloomy, still pounding away every Saturday with songs to sing earnestly jumping up and down as if you were alone in your bedroom but of course you’re not alone! you’re in Academy2 in the heart of a shopping mall in Angel, bouncing up and down with a couple of hundred other lovers of miserable indie music!
Down down, you bring me down…
I hear you knocking down my door and I can’t sleep at night!
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
My tenth Brighton Pride today. The forecast was light rain but we decided to head down there anyway: me, Matt, Phil and Ivo. We marched for a bit, we headed into Preston Park, it rained for a bit, then stopped, then around 4pm or so the heavens opened and just kept going. The Gay Nation got wetter and wetter, and eventually we realised it was never going to stop so we fled Brighton clutching our sopping feather boas, mascara running down our upturned faces, wringing out our dripping day glo jackets on the train. Not before we’d seen Jodie and Dan H, had a good chat with Dan M and Paul, bumped into Adrian, huddled under an umbrella with David F, and picked up Sean, who ranted about the weather all the way back to London.
It’s possible to stand proud under a mild or even medium quantity of rain, but that kind of onslaught inevitably wears you down in the end. Mind you, we heard there were still quite a few people in Preston Park by 8pm. Let’s hope for more sun next year!
We got back to the flat, ordered an Indian takeaway, and watched Afghan Idol, an intriguing documentary about the equivalent of Pop Idol in Afghanistan, which took to the airways in the Noughties with a Western style format that at times challenged and shocked this conservative nation but was also avidly watched by a massive proportion of the population. I recommend it.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »