The Festival? The Fes-Ti-Val.

Well. That's it. One more year's spring-summer drawing to a close, and, with it, one more year's worth of festivals. This year, despite* the Glastonbury-sized hole in the season, I ended up doing tonnes** of festivals, weekend after weekend, so that it kind of just felt like the whole time was just One Giant Festival. One giant mud puddle, one giant fresh-cooked donut, one giant line-check. So, in case you were wondering, here, in chronological order, are the festivals I played this year and four things about each:

•Dartmouth Music Festival (w/ Stringbeans):
     -Beautiful setting: boats!
     -City festival, so, pubs and churchs and things for venues.
     -No proper stay-overnight facilities, so camped in someone's backyard.
     -Ice cream: 2.5/5

•Mayhem in the Meadow (w/ Nuala):
     -Not really Mayhem at all.
     -Real small, friendly.
     -Near ocean, so: Swimming!
     -Food, pasta with watery sauce, decidedly middling.

•Fire in the Mountain (w/ WFTB):
     -New favourite, maybe!
     -River to swim in!
     -Chased/loved by large group of horses!
     -Loads of good free food!

•Keynsham Music Festival (w/ WFTB):
     -Very, um, small town (lots of electric guitar solos)
     -I was introduced as "performance art"
     -A free festival, which is nice for Keynshamites.
     -Big plowman's spread for artists served by quite-cute elderly church types.

•Priddy Music Festival (w/ The Availables):
     -One of the muddiest. Sue goes barefoot to save shoes, pulls up worms with toes.
     -Bunch of tents in a field type thing. Also a pub.
     -Kind of non-descript and hard to remember.
     -No free food for artists. Hm.

•Lushfest (w/ The Nightjar Orchestra):
     -Free soap! So much free soap! So much!
     -Free ferris wheel!
     -Festival for Lush employees from around the world. Which is pretty neat.
     -Don't remember what I ate, but it was good and free.

•Larmer Tree (w/ The Availables):
     -More mud, rain.
     -Bigger festival in a bigger field. Maybe even several fields.
     -Everyone seems happy. Even at 10am in the rain.
     -Lotsa stuff in the dressing room. Some ryevita crisps that were very cardboardy, and good cookies.

•Village Pump Festival (formerly the Trowbridge pump festival) (w/ Reg Meuross):
     -Right underneath the white-horse, which is cool.
     -Main stage, which is neat, but sound issues. Lotsa frantic running around technicians.
     -Breakfast with Seth Lakeman n crew.
     -Free food AND hotel. Right by Laura and Allan's.

•Bath Folk Festival (w/ The Availables):
     -City festival (venues around town)
     -Really good sound. Thanks James.
     -Actual folk folk festival. Like, loads of concertinas and things.
     -No food, but I'm stuffed, so don't care.

•Greenman (w/ Nuala):
     -They burn a giant green man. So, like burning man, but in Wales. So, raining.
     -Lots of great other music. TuNeYaRdS! Feist!
     -Also incredibly muddy. My riding-boots/wellies are the best thing I ever got for free on freecycle.
    -Lots of great food from the Chai Wallah people. Some kind of banana and granola soup that was       actually really good.

•Shambala (w/ Nuala):
     -They pay for me and Charlie to rent a BMW to drive down. Which is pretty nice.
     -75% of patrons are dressed up. Crazy costumes and inhibitions galore.
     -Lots of workshops. Wood-carving. Stone-cutting. Lathing. Sewing. All these sorts of thing.
     -Some of the best (maybe The Best?) performance poets I've ever seen.
     -Food is middling, but free. No donuts, but there is nettle beer.

Now, time for some work that doesn't require rubber boots, food tokens, water-proofed (with a garbage bag) viola case. Not that I don't love my work. I love my work.


*Or maybe due to?
**tons

Wummer.

Biking to Bristol on Friday. 

Hello, rest of the (Northern-Hemisphere) world. How are you? Oh, what's that, you're hot? You're sweltering? Sweaty? Steamy? How strange that all of you are -

oh! Oh right. That's because, in the rest of the world (northern hemisphere),

it is summer.

Summer!

England has lots of great things. Lots of great music festivals, where I get to go, every single weekend of these few months, to another bunch of tents and food and fun in a field of mud for my "job." And people! England has people. Really impressive people, good-of-heart and stiff-of-lip who come out in droves to "have a good time" at these festivals, in their wellies and brightly coloured rain coats, camping in sodden fields and resigning themselves grumpy-contentedly to sleeping in dripping tents.

Priddy Festival, last weekend.

England has good things like this. But it doesn't have summer. Let's be honest. We can't call this that. So, instead, I'm proposing a new term. For the season that would be (_should be_) summer but is, in actual fact, nothingbutrain and is, actually, prettymuchexactlythesameasthelastseason,andthenext. So: Wummer. Wet-summer. Would-be-summer. What-is-summer?

Wummer.

Not a summer,

but not a total bummer

Wummer.

Lushfest. Rainbow rainbow rain.

24-in-24 2012 the last one that we did!

MILE TWENTY-FOUR

Run run run run run

run run run run run run run

Now the sun is up.

24-in-24 2012: almost there.

MILE TWENTY

Home-made creme brulée

and 40's factory tunes

help revive vim.

MILE TWENTY-ONE

My right arch is weird

past ankle trauma? asks 'net

google is so smart.

MILE TWENTY-TWO

Three in the morning

peaceful and quiet, we hoped

nope, still loads of drunks.

MILE TWENTY-THREE

Penultimate mile!

and the sky is getting light

at last, no more rain.

24-in-24, mile 12-19, 6pm-1am

MILE TWELVE

Raining mega-big
shorts immediately soaked,
cars don't care, splash us.

MILE THIRTEEN




















A half-marathon
is way way way easier
over thirteen hours.

MILE FOURTEEN













It is still raining
this should not be surprising.
And yet: soppy sleeves.

MILE FIFTEEN (from here it's too wet for cameras, for a bit.)

Hello Sam! Hi Rick!
We run to your apartment
and eat your chocolate.

MILE SIXTEEN

This run starts out light
then goes royal, navy, pitch
I can't see my feet.

MILE SEVENTEEN

Change our clothes again
because everything is wet
running out of socks.

MILE EIGHTEEN

Neighbours are the best
this run powered by sushi,
whiskey in a globe.

MILE NINETEEN

Charlie starts to wane
says 'whatevs' and flops his arms.
Slight despair in rain.