And what costume shall the poor girl wear
Aye up. It's festival season already...
We went to Wales Goes Pop! in 2016, which was the time when I was still in a wheelchair and ChrisC was my support crew. I did offer to carry him all around Cardiff this year in return, but fortunately he didn't take me up on it.
Wales Goes Pop! is a music festival, but had sufficient space around it that we thought we could manage a bit of a holiday over the Easter weekend, too. So on Thursday we headed as far as Gloucester, and stopped in an Ibis. (I've no recollection of ever staying in an Ibis before. It had possibly the best-designed budget-hotel bathroom I've ever seen, although with a weirdly curvey wall that made me think I meant be in a train vestibule toilet.)
Anyway, the purpose was to get up somewhat early, drive to a nearby village, be mildly disappointed that the pub was shut at half eight in the morning, and then stare at the river. Because at 08:42 (give or take twenty minutes in either direction) there was a 3* edition of the Severn Bore expected. I never seen the Severn Bore - or any bore at all - and wasn't sure what to expect.
They say you can hear it miles away - but mostly what you can hear is nearby major roads. The bore took its time, and at around 9 finally rolled around the bend in the river, scooped up the surfer waiting by the bank, and headed noisily off upriver. The video we took is rather limp, but it was a genuinely impressive thing to watch. (And don't worry, we did all the "bore" jokes, too.)
The pub was open for cups of tea and such (possibly even a pint if you wanted one, but I was driving) and so we hung about watching the Severn flowing the "wrong" way, dragging enormous quantities of dead wood upriver. I was almost tempted to hang around to wait for moment it slowed down, stopped, and changed direction but we had a plan.
Raglan Castle was approximately on the way to Cardiff, and proved absolutely splendid. It's a great big marcher castle, now ruined, but with substantial amounts still standing and various towers still stable enough to be climbed. Honestly, it's a really good castle and we spent a good chunk of time exploring.
It's got old bits, and really old bits, and over-built bits as the owners changed it from a medieval defence into a fancy status symbol with pleasure gardens, then suddenly had to bring it up to snuff for the Civil War. Sadly it turned out to be on the wrong side, and the keep was deliberately undermined to collapse into the moat when the Right But Repulsive side won.
In fact, we spent so long there that we ended up in a bit of a rush for the first band, and scrambled into The Gate just in time...
Bands: Kidsmoke, Mr Ben & the Bens, Asha Jane, The Wendy Darlings, Kermes, Say Sue Me, Simon Love (solo), Bryde, She Drew the Gun.
For me, the stand-out band of the day were The Wendy Darlings, whom I've never been that excited about recorded. Live, they were fun and punky and lightly shambolic ("tuning onstage is forbidden in the Wendy Darlings, there are no wrong notes, only uneducated ears"). They also put in a contender for best cover with their version of Vogue - at least, so ChrisC tells me, I actually managed not to reconise the song at all.
Kermes deserves an honourable mention. I'd been quite looking forward to them after my Spotify WGP! playlist-based revision, but was expecting a band. After some not-quite-explicated mishap there was only one of them, the singer (so nervy she was visibly shaking) who carried it off extremely well. It did include a bit of narration for guitar solos and drum breaks occasionally, but was actually a surprisingly fun set.
Simon Love rocked up to the mic in the cafe downstairs with a guitar ("hi, I'm TBA" he said, as that slot in the program had never really been A'd). Having confirmed that he would play nothing that he was expecting to play in his full band slot the following day, I found myself in the weird position of hoping for none of my favourite songs.
We wandered out to get pizza from the little oven set out on the road outside, only to find that it had been completely out-demanded and run out of pizzas. So instead we had a moderately adequate meal in a Persian restaurant down the road. We got back just in time to catch most of Bryde, who veered between "meh" and really quite rocky and interesting.
I'd been somewhat looking forward to She Drew the Gun, and was left a little lukewarm about them. The band times had somehow got all out of whack and there was a huge gap while they set up, and somehow they never quite seemed to get the party started. I've certainly seen them be much better in the past.
Saturday dawned bright and exciting, with most uncharacteristically sunny weather for a bank holiday. The band line up didn't really tempt us too greatly in the early stages, so instead we set out to walk around the bay. Who knew Cardiff would be so lovely and seasidey? All that was missing was an ice cream, which we persistently failed to find as we strolled around the path-cum-cycleway. Although we did find a crocodile.
In fact, the weather was so completely unexpected that I was caught quite on the hop and got slightly sunburned.
Bands: She's Got Spies, Simon Love & the Old Romantics, Rosehip Teahouse, Charmpit, Oh Peas!, Vic Goddard & Johnny Britton with the Subway Sect, The Nightingales
Simon Love, now fully backed up by the Old Romantics was in fine voice on the main stage. I'd forgotten that his keyboard player is one of my favourite people to watch: he sounds great, but plays keyboards as if taught by someone who only knew how to knead bread. In view of the family-friendly vibe and large numbers of children around, some bands opted to self-censor; Simon Love did not, with a raucous rendition of Motherfuckers (although admittedly at least one of the small children was his own).
Vic Goddard and Johnny Britton with the Subway Sect (what an unhandy name) were... awful. Properly shambolic punk, but with an awful lot of fannying about and arguing and wittering onstage between songs, and apparently disagreeing about how songs were going to go... We opted to go and hang out in the cafe instead.
The Nightingales, on the other hand, were awesome. I didn't really know them, but they sound like one of those bands that I don't know how to describe and whenever I look it up the answer is always post-punk. Angular and noisy and with a bloody amazing drummer (Fliss Kitson, she can hit more things at once than you would think given her average number of hands). Also, post-punk swannee whistle is a thing. Would recommend to a friend.
Sunday was a good excuse for a bit more touristing, and we hoofed it down to Cardiff castle. Which has a proper Norman shell keep on a motte, and a dubious 19thC. reconstruction of a Roman fort, and some nice green open space, and some tunnels that were used as WWII bomb shelters, and a military museum, and a deranged Victorian gothic fantasy of medieval rooms... there's something for everyone. It also has a clocktower, and we elected to pay extra to join the tower tour.
There wasn't much clockiness, to be honest, as the room with the mechanism is tiny and was rather skipped over. The other rooms, however... William Burges (the architect responsible for aforementioned gothic fantasy) was given free reign to build a bachelor pad and boy did he go to town. Do you find your residence is sadly lacking in a winter smoking room, complete with monumental fireplace, gilded ceilings, allegorical corbels, stained glass windows, mosaic flooring, and custom-built cabinet with hidden opium drawer? Well, the Marquis of Bute didn't, because Burges was right there to fix it.
And as for the summer smoking room... honestly, the Burges rooms in the clocktower and in the main house are well worth the entrance price alone. Burges was one of those thorough types who will do the hangings, drapes and furniture while he's there and was apparently famous for going over time and over budget. But since the Marquis was staggeringly rich, they just left him to get on with it and the result is delightful and over the top and highly gilded.
Bands: All Ashore!, The School, Mikey Collins, Cornshed Sisters, Hanna2K, Tigercats, Virginia Wing, 100% Rabbit, International Teachers of Pop, TracyAnne & Danny.
We got back to The Gate for the start of proceedings, which was All Ashore doing what they called "old timey indie pop". They sounded... a smidge under-rehearsed, but seemed to be having a nice time. The School are the festival organiser's band and they always play - and they are delightful, oldskool girl-meets-boy pop. With a trumpet.
Hanna2K was something of a curve ball, a solo singer with a backing track (and a serious contouring game) who looked like someone who might actually be aiming for chart success. She certainly sounded a lot more like today's chart music than everyone else.
Tigercats were - as usual - awesome and why aren't they more popular? Everyone should love Tigercats.
The big surprise of the night was the International Teachers of Pop. They came on stage, also a little late, to a room full of somewhat sluggish and weary people and singlehandedly manufactured a banging dancefloor out of nothing. They leapt around the stage, made thumping electrop, had mildly ridiculous costumes, and were generally extremely good value. TracyAnne (better known as 'er out of Camera Obscura) & Danny were, if anything, a bit of a warmdown. Perfectly nice, but not quite headlinery.
On Monday, we climbed over the top of Newport transporter bridge (of which more later), and went home. Not bad for a weekend ;)
There is actually a whole playlist of live videos from Wales Goes Pop! on YouTube (though I assure you the International Teachers of Pop video is extremely unrepresentative!)
This weekend it was I-can't-believe-it's-not-WGW. The long-running drama around Whitby Goth Weekend has finally caused a split, whereby the original festival happened in mid-April, and the new-fangled, fancily-titled Tomorrow's Ghosts happened a fortnight later. I had been wondering whether it was perhaps time to quit on Whitby, then I realised that (a) the new-fangled thing was headlined by NMA and PWEI, and (b) quite a lot of the people I regard as one of the major reasons for heading up there were also going.
So off I went.
And the whole thing was... odd. Like a sort of mirror-world WGW where almost - but not quite - everything is exactly what you expect.
One major change which I cannot possibly blame on festival management was that my long-time (and long-suffering) housemates, Davefish and Keris, are now in possession of a SmallHuman and were bringing her along. Davefish reviewed SmallHuman a couple of months ago as "screamy", but she seems to have moved on to being generally happy and content with life and took our rock'n'roll, tea'n'cake lifestyle very much in her stride.
We pootled about doing normal sorts of stuff on Friday, and figuring out how everything was going to work. Having not quite put much (read: any) effort into investigating the line-up, I was slightly surprised to find I was getting Chameleons Vox on Friday night.
I failed to make it to the Spa in time for Christine Plays Viola (about whom I know nothing, other than reading someone on Twitter - possibly
ceb? - complaining that noone in the band is called Christine and they don't have a viola.
Mercury's Antennae were surprisingly OK, given that I wandered through a foyer full of people grumbling about them. Not the most polished, and at least one person complained the singer was off key (fortunately I was too cloth-eared to notice in most songs). Slightly hypnotic backing, with a waily female vocal over the top. Not really what I'd usually go for, but perfectly decent. The main singer had a slightly Thunderbird-in-treacle vibe which was weird; we decided she might be tidal.
I do like Chameleons Vox, but didn't feel they were on top form. I'm not sure whether the singer's voice is going, or whether he's just very produced in album form, but it all sounded a bit slapdash, like a low-rent pub-covers version of the Chameleons. I mean, I still love Monkeyland, but I just wanted them to be a bit better.
Pop Will Eat Itself - who turned out to be doing a play through of ...This Is This! (thus making their gig extremely easy to revise for, if only any of us had known) - were flippin' marvellous. DMH and I sacked off standing with the cool kids at the back and went and stomped about like good'uns at the front.
PWEI came back for a long encore, including the sadly-relevant Ich Bin Ein Asulander and Get the Girl! Kill the Baddies! and a bunch of other good stuff before closing with Their Law, dedicated to Keith Flint ("bless his ravey little soul").
I wasn't feeling terribly excited about the DJ, and was rather expecting to head home to bed. Unfortunately, the large glass roof of the foyer was very clearly letting us know that there was some moderately catastrophic weather out there, so getting a round in and chatting a bit more seemed like the only sensible option.
Saturday was quite a success of a day, all things considered. I got up around 11ish, what with Davefish and I having waited for the rain to stop before heading home, and then paused for tea and cake (chocolate Swiss roll with fresh cream, since you ask) before bed. Keris had been up for quite some time with SmallHuman, and thus she had worked up to second breakfast by the time I was ready for first.
We went to Java and (despite minor panic on discovering they no longer sell their awesome mediterranean breakfast) ate. As we were finishing, Elaine and Nick showed up, so we got more coffees and settled in. And
mrph and eventually DMH came along and there was more coffee, and basically breakfast took until about half past two. Which meant it was pretty much time for me to run an errand, and head down to the quayside to meet CEB and
damerell for a pint.
Or two, as it happened, and a nice catch up with them as I've not seen CEB in ages, and haven't seen Damerell in a couple of years in any context other than standing-near-loudspeakers, which limits the complexity of sentences. They headed off to their fish&chip plan, and I went home to scoop up Davefish, Keris and SmallHuman for a trip to the diner.
Which means I basically spent the entire day either eating, drinking, or chatting to friends. Sometimes all three at once. And I consider that a win.
Although it did mean I missed the first two bands in the evening (honestly, who starts a band line up at half six, anyway?). Terminal Gods were... fine. If you want a pub band made out of people who've never listened to anything but the Mission, they're all over that job.
New Model Army are always going to be properly up my alley, although I can't say I rate their setlist choice much at the moment. Bonus points for playing Purity, though, which I haven't heard live in ages. Plus a genuinely glorious I Love The World to finish. I'll take that :-)
Sunday morning saw us lounging around in our living room trying to decide where to go for breakfast. Keris interviewed her phone, and started reading a menu, and about halfway through I started muttering things like "we're going there!" and "now!" and ultimately "NOW!" at increasing volume.
Y'see, the unpleasantly-named Cranberry Swamp, beloved of coeliac cake-eaters also has a fabulous breakfast menu and turns out to do kedgeree. I scooted ahead, grabbed a table and chatted to Julian on the next table until the others turned up, and munched my way through some extremely nice kedgeree. Kedgeree! I think that one is going to go into the rotation.
Sunday further involved a walk on the beach, to demonstrate to SmallHuman what a beach is, and ice cream. The stall near the Marine Cafe sells goth vanilla ice cream - tastes like vanilla, but absolutely jet black. It dyed my mouth somewhat ("you look like you've been kissing goths", said Davefish disgustedly). And then I went out to dinner with my parents, coincidentally in Whitby for the weekend. Um, for a music festival this seems like a rather food-centric write-up (carrot and ginger soup, baked trout and almonds, white chocolate and raspberry souffle, if you wish to know). Which, as I'm sure you'll agree, is an excellent way to begin an evening that ends up jumping up and down like a complete twat at the 80s night. So I did that.
Anyway, on the whole, I'd say Tomorrow's Ghosts worked. I'm a bit underwhelmed by November's lineup (Wayne Hussey and Clan of Xymox - disappointingly not a double act), but I might just go anyway for the company :-)
[Originally posted at https://venta.dreamwidth.org/538602.html]
We went to Wales Goes Pop! in 2016, which was the time when I was still in a wheelchair and ChrisC was my support crew. I did offer to carry him all around Cardiff this year in return, but fortunately he didn't take me up on it.
Wales Goes Pop! is a music festival, but had sufficient space around it that we thought we could manage a bit of a holiday over the Easter weekend, too. So on Thursday we headed as far as Gloucester, and stopped in an Ibis. (I've no recollection of ever staying in an Ibis before. It had possibly the best-designed budget-hotel bathroom I've ever seen, although with a weirdly curvey wall that made me think I meant be in a train vestibule toilet.)
Anyway, the purpose was to get up somewhat early, drive to a nearby village, be mildly disappointed that the pub was shut at half eight in the morning, and then stare at the river. Because at 08:42 (give or take twenty minutes in either direction) there was a 3* edition of the Severn Bore expected. I never seen the Severn Bore - or any bore at all - and wasn't sure what to expect.
They say you can hear it miles away - but mostly what you can hear is nearby major roads. The bore took its time, and at around 9 finally rolled around the bend in the river, scooped up the surfer waiting by the bank, and headed noisily off upriver. The video we took is rather limp, but it was a genuinely impressive thing to watch. (And don't worry, we did all the "bore" jokes, too.)
The pub was open for cups of tea and such (possibly even a pint if you wanted one, but I was driving) and so we hung about watching the Severn flowing the "wrong" way, dragging enormous quantities of dead wood upriver. I was almost tempted to hang around to wait for moment it slowed down, stopped, and changed direction but we had a plan.
Raglan Castle was approximately on the way to Cardiff, and proved absolutely splendid. It's a great big marcher castle, now ruined, but with substantial amounts still standing and various towers still stable enough to be climbed. Honestly, it's a really good castle and we spent a good chunk of time exploring.
It's got old bits, and really old bits, and over-built bits as the owners changed it from a medieval defence into a fancy status symbol with pleasure gardens, then suddenly had to bring it up to snuff for the Civil War. Sadly it turned out to be on the wrong side, and the keep was deliberately undermined to collapse into the moat when the Right But Repulsive side won.
In fact, we spent so long there that we ended up in a bit of a rush for the first band, and scrambled into The Gate just in time...
Bands: Kidsmoke, Mr Ben & the Bens, Asha Jane, The Wendy Darlings, Kermes, Say Sue Me, Simon Love (solo), Bryde, She Drew the Gun.
For me, the stand-out band of the day were The Wendy Darlings, whom I've never been that excited about recorded. Live, they were fun and punky and lightly shambolic ("tuning onstage is forbidden in the Wendy Darlings, there are no wrong notes, only uneducated ears"). They also put in a contender for best cover with their version of Vogue - at least, so ChrisC tells me, I actually managed not to reconise the song at all.
Kermes deserves an honourable mention. I'd been quite looking forward to them after my Spotify WGP! playlist-based revision, but was expecting a band. After some not-quite-explicated mishap there was only one of them, the singer (so nervy she was visibly shaking) who carried it off extremely well. It did include a bit of narration for guitar solos and drum breaks occasionally, but was actually a surprisingly fun set.
Simon Love rocked up to the mic in the cafe downstairs with a guitar ("hi, I'm TBA" he said, as that slot in the program had never really been A'd). Having confirmed that he would play nothing that he was expecting to play in his full band slot the following day, I found myself in the weird position of hoping for none of my favourite songs.
We wandered out to get pizza from the little oven set out on the road outside, only to find that it had been completely out-demanded and run out of pizzas. So instead we had a moderately adequate meal in a Persian restaurant down the road. We got back just in time to catch most of Bryde, who veered between "meh" and really quite rocky and interesting.
I'd been somewhat looking forward to She Drew the Gun, and was left a little lukewarm about them. The band times had somehow got all out of whack and there was a huge gap while they set up, and somehow they never quite seemed to get the party started. I've certainly seen them be much better in the past.
Saturday dawned bright and exciting, with most uncharacteristically sunny weather for a bank holiday. The band line up didn't really tempt us too greatly in the early stages, so instead we set out to walk around the bay. Who knew Cardiff would be so lovely and seasidey? All that was missing was an ice cream, which we persistently failed to find as we strolled around the path-cum-cycleway. Although we did find a crocodile.
In fact, the weather was so completely unexpected that I was caught quite on the hop and got slightly sunburned.
Bands: She's Got Spies, Simon Love & the Old Romantics, Rosehip Teahouse, Charmpit, Oh Peas!, Vic Goddard & Johnny Britton with the Subway Sect, The Nightingales
Simon Love, now fully backed up by the Old Romantics was in fine voice on the main stage. I'd forgotten that his keyboard player is one of my favourite people to watch: he sounds great, but plays keyboards as if taught by someone who only knew how to knead bread. In view of the family-friendly vibe and large numbers of children around, some bands opted to self-censor; Simon Love did not, with a raucous rendition of Motherfuckers (although admittedly at least one of the small children was his own).
Vic Goddard and Johnny Britton with the Subway Sect (what an unhandy name) were... awful. Properly shambolic punk, but with an awful lot of fannying about and arguing and wittering onstage between songs, and apparently disagreeing about how songs were going to go... We opted to go and hang out in the cafe instead.
The Nightingales, on the other hand, were awesome. I didn't really know them, but they sound like one of those bands that I don't know how to describe and whenever I look it up the answer is always post-punk. Angular and noisy and with a bloody amazing drummer (Fliss Kitson, she can hit more things at once than you would think given her average number of hands). Also, post-punk swannee whistle is a thing. Would recommend to a friend.
Sunday was a good excuse for a bit more touristing, and we hoofed it down to Cardiff castle. Which has a proper Norman shell keep on a motte, and a dubious 19thC. reconstruction of a Roman fort, and some nice green open space, and some tunnels that were used as WWII bomb shelters, and a military museum, and a deranged Victorian gothic fantasy of medieval rooms... there's something for everyone. It also has a clocktower, and we elected to pay extra to join the tower tour.
There wasn't much clockiness, to be honest, as the room with the mechanism is tiny and was rather skipped over. The other rooms, however... William Burges (the architect responsible for aforementioned gothic fantasy) was given free reign to build a bachelor pad and boy did he go to town. Do you find your residence is sadly lacking in a winter smoking room, complete with monumental fireplace, gilded ceilings, allegorical corbels, stained glass windows, mosaic flooring, and custom-built cabinet with hidden opium drawer? Well, the Marquis of Bute didn't, because Burges was right there to fix it.
And as for the summer smoking room... honestly, the Burges rooms in the clocktower and in the main house are well worth the entrance price alone. Burges was one of those thorough types who will do the hangings, drapes and furniture while he's there and was apparently famous for going over time and over budget. But since the Marquis was staggeringly rich, they just left him to get on with it and the result is delightful and over the top and highly gilded.
Bands: All Ashore!, The School, Mikey Collins, Cornshed Sisters, Hanna2K, Tigercats, Virginia Wing, 100% Rabbit, International Teachers of Pop, TracyAnne & Danny.
We got back to The Gate for the start of proceedings, which was All Ashore doing what they called "old timey indie pop". They sounded... a smidge under-rehearsed, but seemed to be having a nice time. The School are the festival organiser's band and they always play - and they are delightful, oldskool girl-meets-boy pop. With a trumpet.
Hanna2K was something of a curve ball, a solo singer with a backing track (and a serious contouring game) who looked like someone who might actually be aiming for chart success. She certainly sounded a lot more like today's chart music than everyone else.
Tigercats were - as usual - awesome and why aren't they more popular? Everyone should love Tigercats.
The big surprise of the night was the International Teachers of Pop. They came on stage, also a little late, to a room full of somewhat sluggish and weary people and singlehandedly manufactured a banging dancefloor out of nothing. They leapt around the stage, made thumping electrop, had mildly ridiculous costumes, and were generally extremely good value. TracyAnne (better known as 'er out of Camera Obscura) & Danny were, if anything, a bit of a warmdown. Perfectly nice, but not quite headlinery.
On Monday, we climbed over the top of Newport transporter bridge (of which more later), and went home. Not bad for a weekend ;)
There is actually a whole playlist of live videos from Wales Goes Pop! on YouTube (though I assure you the International Teachers of Pop video is extremely unrepresentative!)
This weekend it was I-can't-believe-it's-not-WGW. The long-running drama around Whitby Goth Weekend has finally caused a split, whereby the original festival happened in mid-April, and the new-fangled, fancily-titled Tomorrow's Ghosts happened a fortnight later. I had been wondering whether it was perhaps time to quit on Whitby, then I realised that (a) the new-fangled thing was headlined by NMA and PWEI, and (b) quite a lot of the people I regard as one of the major reasons for heading up there were also going.
So off I went.
And the whole thing was... odd. Like a sort of mirror-world WGW where almost - but not quite - everything is exactly what you expect.
One major change which I cannot possibly blame on festival management was that my long-time (and long-suffering) housemates, Davefish and Keris, are now in possession of a SmallHuman and were bringing her along. Davefish reviewed SmallHuman a couple of months ago as "screamy", but she seems to have moved on to being generally happy and content with life and took our rock'n'roll, tea'n'cake lifestyle very much in her stride.
We pootled about doing normal sorts of stuff on Friday, and figuring out how everything was going to work. Having not quite put much (read: any) effort into investigating the line-up, I was slightly surprised to find I was getting Chameleons Vox on Friday night.
I failed to make it to the Spa in time for Christine Plays Viola (about whom I know nothing, other than reading someone on Twitter - possibly
ceb? - complaining that noone in the band is called Christine and they don't have a viola.
Mercury's Antennae were surprisingly OK, given that I wandered through a foyer full of people grumbling about them. Not the most polished, and at least one person complained the singer was off key (fortunately I was too cloth-eared to notice in most songs). Slightly hypnotic backing, with a waily female vocal over the top. Not really what I'd usually go for, but perfectly decent. The main singer had a slightly Thunderbird-in-treacle vibe which was weird; we decided she might be tidal.
I do like Chameleons Vox, but didn't feel they were on top form. I'm not sure whether the singer's voice is going, or whether he's just very produced in album form, but it all sounded a bit slapdash, like a low-rent pub-covers version of the Chameleons. I mean, I still love Monkeyland, but I just wanted them to be a bit better.
Pop Will Eat Itself - who turned out to be doing a play through of ...This Is This! (thus making their gig extremely easy to revise for, if only any of us had known) - were flippin' marvellous. DMH and I sacked off standing with the cool kids at the back and went and stomped about like good'uns at the front.
PWEI came back for a long encore, including the sadly-relevant Ich Bin Ein Asulander and Get the Girl! Kill the Baddies! and a bunch of other good stuff before closing with Their Law, dedicated to Keith Flint ("bless his ravey little soul").
I wasn't feeling terribly excited about the DJ, and was rather expecting to head home to bed. Unfortunately, the large glass roof of the foyer was very clearly letting us know that there was some moderately catastrophic weather out there, so getting a round in and chatting a bit more seemed like the only sensible option.
Saturday was quite a success of a day, all things considered. I got up around 11ish, what with Davefish and I having waited for the rain to stop before heading home, and then paused for tea and cake (chocolate Swiss roll with fresh cream, since you ask) before bed. Keris had been up for quite some time with SmallHuman, and thus she had worked up to second breakfast by the time I was ready for first.
We went to Java and (despite minor panic on discovering they no longer sell their awesome mediterranean breakfast) ate. As we were finishing, Elaine and Nick showed up, so we got more coffees and settled in. And
mrph and eventually DMH came along and there was more coffee, and basically breakfast took until about half past two. Which meant it was pretty much time for me to run an errand, and head down to the quayside to meet CEB and
damerell for a pint.
Or two, as it happened, and a nice catch up with them as I've not seen CEB in ages, and haven't seen Damerell in a couple of years in any context other than standing-near-loudspeakers, which limits the complexity of sentences. They headed off to their fish&chip plan, and I went home to scoop up Davefish, Keris and SmallHuman for a trip to the diner.
Which means I basically spent the entire day either eating, drinking, or chatting to friends. Sometimes all three at once. And I consider that a win.
Although it did mean I missed the first two bands in the evening (honestly, who starts a band line up at half six, anyway?). Terminal Gods were... fine. If you want a pub band made out of people who've never listened to anything but the Mission, they're all over that job.
New Model Army are always going to be properly up my alley, although I can't say I rate their setlist choice much at the moment. Bonus points for playing Purity, though, which I haven't heard live in ages. Plus a genuinely glorious I Love The World to finish. I'll take that :-)
Sunday morning saw us lounging around in our living room trying to decide where to go for breakfast. Keris interviewed her phone, and started reading a menu, and about halfway through I started muttering things like "we're going there!" and "now!" and ultimately "NOW!" at increasing volume.
Y'see, the unpleasantly-named Cranberry Swamp, beloved of coeliac cake-eaters also has a fabulous breakfast menu and turns out to do kedgeree. I scooted ahead, grabbed a table and chatted to Julian on the next table until the others turned up, and munched my way through some extremely nice kedgeree. Kedgeree! I think that one is going to go into the rotation.
Sunday further involved a walk on the beach, to demonstrate to SmallHuman what a beach is, and ice cream. The stall near the Marine Cafe sells goth vanilla ice cream - tastes like vanilla, but absolutely jet black. It dyed my mouth somewhat ("you look like you've been kissing goths", said Davefish disgustedly). And then I went out to dinner with my parents, coincidentally in Whitby for the weekend. Um, for a music festival this seems like a rather food-centric write-up (carrot and ginger soup, baked trout and almonds, white chocolate and raspberry souffle, if you wish to know). Which, as I'm sure you'll agree, is an excellent way to begin an evening that ends up jumping up and down like a complete twat at the 80s night. So I did that.
Anyway, on the whole, I'd say Tomorrow's Ghosts worked. I'm a bit underwhelmed by November's lineup (Wayne Hussey and Clan of Xymox - disappointingly not a double act), but I might just go anyway for the company :-)
[Originally posted at https://venta.dreamwidth.org/538602.html]