OK, I promise, this is the last Glastonbury post this year. I’m quickly becoming a Glasto bore, I know. But indulge me one last time.
One of the reasons I wanted to go was to take some photos, and while I didn’t manage to separate the time out effectively to just watch people instead of watching bands, I did get a chance to run off a quick and dirty composite photo of the most spectacular view of the site (city) from above the famous stone circle.
In case you were in any doubt I did a little photoshopping on the panorama to make it into its own little planet, because effectively it is. A popular question before I went was “What if you forget anything?”, well what if I do. More to the point what if you do, where would you go? You’d go to the shops and so would I. For a temporary city that appears for just under a week each year, it’s pretty much self supporting. You’d never need to leave the site for anything and if you run out or, heaven forbid, forgot anything, you could find a shop, store or stall that would service your needs in a mainstream or alternative fashion.
So for all of you concerned people and for those that have blasted off there before, here for your viewing pleasure is Planet Glastonbury.
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Planet Glasto
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If only someone would pay me…
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I’m back at the Orange Chill ‘n Charge tent but this time I’ve taken up the kind offer of @conorfromorange who invited Glastonbury bloggers to the backstage area behind the Chill ‘n Charge tent, and I can tell you I’m glad I did!.
For the uninitiated, the Chill ‘n Charge tent is a bipartisan charging facility for the power hungry music fans at Glastonbury. Everyone is invited to wait their turn to juice up their phone and watch some music on their mini Pyramid Stage and partake in a little surfing of the old internet too (cos we can’t go without it, not for a whole weekend!).
A few weeks ago Conor tweeted that any bloggers going to Glasto should msg him and let him know, cos he was opening up the backstage area to them as well. Usually this space is reserved for newspaper hacks to write up their gossip and news and send it back to base, but this year Conor and Orange wanted to be nice to bloggers and that they are.
I was welcomed in and shown around and offered a towel. This is my 3rd Glastonbury and each one brings a new experience. This year’s experience is the shower. It might sound like a small thing but a shower after 2 days in the dustbowl that is Worthy Farm is a welcome relief! I might add that I’m not complaining that it’s a dust bowl because the sun and definitely better than the usual swamp that greets visitors to the festival. With temperatures peaking at 30 degrees a nice hot shower and a clean toilet (sorry, too much information) is like staying in a 5 star hotel. To top this generosity I’ve also been given a few free drinks (JD and Coke!) and access to a reasonable internet connection and a lap top.
Backstage here is truly lush and I might even come back later for a proper chill but at the moment I’m just coming down from the buzz that was 20,000 people pack into the Avalon Field to see The Wurzels! I’m missing The Dead Weather to write this little blog entry but hope to catch the end of their set before chipping off to The Park for tonights surprise guest, Biffy Clyro! Last night we were thrilled by Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood before seeing a sadly mediocre set by Gorillaz, but hey, it was a last minute thing and seeing Lou Reed, Shaun Ryder and Mark E Smith on the same bill was pretty good all the same.
So I wrote a little thing for the Wired Geek Dad blog about Orange’s phone charging wellies and I’ve updated you all, now I’d just like someone to pay me to do this. Now that would be cool!!
Maybe they’ll let me in again for more free drinks and internet access tomorrow night but until then I’ve got 64% battery on my phone to last me until then!
Worthy Farm
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It’s been a couple of years but I’m back at Worthy Farm for Glastonbury’s 40th Birthday. I’m briefly holed up in Orange’s Chill ‘n Charge tent where I’m giving my iPhone some well earned juice (yeah thanks iOS4 for screwing with my battery!).
So far today I’ve had the pleasure of Snoop and Rolf (Harris that is), and there is a rumour that Thom Yorke will be playing at The Park at 8.30, so we’ll be heading over there for a bit before heading back down to The Pyramid for the Gorillaz spectacular.
In about 10 minutes I will be hooking up with my fellow Red Sea Pedestrians in the Jewish Tent for the traditional friday night chicken soup. I’ll report back on the quality of that later!
I think 85% should get me through the next day perhaps. Time to disconnect the phone and head back out into the madness, I can hear a pint of cide calling my name.
“Can you help me please?”
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Until I heard this phrase on Doctor Who last Saturday, I’d not heard this for a while. I’m not sure why. People don’t really ask for help any more. Perhaps they’re afraid of what the response will be. Well they certainly won’t be used to free an alien space craft from it’s earthly captivity!
It could be the news, there’s a lot of it about and depending on where you are receiving it, it can be quite frightening, but then again I suppose that’s the point. It also could be TV drama, that is also designed to scare the pants off you. But should it affect the way you live your life. I’m not saying that there might be positive effects but there are most definitely negative ones, like not asking for help for example.
On my daily ramble through Moorgate to work I see a lot of city folk wending their way into work. Some have been there for a while and are out for a no doubt well earned cigarette break. Others might be fresh from buying their morning mocha choca cappuccino latte or something. There are a few busy roads that need crossing before I hit the relative peace and quiet of Shoreditch but today, as I crossed one of the junctions there was a lady in a small hatchback who had broken down. Behind her were all the London favourites; white van man (in a blue van!), London cabbie and a red double decker bus. While she sat in her car frantically attempting to get the thing started she was confronted with a barrage of horns beeping and fists waving from the waiting vehicles behind her. Did she receive help from the cabbie, van man or bus driver? No she didn’t. Did she get help from anyone walking passed her car, and there were quite a few of them. No she didn’t. Even when I approached her with an offer to push her car across the junction, she declined, preferring to sit helplessly in the traffic than get a shove across the junction so she could sort her car out, out of the way of the baying throng behind her. Shame really, and I didn’t think I looked that scary. Maybe it was the 3/4 length trousers that put her off!
So to all of you people in trouble, where ever you may be. London is not full of lunatics who want to do you harm! Some of us are genuinely helpful people who would be happy to help you and your car across to the other side of the junction, and might even call the AA out for you! So next time you’re in a bit of a pickle and we offer you our assistance, why not say, “Yes, that would be lovely thank you!”
Geek Dad
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I’ve just submitted my first entry for wired.co.uk’s Geek Dad blog. I’ll be attempting to write a weekly piece about dads and technology while adding my own spin on things. The first article was about my (bad) habit for hoarding old film cameras. You can read that here.
The next few are already in the pipeline so you’ll have to keep an eye on wired.co.uk to keep up to date.
Am I really that old?
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We had the radio on during the kids’ pre bedtime shower the other day. I think it was 70′s & 80′s hour on Absolute Radio or something. My eldest likes her music, she’s 8. I’ve tried to educate her as best i can. We went to Glastonbury together a few years ago, did I mention that?! But still she’s hooked on JLS and Pixie Lott. So Big County’s eponymous song comes on, not a favourite tune but worthy of a bath time wail, and Mini Me pipes up,
“I don’t like this song” she declares
“Why’s that?” I ask.
“It’s from the olden days”, she replies, “I don’t like music from the olden days”.
“THE OLDEN DAYS!”
I was shocked, but then I thought… That song came out in 1983 which makes it 20 years before she was born. Now if I track back to 20 years before I was born then we’re sitting firmly in 1951. That indeed was the olden days and the music then was far from rocking!
I’m 38, that’s not old! I was born at the tail end of the musical revolution that was the 60′s and while Mini Me might consider classic rock to be from the ‘olden days’, she will soon learn that the stuff that she’s listening to, that is more frequently sampling music from my teenage years, is indeed more ‘classic’ than ‘olden’. I can’t rightly remember when it was I started trawling through people’s record collections and discovering The Beatles and The Stones, maybe I’m expecting too much from her at 8 years old, but that day will come and my ‘olden’ status will be vindicated… I hope!
Passover Fact 8
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You may think, having looked at all of these photos and read the ramblings that Passover is all about food. Actually this isn’t the case, it’s just that the food seems to take over your every waking thought. From not being able to have your usual breakfast to wondering at what point the matzahs are going to make your insides explode.
Getting side-tracked by food really does take away from the religious and spiritual aspects of Passover. The handing down of the story of the exodus from parent to child amongst other things. But when the hammer falls on the final day, there isn’t much that will keep me from packing away the Passover crockery for another year and stacking it up in the garage in time to leg it to the local take-away for some real food. Usually we ease ourselves back in to leavened product by having a pizza but this year I was down to my local Fish and Chip emporium, the fine Ideal Fish Bar in Pinner.
I had my order in 15 minutes before Passover ended, so I could be back home with supper on the table with no time wasted. To say that was probably the finest meal I’d had in a week, might have been an understatement.
Roll on Passover 2011!
Passover Fact 7
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This is a poorly cooked Matzah Brei, cooked by me. It’s now day 7 and we are truly fed up of Matzah so we’ve got to find a new way to present these food stuffs that have less nutrition than the box they came in. So what do we do? We soak them in water, or even eggs, and fry them. You can have them with tomato ketchup, if you’ve fried them in eggs, or you can add salt and pepper, or even sugar and cinnamon if you’ve gone the water route. You may not believe it but they are rather yummy, but after a week anything would be better!
Surprisingly this went down quite well with one of the kids. The other one had described what she’d had at a friends house for breakfast after the sleep over, and I thought it was this. When I presented my culinary masterpiece to her, she snarled “That’s not what Anne made! Give me an apple.”
Tomorrow night I’m having proper Pizza!
Passover Fact 6
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On the first two days of Passover we partake in a family evening meal accompanied by a religious service where we recall the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt. Well at least when there are parents present. When we all pile round to friends houses it can get a little raucous and the traditional service goes out the window and is replaced by comedy passover songs downloaded from the Internet. Yes, the Internet is the new Hagadah! Wine forms an important part of the seder service. You are obliged to drink four cups (small unfortunately) of wine, or grape juice for the kiddies, over the course of the services. Of course, as the week drags on you pine for more wine in bigger glasses until you can take it no more.
Here we are, day 6 and we’ve found the biggest wine glasses we can and are reliving the seder service without the songs, or the religious significance or the food, bar a stack of chocolate but not forgetting the four glasses, each.
2 days to go!
