Shrewsbury 2011 - Day 3

Not a good start for the day. After the 9pm to 11pm duty last night we had to do 9am to 11am this morning so it was not a leisurely breakfast. The only serious problem is the lack of stewards for Main Stage 1 (we used to call it Marquee One but presumably that is not an OK name in the developing world of festivals).
Managed to see Pilgrim's Way before lunch but didn't find anyone else that we could fit in before going back on duty at 3pm. One advantage of the new office is that we are visible and people other than stewards came in with questions and lost property. The most common question was about battery charging. The campsite wardens offer a service to charge almost anything  and with the continued rise of hungrier 'phones the number of people needing a charge keeps increasing. This year they were using a room that was previously the radio room. The radio room had moved with us. The door of the old radio room carried two notices - 'Battery Charging' and 'The Radio Room has moved' (with a large arrow pointing our way). These were intended to provide two separate pieces of information but, because the door was padlocked to protect the phones etc, many people saw the notices as one and came to us expecting to get their phones charged. This would never have been possible because the building floods every winter and there are not many working electricity sockets.
At 4pm '17 Hippies' were on Main Stage 1. We were lucky not to have been able to see them. We were later told that their set consisted of 55 minutes of extended sound checking and one song!
In the evening we saw Martin Joseph, Show of Hands and Home Service. Martin Joseph could have been a Welsh Bruce Springsteen if ....
Show of Hands did a fairly standard festival set but Home Service were brilliant - old fashioned (c1986) but exciting.

Shrewsbury 2011 - Day 2

A long day. Our first duty was from 8:30 to 11:00 and our last from 21:00 to 23:00. Mostly the same old issues but there appear to be more no shows amongst the stewards and that is compounded by a reduction in the total number available. We did certainly have trouble finding jobs for all of the task force last year but it does fell as though the number has ben cut rather too aggresively. I have to admit that the new accomodation is actually better!
We walked into town but didn't find the toy that we wanted for Morgan.
The concerts didn't start until 20:00 so we only saw a local group before we had to work. However we did manage to see about 30 mins of Bellowhead which was really dramatic. Fortunately we had made up the caravan bed before going out. It looked very enticing when we finally crawled back.

Shrewsbury 2011 - Day 1

Last year the journey took over 4 hours because of heavy rain and roadworks to the north and west of Birmingham. This year it was really easy and although I kept my speed down to try to reduce the cost, we arrived in 3 and a half hours. This was too early for the organisers and we had to wait in a field with all of the other people who can't work out when to set off. We made use of the enforced halt by eating our lunch - one of those in car picnics. We set up the caravan in a place very close to last year. I had more trouble with the awning but it appears to be stable so far.
The stewards office has be moved to a superior building but it is too tidy. We were comfortable in the old scruffy rooms. I went to check if Ron was going to break with tradition and actually hold a team meeting this year. He shook my hand and said 'now we've met' so I said 'see you tomorrow' and that was that.
It took us an hour to work through the program and plan what we could go to within the constraints of our duties. We can see most of what we want although some of the sets will have to be truncated.
So far we have talked to Sue and Dave Emery and nodded to a few regulars. It is really rather comfortable.

Connections

I love it when unexpected connections appear.
Recently, in the middle of the night, I heard an old 'Desert Island Discs' where the guest was Jacqueline Wilson who chose, just as I started listening, 'Mythical kings and Iguanas' by Dorey Previn. I was instantly fascinated by the song which had somehow passed me by back in the '80s. I later downloaded the whole album and played it frequently over the following weeks.
Time passed and one day I was listening  to 'Womans Hour' when, after a live performance by two women folk singers, Jenni Murray said that it took her back to the time when she used to go to Barnsley Folk Club. That was interesting because the secretary of Spalding Folk Club comes from Barnsley and went to the same club. In a burst of nostalgia she had booked Dave Burland for the Spalding club and when he came I discovered that he had a CD on which he sang 'Mythical Kings' and also that he remembered Jenni Murray who apparently had a crush on him.
Now I have two CDs with that song and an interesting image of the Barnsley folk scene 40 years ago.
Another slight connection was also triggered by 'Womans Hour'. A few months ago the Womans Hour drama was about F Scott Fitzgerald and that reminded me of 'Tender is the Night' and the film and song that were significant many years ago. I bought the DVD! This weekend David Nichols, the author of 'One Day' was interviewed and at the end of the interview he said that he loves 'Tender is the Night' and would really like to write the screenplay for a new version.
None of this is important but it is interesting to see unexpected ways in which the world is connected.

Classics

The closest I came to Classics at school was O Level Latin which I have to admit was a bit of a struggle. It is therefore always a pleasant surprise to discover how easily I can talk to Joe Millington the classics teacher at the grammar school.
It was an end of term party and we started chatting about holidays. Joe and Julie go regularly to to Greece but more often to Crete. Last year they couldn't leave for a week because of the problems with volcanic ash and earlier this year they had problems with riots in Athens. However nothing will stop them going back.
We talked about books and I mentioned Captain Correlli somewhat tentatively because such popular books are often frowned upon by people with real knowledge of the background. However Joe loves it as much as I do and we both feel the same about the prequel 'Birds Without Wings'. I don't know how many people have read this book but it describes the history of Turkey in the early years of the 20th century which is a period that neither Joe nor I knew much. The key is the harmonious state in which Greeks, Turks and Jews lived at the beginning of the story and the way that it was destroyed when the Greeks were forcibly repatriated. Key characters in Captain Corelli were among those moved from Turkey. We were both horrified by this discovery.
We also talked about the Durrells and their different books about the Greek Islands and discovered a joint interest in the travel books of Patrick Leigh Fermor.
Although individuality is attractive it is also satisfying to know that you are not completely alone.

Our Hedge

A long time ago, when we first moved into our house, the end of the garden was marked by a low mound of earth, on the other side of which there was, and still is, a small dyke.  At one end of the mound was a very small evergreen conifer. At some point, possibly when Matthew son was born, we decided that we should have a proper fence that would connect to our neighbours'  existing fences. So I bought the posts and panels and set to work. This fence was only about 3 ft high and so I could  climb over in order to paint both sides although the slope down into the dyke is quite steep. This was a practical solution until the fence blew down. I like to think that it was the night of the 'hurricane' in 1987 but it was probably a less memorable night.
After a range of attempts to repair it I finally gave up and decided to plant a Leylandii  hedge - it was a common solution at the time!
For some years it didn't amount to much - the end of the garden was really marked  by the rope that I had used to line up the plants.
After a while it became a serious hedge and it is now about 8ft high and 3 ft thick. It's an effective hedge but a real challenge to keep tidy and that's what I've been doing this week. From the last time that I worked on it there were about 5 really tall trunks that I hadn't been able to reach. This time I was equiped with a better ladder, an electric saw, multiple types of lopper and a surface to lay on the top of the hedge to spread the load of my body stretched out to reach the furthest trunks. So now there are no potential trees but I will have to keep trimming the shoots - probably monthly.

You, me and the bees

We were just sitting in the sunshine in the garden and this title popped into my head. Nothing that I can do with it but I wanted to write it down.