weeknightsfieldmusic, originally uploaded by DragonDrop.

Went to see Field Music at the Harrogate Theatre last night. Such a polished act. Thousands of hours worth of practice boiled down into an hour or so.  Interchangeable drummer / lead vocalist / keyboard kept things very interesting.

The two support acts were very good as well. Simon Wainwright from Hope & Social did an acoustic / unplugged set. Nice stuff – great voice. He demonstrated just how good the acoustics are of The Theatre’s main stage by doing a song  sans PA. He also give everyone a kazoo to emulate what is normally his brass line – an interesting experiment!

2×2 twins from Ripon called The Weeknights were the surprise highlight for me.  Young lads but they don’t sound it. The fact that they are so in tune with each other as twins really came across in their highly original almost Fleet Foxes / Sigur Ros sound.

It’s a while since I’ve been to a music gig in theatre – not since the (good ‘ol) Theatre Music Party days – where everyone who could play, played. The entire creative community of Harrogate got together for a one day celebration of just how good we are. It really was the flagship event in Harrogate’s rich musical calendar. Perhaps this Fringe Crawl day tomorrow will take over where that left off?  Hope so.

See the set of photos from the night here>>

Here was the mid punk gig raffle last Friday. Yes, you read that right. A raffle at a punk gig. Henry (featured in the hat) had the idea to have; a birthday party, 5 bands, cake, 4 DJ’s all to feature on the same night.

What a success! £524.60 for Médecins Sans Frontières was raised on the night. This is going towards Henry’s total, for when he does his next trick – runs 110 miles across The Cleveland Moors in September.

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Felix’s very last day at Grove Road School today. What a lovely school it is. We’re so happy with the way they have cared for, educated and inspired our Felix and given him such a solid foundation. As far as the formative years go, we we’re lucky enough to chip him off in that direction. Still got our other two there so we’ll be friends of Grove Road for a while.

It’s quite good having a blog that’s been around for a few years sometimes. I just looked back on the blog that I wrote all those years ago on “Felix’s first day at Grove Road School” Full circle / Start of a new chapter.

Had a fantastic weekend at Deershed. A very slick production indeed – Loads going on and they really did cater for the family. Stacks of quality entertainment for us, for the kids for everyone. Sold Out – I think about 1600 or so – a good number. Not too big, certainly not too small. Perhaps too much going on to squeeze into one day really – would have been good if it was an all weekeneder perhaps but no complaints – if I’d been relying on the beer tent there may have been – they ran out of beer mid/late afternoon! Can only take this as a sign of success.

The video here is a timelapse of The Art Wall (click here for the longer, bigger version) organized by www.artists.ltd.uk. A fantastic idea that loads of people seemed to enjoy! Art for everyone / Everyone IS an artist.. officially!

A few more snaps from the weekend here>>

I’m as far east in England as its possible to go without getting your feet wet. Lowestoft. I’m down here on business. It’s the furthest east I have ever been in England. Two new county bags. I think I have now run out of English counties that I have not been to apart from that anglia one, if it actually exists.
Observations so far. It’s very flat. The restaurant at The Victoria hotel is quite good. Kite boarding is good sport round here. Its a good place for spotting a super tanker or 5.
My hotel is a mile away from town. Beach walk to digest the 3 courser soon me thinks.

Big beach are the best.

One of the many highlights of Jaygo’s birthday weekend extravaganza. Here we are just before the second dip at ‘ The Ultimate’ – a rollercoaster at Lightwater Valley theme park – North Yorkshire, UK. I smell wild garlic.

Having a little breather for a couple of hours before we carry on with Jaygo’s birthday weekend. We started on Friday night with a game of rounders on the stray that we were invited to. This was really good fun for everyone.  Rounders, BBQ, cake and catching up. This photo shows the line up – little to big selection process. We had a few spare kids with us as Jaygo was having a sleep over. J & H and their brood were there also as well as a whole bunch of lovely others.

I was looking forward to the morning of his birthday (yesterday) nearly as much as he was. We’d put the feelers out for an electric guitar and amp. My old friend McParty was selling a Marshall amp, meanwhile a guitar came our way and the serendipity of it all couldn’t have been better. He’s been having guitar lessons at school now for a while and he’s just at that age when he’s really discovering music – he particularly likes ROCK. Here’s a picture of him doing the birthday dance.We had a lovely day of pottering about, playing guitar! the evening rolled into a rather impromptu BBQ – we’d planned on having a couple of people over and it expanded a little to be somewhere between a gathering and a party. Some old friends that we’ve not caught up with for years.  Some splendid attendees and some nice bbq chow which merged into a chilled choons,  fire bin and wine type night.

Lots more batting to come in this B’Day weekend – we’re off to Lightwater Valley today and we’re supposed to be going to another BBQ this evening! A BBQ hat-trick no less. A few more photos of the weekend can be found in this flickr set here (which I’ll add to with any photos I take today)

Got back last night after a lovely camping trip to the Lake District. We didn’t see a single Lake though.

Fisherground campsite – lovely spot – part of this set of photos>>

Fisherground Campsite is reputedly (and I can confirm) one of the best campsites in the country for kids to enjoy. It’s got a really good adventure playground  complete with zip wire. It’s got a pond with an island and rafts. It’s got a train station with trains that go to the coast or up to the village to the East. It allows fire – a massive plus point in our book – an essential part of camping that so few campsites allow these days. It’s got a 3 acre mowed field for games and sports. It’s got a green team that really do look after the place and its residence – perhaps a bit to Victorian Dad about it at times, but at the end of the day – they do a really good job.

We’ve stayed at Fisherground campsite before – when we were there last time it was rather cold but this time we had the weather on our side. After grouping up on Friday night and imbibing a modest amount of alcohol we got up bright and breezy on Saturday. We made a check list of things to do – Play cricket, look at the trains (perhaps go on one), collect wood (they sell it there, but the Yorkshiremen in us knew best) , eat some nice food, have a few beers and play lots of Boules and Frisby. We did all of the above and added ‘game of rounders’ and ‘fly kite’ to the completed action list. The evening consisted of silly story time from the kids round the fire then we all turned in fairly early after all the days excitement.

Sunday – we got packed up just before the heavens opened. Rainy day activity plan kicked in – Museums. Barrow-in-Furness has The Dock Museum. This was fascinating. A converted dry dock, mainly on the history of (the biggest cul-de-sac in England – ) Bowness. Ships, Trains, Grimness, Engineering, Determination. We all really enjoyed it.

After that, almost by random I discovered that there was another museum on something quite close to our hearts – The Laurel and Hardy Museum in Ulverstone. This consisted of part of an old cinema with anecdotal and historical reference to the comedy duo, as well as memorabilia and a mini cinema showing back to back Laurel and Hardy classics all day long. A very pleasant end to a very pleasant weekend.

From one end of the entertainment spectrum – watching Sophie’s end of term ballet show in a hot, packed Ashville hall on the Saturday – to a hot packed Old Trafford cricket ground on the Sunday watching England play Australia in a One Day International match. Impressive to watch ‘best in the world’ performers – the cricketers were great too.

Setting off on a giddy ‘lads’* day out (yes, I am talking about the cricket now) always gets me excited. The thought that I get to be a kid again, where I’ve got a responsibility holiday (apart from the notion of bringing myself and the rest of the fleet back in one piece) fills me with a unique energy.
Harmless fun and japes, laughing hard, doing things on a whim, going to places and situations that I couldn’t experience in any of the normal modes of me is very good from time to time. Reminds me of the Peter Pan in me. Somebody once asked me and Skip (who couldn’t make this tour) whilst Headingley bound on a damp train full of cricket and commuters, if we were in the Barmy Army. “oh no,” Skip replied “we’re a special ops unit”.
The match we were at had heroics. It had tension. It was two (at times) gladiators equally poised in the balance of mortal combat. The series win was at steak and oh how pleased we were when a Yorkshiremen brought home the silver for St. George (and the dragon). Meanwhile the England football team were outplayed on the field by Germany knocking them out of the world cup.
By the time the match had finished and we’d got out of the ground, the vast majority of car and house England flags had already been demoted to out of sight, out of mind. Not many people were drinking champagne on the train back over the Pennines that night, I can tell you… except us that is. What a superb day. Cardiff next year?
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* J who I’ve known over half my life,also a father of 3 also relishes the rare away missions that life throws at him. The rest of the unit : H, a brilliant chap, has the ability to run scores of miles up mountains and has a wit and interlect just as excersised, likes a day off from himself, I’m sure. T contributes an infectious positivity, R a wise humour and honoured veteran while M shows that growing up in Wales has a lot of parallels to growing up in Yorkshire.

Harrogate Fringe Festival ‘Grand Finale’. We’ve been asked to chuck another log on it for the official after party to the Harrogate Fringe Festival. There’s the ‘Crawl’ day on the 31st featuring shed loads of bands across umpteen venues in Harrogate and we’ll be wrapping up the show with double dose of  party at Rehab, downtown Harrogate.

“It’s gonna be a belter”. We’re taking on the mighty Bottom of the Bottle =- we’ll do one floor, they’ll do the other (TBD which way round..) Wrist band holders from any of the day event means FREE ENTRANCE / priority clearance (subject to capacity).

I was lucky enough to do a lot of my favourite activities over the past 5 days or so.
Thursday – went to watch the cricket at Headingley with a lovely bunch of people. ‘My’ team (Yorkshire) won one of it’s key matches of the season – they beat arch rivals Lancashire by 17 runs in a confident win. A train ride back to Harrogate, followed by a few drinks in town ensured a healthy hang over the next morning. Luckily, I’d arranged the day off so one of the first ports of call was coffee in town followed by a few missions to stock up for the festival we were headed to for the weekend.

As I’d mentioned in last years post, Lindley Woodstock is technically a private party but had the feel of a small festival – stages, fires, PA’s, people, curry van, bouncy castle etc. Very lovely it was as well. I ran the top stage – the format of top stage act > bottom stage act > top stage act (etc) meant that the music could go on seamlessly (ish) all day and night. The highlight musically for me on that stage was a psychadellic act who’s name I missed – all Gong / Hawkwind ish. really interesting. The highlight for the bottom stage for me would have to be Mick Artistic, who I’ve seen before somewhere but who was on top form at Lindley.

After a lovely Sunday in the sun we headed home to get the kids settled for school night. The next day – Monday – I went and had quite a major haircut followed by lunch at home, followed by the delights of seeing Sophie at her Baby Ballet class. Very cute. Very pink. We let Sophie have a potter about in the KidzPlay at Hammerian House – they had a TV on where I got to see the second half of Portugal thrashing North Korea. The big think of the day was Eirene and I’s 10th wedding anniversary. ‘Tin’ apparently. 10 years ago that day we had our wedding reception / party (and oh boy oh boy, what a party it was!) up at the Harrogate Arms. This was back when the club downstairs was still serviceable, so we took over that with DJ’s, set an acid jazz / funk type band upstairs and I think we had more stuff outside… all very much fun) so with those thoughts in mind we headed back up there with the kids after school for a look. Downstairs is no more, the pub has been knocked about a bit (still nice) and outside has donkeys and birds of pray! what a difference 10 years can make!

At my mate Henry’s house – got the afternoon off work.  Watching Argentina v South Korea – currently 2-1 to the Americans.  Henry, who’s just decided he’s a vegetarian who’s now allowed to eat fish because Dean Karnazes says it’s OK has just brought me a fish finger sandwich. He’s a big fan of them now after a decade in the fish wilderness. Beer and Rum, we should really be out in the sun.

Shortly (very exciting) we’re off to Headingley (YCCC) to watch Yorkshire  take on Lancashire in the T20. Super Sports Thursday.

After collecting my new DragonDrop shirts and kitting the boys out in the all new 12yr old edition , we headed off to a lovely garden at a friends mum’s house in Ripon to celebrate their boys birthday. The best gift was a massive cardboard box which kept all the kids amused for hours.

Following the rather splendid garden birthday party, we walked up for a look around Ripon. I’ve not actually had a look around the smallest city in England for a number of years, even though it’s just a few miles from where we live. We were lucky enough to see the bride of a wedding sweep past us as we loitered around the Cathedral. Felix bought some Nurf guns which he’s been after for a while. World cup viewing was taken in by all of us at a friends house via a big screen projection. What a disappointment of a match though. Our half time frisbee and nurf session on the stray was way more exciting. After the footy, we headed back to ours for a fire bin and a few drinks. A nice collection turned up and it was getting light by the time I wound down for the night. Sunday – a bit of a tidy up followed by a super BBQ in our back yard with some old friends. Nice way to spend a day – I’d just got the last thing off the bbq before the heavens opened – good timing!

DragonDrop Adventure Shirts – fresh batch!, originally uploaded by DragonDrop.

Just got these back this morning –  superb. Big thanks to Visual Branding for printing them to such high standards – quality job!

DRAGONDROP ADVENTURE SHIRT

Got an adventure coming up? Get yourself snapped wearing one of these shirts and get your photo in the gallery. £12 to keep the shirt – I may have a few loaner / courtesy shirts as well. Available in 12yrs up to XXL. For more info – contact us

We went to a wine tasting event yesterday at The Crown hotel hosted by Harrogate Fine Wine and their suppliers. 70 wines to have a go on, all of a very high standard. I experimented with whites (normally a red man) before going onto the reds.

Quite a fascinating culture the wine crowd. I don’t confess to much about wine but found some of the conversations a fascination. One of the wines I had zoomed in on and went back twice to make sure it was still to my liking was this 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon called “A”. I have always been a of the “you CAN judge a book by its cover” mindset – you can tell by the fonts, the layout, the corners cut, the processes and general attention to detail and due care that has been employed when looking at a book cover or wine label. Some of this has a correlation to the product inside (albeit story, or wine).
So this “A” had a simple black design with an A made with 3 colours. I was told that the colours were the colour of the taste of this wine. Someone with Synesthesia – the condition whereby people can ‘see’ taste, sound and smell – had been used to select the colours on the label and although I had no frame of reference, the colours (a purple, a blue and a dark magenta with white lines if wine addled memory serves me correctly) did indeed look like the taste. I’m on the lookout now for other products where Synesthesia has been used to create a design.