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.

Apparently, there’s a football world cup starting soon.
Quite like this funny that good did..

do a search for ‘World Cup’ in google and scroll down to the bottom.

I have been off line most of this weekend and most of Friday. Not as a result of a lifestyle decision but as a result of technical gremlins. I couldn’t figure it, tech support couldn’t figure it and it annoyed. It’s quite alarming how much I rely on the internet. From in the supermarket to look up a recipe to full charged up with creativity and needing a screenshot of something.

Apart from that it’s been a great weekend
Perhaps it was meant to be. Had friends over on Friday, one of which has just upgraded from veggy status to fish eater status. Caviar and vodka with toast points to start, Splendid salmon, pasta, asparagus, mushroom sauce combo for main and they brought round a rhubarb grumble for afterwards. Super doop. Scrabble and extreme uno followed by sleeps and a reunited family as Felix came back from camp.
Eirene went to cinema to see Rocky Horror with friends and I stayed in and finished reading a fine book called eleven minute by Paulo Coelho.
Today, I gave the fishtank a deep clean and got a new fish called Billy.

Bit of a textual write up in the post below – here is my visual write up.

Click here to view the photo set.

For some reason, the last two FIRE parties have borne the above mantra.

Having thought that the VOTE fire edition was incredible, I was secretly worried that this would not come close, but it did. Musically I kicked off the night with some down tempo / lounge / Latin type stuff – which people seemed to (gulp – dare I say) like. By 10 the bar was buzzing and smilling, drinking and chatting. Dharma took the musical helm at 11 and played a superb house / funk type vibe for a couple of hours, then into the legendary set of Archio Banquarta who rocked the joint. Wrapping up the night – the freshly named K2 Brothers went with a deep tech set. Meanwhile Blake was playing upstairs – He’d been briefed on doing a Dub / Reggae / Babylon and ting type set but ended up playing Balkan Gypsy set. I liked what I heard – he also played out a couple of tracks that himself and good friend Vicky had made – sounded superb. It was pretty rammed upstairs as well as downstairs all night, till about 3 ish anyway before the aircon blew upstairs (it’s no good cap’n, they cannie take it) flooding water into the top bar, rendering it unpunterable.

The look of the place was at another level as well – along with the acre of red and yellow material donning the roofs (that we blagged from someone who blagged it from someone who took it off the top of the millennium dome) we were also blessed with two screens, one of which I’d put a couple hundred vintage FIRE PHOTOS on there, the other screen Si Hudson did a superb VJ set upon.

Thanks to everyone involved – the artists, the performers, the staff and everyone who brought smiled and dancing shoes.

Photos to follow (soon!)

Next FIRE – 31st July : FIRE v Bottom Of The Bottle @ REHAB