Riverside walk, originally uploaded by DragonDrop.

A weekend of contrasts – Eirene and I had been out to a Festival warm up party on the Friday evening (the festy in question is DragonGate 2012 – no doubt more on that to follow). Much fun was had at this till the wee hours on Saturday – when I remembered I had a forgetful friend staying at our house so ended up collecting the dog and going back into club-land to collect him. We called our mutual friend in California on the way home at about 5am our time +20 dec C there, -3 here. Winter has finally arrived.

Saturday – recovery day with a jaunt out to the paintball centre near Flaxby to collect Felix who was at a birthday party there. I took the opportunity, and the dog to walk the grounds (increasingly useful excuse tool for a nosey blogger like me to have) . A superb place – half of it is a huge quad bike track and the other half is a paintball, erm.. arena? zone? location?.. a paintball place. Completely wrapped in fine netting which I discovered the dog could not see in the slightest as she bounced off it at full pelt. As I got closer to the action – deep in the woods – I actually felt like I was a special ops scout. I spotted all the paintballers doing battle and they didn’t spot me. I was ready with the dramatic arms in the air whilst shouting “CIVILIAN – DON’T SHOOT, friendly, friendly..” or similar. Alas the potential war machines of tomorrow don’t notice some bloke with his dog 20 yards away only disguised by wall of black netting. I blame the video games. Kids don’t play army in the woods any more (apart from highly structured, albeit brilliant pseudo excercises like this). Mind you – army of the future doesn’t need the traditional organic skills of yesteryear. Probably. What do I care anyway? War sucks.

Sunday was lovely. After I’d parked a slow cooker of beef stew on low, we headed out to a bit of the OS 1:25000 that looked interesting. Near the Lido in Knaresborough (pictured above) – some paths by the river, some fields, some crags. We only saw two other people for the whole 2 miles or so round trip we ambled – yet we were at times really close to populated areas. I love winter for that.I’m glad winter has arrived properly.

Limetree this year ticked pretty much all the boxes and then some.  Textbook festival fun. Having had a few pre festival jitters enhanced by last minute unknowns – within minutes of arriving, I’d discovered that some good friends had saved us an awesome plot for our van. I then discovered that I had a full compliment of fresh tickets and that a whole bunch of friends were there. After setting up camp, we headed into the arena.

The last time I went, there didn’t feel like there were quite enough people there – this years had a veritable bouillabaisse of people. Young and old, smart and bold, the ravers, the jazz heads, the beautiful people, the family guys. The Costume de rigueur, the visual uniter was mud. Everyone from at least the knee down was emblazoned with a tasteful portion of the afore mentioned. Another common accessory would be the smile. Happiness abound.

The site itself had grown – The choice of stage for a festival of its size was remarkable. In the eastern section of the site, a circus big top flanked by two large dome tents proved the main venues for dance / DJ based entertainment – a cracking sound system almost taunted DJ’s with ‘go on, lets have your best sub bass’. To be honest, I didn’t spend a huge amount of time in this area but from what I heard (we were camped just the other side), they had it XXL.

The main arena – a ‘proper’ main stage showcased some fantastic music and provided a focal point. I was blown away by Aradhana Arts on the Saturday afternoon. The sheer brilliance of Sanju Sahai – one of the best tabla players alive today – was incredible to watch at close quarters.

That was undoubtedly my musical highlight – so glad I caught that.  The arena field was satellited by stalls, stages, props and shops. One of these stages was The Bet Lynch stage – essentially a huge camp dressing up box of a stage showcasing some quirky, avant garde type affairs. We watched a duo in there called Hectic Egg – funny, beautiful, unique. They sang a song about wanting to be with mum for Christmas. Brought a lump to my throat.

The West field Next door was home to another big top and a fully fledged Jazz Club. A blacked out marquee that had a full bar at the back and around 30 tea lit, 4 chair tables. The blacked out walls were adorned with tastefully spot lit muso pics, the atmosphere – quite surreal. Kind of like when you go to a cinema during the day. At one point – around 5.30pm on Saturday afternoon, the heavens opened – quite a guilty pleasure being comfortable and warm in said venue.  Some friends of ours had been working on front row seats all afternoon and we were lucky enough to saunter in at the last minute and blag some in time to see The Scapegoat Kelly band who were sporting a fairly new line up.

I’ve always loved Scapegoat – since I saw their first ever gig at the legendary Harrogate Theatre Music Party (RIP) many moons ago. A great gig. Tight. A big Blues Bar contingency took ownership of most of the front of the venue, there was a dancing, and a singing, and a music.

Next door to the Jazz club was another big top. This had a bunch of great stuff in it, but the ones that did it for me in there would have to be Middleman. M’Good friend Allan and I caught the last bit of their set – big grin tastic. The energy was a bit like early Prodigy and the groove was akin to Rage Against The Machine. Bosh. Amazing. A band called Senser did a thing back in the 90′s where they fused crunchy guitar with hard and heavy dance noises – Middleman reminded me a bit of that.

Seeing Middleman was part of my proper party wander. After tea on the Saturday, I went deep into the no agenda festival fun zone. Eirene was fairly partied out as she’d had a look over at Leeds Festival on Friday night and was pooped. I wore full orange waterproofs – which always seems to do the trick of stopping the rain. After sticking my head into unknown stages and tents we settled down in one of the two silent disco’s. Light, upbeat funk / disco meets reggae was the DJ’s output whilst we hung out there on and off till 3am. The format of silent disco is superb – especially when it’s in a super snug big ol Papakata style double teepee. You can get into the music – in super hi fidelity stereo, or you can chat to the person next to you without the usual “Y’WHAT MATE?”

After that, I popped back into the Jazz Tent where the Governor, Shaun was pulling pints. I’d not met him before – lovely lovely chap. Had some great chattage with cast and crew who’d assembled for a late taste before heading back via some randoms party in one of the residential, set-up and ready-to-rock teepee’s (of which there were loads!). I got to see the sun rise before quietly trying to take off my big muddy boots and layer of orange plastic without waking anyone or falling over.

I wish it was still on. It would be ace if festivals could run all year and we could dip in for the odd couple of nights every now and then. I suppose on paper, ‘towns and cities’ offer some of the trappings – but it’s no where close.  If I could wave a magic wand to make any fest a perma-fest, I would do it with Limtree me thinks. The land and the crew need a well deserved rest though! Can’t wait till next year.

Photos by me | More over yonder»

Just before any big adventure, I get jittery. Especially when it’s a last minute thing. On Wednesday evening an email from www.notitlemagazine.com casually informed me that I’d won a pair of tickets for Limetree Festival, via a ‘in 30 words or less’ competition. I did my excited face.

Eirene, is convinced that the more I flap, procrastinate or object to the up-and-coming adventure, the better it is. It’s not so bad towards the back end of summer – when I’ve had several outings to prep. Charge batteries. Find that.  Do I take this one or that one? Shall I see about getting one of them? Do I need one of them? Etcetera.

The plus side to this hyper-tension is that it keeps me busy. If I stopped to think about the festival too much, the wind would change and I’d be stuck with my excited face on. An incredible collection of artists has been assembled – well done to the musical director types involved – just short of 170 confirmed acts from techno to afro, celtic to punk,  ska to funk, folk to rock and a bunch of those kinds of acts who flatly refuse to conform to a genre label.  Dare I say, something for everyone – although – one thing that all the acts do have in common is that most appear to be distinctly off the mainstream path. I like that.

I’ve not been to Limetree Farm for a couple of years. I’m done Limetree Festival before – we took FIRE up there for a night. Loved it. Loved the site.  I’d done all the Thornboroughs – a festival that used the farm prior to the Limetree festivals presence. Peter, the farmer is a top bloke. I had the pleasure of going for a walk with him around the outer grounds of his farm once – around the outside perimeters of the festival site. There’s a whole bunch of nature out there and he’s passionate about it.  There’s a badger reserve. There’s a magical overhanging tree where he’s got an ace story about seeing a wild white rabbit there once (quite a rare thing, attributed to a fair portion of folklore). The site itself has the standing stones and some incredible nooks and crannies. A lot of character – reminds me of a small Glastonbury festival site.

Anyway – I’m hoping that the pre festival up-in-the-air factors iron themselves out soon. I’m going to try blogging from the field again I think – as per this post from the 2008 festival.

 

Casablanca, originally uploaded by DragonDrop.

You must remember this scene from Casablanca.. ? no? It was 8pm, Sunday evening in Harrogate. Daren, aka @paint_Monkey defined the moment by taking the Cuban bit by the teeth and declaring one of the few smoking cinemas left in England,  was open for business. Casablanca was playing on the temporary outdoor cinerma, perhaps less inflectionally known as ‘Movies on Montpellier’. The weekend activities (of which there were a few) were enhanced by the option of the free (and easy) outdoor walk in moviedrome.

The something for everyone film policy could have oh so easily gone for a strictly mainstream super safe approach the selectors, I think, got it spot on. Toy Story 3 was their opening gambit which we attended – on a stunning afternoon – and this was one of the kick-off (read awareness) events of the Harrogate International Festival – proper.  The Talented Mr Ripley headlined Sunday with Sherlock Holmes and Moulin Rouge! being the Saturday night showreels. I tweeted and foursquared during the event – seemed like quite a buzz about town for this event. We made the most of it and I rustled up a cracking picnic, washed down with cider on ice. Happy atmosphere, loads of space and thankfully the quality sound and picture were more than acceptable. The surreal bit was watching a terrific thunderstorm, whilst sat outside on a red hot and sunny July lunch time.

The only slight erk was that the virtual brochure (see link above) claimed that it would be showing “an array of feature [tick], family friendly [tick] and art-house films [hmm..?] as well as a showcasing talented young filmmakers in the region [insert Family Fortunes big cross noise here]“.  Is this last years copy? Were they featured but not billed,  or are there no talented young filmmakers in the region?

If I may reiterate the emphasis on ‘slight’ erk though – my main regret from the whole package was that we didn’t get enjoy more of it. Our weekend was jam packed. A Pub Quiz night at Grove Road School, a 4 year olds princess party, a huge win by fixing the fridge in our land ship as well as a bunch of other uber practical activities topped off with a lovely dinner and hang out with super fine wine and sunshine at the gorgeous abode of some lovely friends. Quite a special weekend all round. Here’s looking at you kid!

Apparently, A DragonDrop Adventure Shirt has already been on TV during a cricket match in India when it’s wearer, Jim, was carried around the ground at shoulder height for being the only non Indian in the ground. Or so I’m told.

Last night, a DragonDrop Adventure Shirt made it onto Mainstream British TV with an appearance for a minute or so of Channel 4′s Come Dine With Me. It’s wearer, DragonDrop Adventure veteran Alison Brierley.

Loved the show, loved the #cdwm twitter hash tags during / after the show. Even though I wasn’t directly part of the show we felt like were – for one, we’d had a leftovers after party at the time and had gotten to consume a lot of the things that the other contestants had scoffed and for another – the deer haunch that Ali described how she was butchering the day before was a roadkill I’d spotted and phoned through to an excited Ali on day 2 of film week.

The show is available to watch for another 29 days on 4OD (well worth watching!)

..and there’s a clip of the show here.

Lovely weekend slightly tarnished today by loosing all my photos from it – either human error or some weird thing happened when I tried to upload them from my phone to dropbox. This has never happened to me before as far as I can recall but I’ve lost phones and wallets before and it’s a feeling akin to that. Never mind though!

Brilliant campsite – Mere Farm Bobbybees caravan and camping campsite in Burton Flemming – near Filey on the East coast of Yorkshire. It has loads of animals to look at – baby rabbits, chicks, turkeys and a dog called George who liked to run off with shoes. It had a book-swap library in the form of an old red telephone box. The toilets and shower block were clean and even though we brought our own, the bacon sizzlers on Sunday morning smelt superb. A great spot for very late summer sun is a bonus. A small farm shop stocked local produce. The half dozen eggs I got were quite remarkable – 5 out of the 6 of them were double yokes! I also picked up a jar of honey collected on site – beautiful. We’d heard somewhere along the line that local honey is good for the immune system and I’d say it helped with Eirene and Jaygo’s hayfever!

Regular readers will know that I’ve got a minimum requirement for a campsite – one that allows fires. Metal fire pits and wood were supplied (at a small cost) but we’d brought our own.  Mr Bobbybee is everything a camsite host should be. Firm with a bunch of “drongos” that were shouting their heads off all night – he hoofed them off – yet fair with the price and leaving everyone in peace – a very well kept ship.
Speaking of ships – I turned Clover (a van) into a land ship. I achieved this by installing a barometer and two sails. I erected the sails, along with a pole and guy ropes, to be a superb shelter attached to the side of the van. It passed test a./ keeping the rain off an outside stand area and b./ strong ish winds for the night. Further ship accreditation comes in the form of a wheel, a galley, a captain (me) a 1^st Lieutenant (Eirene) and two midshipmen (Felix and Jaygo). Sophie is as yet to receive a formal title.

We’d headed up into that area as good friend of DragonDrop Henry was doing a run and we created ‘base camp’. He got to 80 miles and couldn’t go another step. He made the better decision of stopping then, so that he could run another day before doing himself a mystery. Stirling effort non the less. Henry has just blogged his thoughts from Hardmoors 110 here.

Had a bit of a rummage in our cellar this morning with a view to sorting stuff and clearing out some junk . There’s a few of things in there from the people we bought our house off about 11 years ago. I picked up a dusty old scrap of newspaper and was about to throw it in the bin when some of the styling on the adverts caught my designers eye.  I stopped what I was doing for while to look at it – as it had put a smile on my face. I was amazed to see that the print date – 15th May 1971 – was 40 years ago, exactly to the day.

It’s got some great stuff in there.  Some things never change, like the way Smiths the Rink set their stall out in this advert – but some things have changed quite radically. For instance a brand new Ford Capri would have only set you back £1,066. You could order a Soup of the Day for 9p and a Harrogate phone number comprised of just 4 digits.

The evening entertainment look rich and varied. Cat Stephens and YES we’re playing the Harrogate Theatre whilst you could choose between two cinemas – The Odeon we’re showing “When Eight Bells Toll” whilst ABC (now the golden arches embassy) were showing “Creatures That The World Forgot”. Club land listings – You could go to the Savoy Club and/or Countdown. Pre DJ entertainment looked interesting. Club land now seems to have forgotten all about the old formats. Caberet, and Live music with a racy bit of exotica thrown in with acts like “Naked and Naughty – Janet Montana and fantastic vocalist Yvonne Dixon dancing to the Pete Verity Trio”.

An interesting find. I wonder what else is down there that I’ve not noticed before..

Click to view more images of this newspaper

Felix in a Sinclair C5, originally uploaded by DragonDrop.

Superb day yesterday. They have changed all of Jays meds – no more anti biotics for a start – resulting in a whole 8 hour gap between meds – which the staff at LGI advised we made the most of and get out of the hospital and into the sun. AYE AYE SIRS!

Eirene set off for Leeds to visit by the time we knew we were coming out – got a message to her to turn around. Both of us had the idea to pick up some asparagus from the farm between Harrogate and Leeds so the first thing we did on home arrival was a fantastic big feats that involved lots of beautiful asparagus. It was so nice having the whole clan home. All three pottering making watching playing chattering.

After a chill we headed up to T & F s house for a garden party / bbq. Lovely company – some of our all time fave lovelies were there and everyone was so peased to see Jay. Someone even turned up on an original Sinclair C5 (pictured above). Felix and I had a go. Part of me thinks they are brilliant, part of me thinks they are impractical. Quite fun though. Loved the branded Sinclair pedals. Quite a comfortable riding pisition but would feel vulnerable on a busy road me thinks!

Spent a great couple hours or so up there before heading back to Leeds General Infirmary for the night with Jay.

Jaygo recieved a gift posted all the way from the States today – it created a MASSIVE grin on his noggin. So nice to see.

There’s a couple more photos of the moment on my flickr site

Had an appointment with the opthamologist this morning and they gave me a souvenir photo of the back of Jaygo’s eyes.

Lego, originally uploaded by DragonDrop.

Super nice to see him doing something he enjoys doing.

Eirene just sent me this pic of our boy Jay. He’s at the canteen at York Hospital eating curry and chips.

Quick test blog using the wordpress android app on my new phone (Google nexus s)

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This was a test photo I took in the shop.

Stunning phone so far. Superbly designed. Only slight gripe is that its has a weak wifi reception. Looks like a known problem and done on purpose to extend the battery life apparently. Can still pick up wifi no worries though.

Super fast. Super screen. Super smooth. Lovely looking design and a the creme de la creme of Google goodness.

Sophie (aged four and eleven twelfths) just made made this using a google chrome app called Harmony.

We think it’s rather splendid. The artist goes on to say “Yes. I made it by my own but my brother helped me”

Ha! Brilliant! There’s another guy called Matt Watson. That’s exactly the same name as mine. He runs a fishing show – not just any old fishing show but The Ultimate Fishing Show with Matt Watson. I’ve now seen a few episodes and it rocks. Matt – if you do look at this site as a result of the email I’ve just sent, I just want to say a big hello, and I’m loving your work! Would you like an Adventure T-Shirt?