This Friday, Ben “What’s your beef” Osmond, a DragonDrop Adventure Shirt and a bunch of intrepid adventureres and sets off for the Sahara. He’s raising funds for a very worthy cause. In his own words..

“I am taking part in the Sue Ryder Sahara Trek, which consists of 100km trek through the desert! This is something my father would never have been able to achieve even before he was diagnosed with cancer. I am aiming to train as hard as i can, fundraise as hard as i can and complete this challenge to the best of my ability in my dads memory. The money raised will be going to Sue Ryder Manorlands Hospice where my dad was so brilliantly looked after during his illness. 

The people of Manorlands deserve all the credit for the help and assistance they give to people in need of Palliative care.

I love you and miss you everyday Dad. This is for you.”

Hats off to you Ben – well – perhaps keep your hat on, in the interests of desert health and safety,  but you get the picture. Good luck!

If you’re even remotely moved by this, I’d implore you to stick your hand in your virtual pocket and bung him a couple of quid. Here’s his online sponsorship form»

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.

The fringe, as well as the International Festival itself is bristling with brilliance this year. Having been on the committee for the fringe I saw its budding ideas blossom and bloom before my very eyes. I had to back out of involvement (due to the Jaygo / hospital saga around the peak planning time) but I’m very pleased to see that it’s going great guns.  A huge cross range of things to do in and around town over the next couple of weeks.

Here’s a copy paste from an email thread I’m on the circulation of from the fringe main man, the one and only Graham Chalmers;

“The next 7 days are going to be a helluva week with the excellent Poems, Prose and Pints back in action at the Tap n Spile on Wednesday, Edwyn Collins of Orange Juice at 108 Fine Art gallery on Friday (the same night as amazing London rock band Teeth of the Sea play Katana in a 3D extravanganze thanks to Rod) and then a triple whammy next Saturday with a quintet from the Scottish Philharmonic at 108 Fine Art, Melody Maker music critic Chris Welch at Harrogate Theatre circle bar and the Across the Town: Hidden Harrogate psychogeographic ‘happening’ the same evening.
..Toyah at Harrogate Theatre on Friday and the highly sophisticated but quite sexy Claire Martin and Sir Richard Rodney Bennett at the same venue next Sunday.”

- – -

Click here for more info – the Fringe webpage»

World Book Night, originally uploaded by DragonDrop.

I’ve been selected to be ‘a giver’ on World Book Night, which is today. If you’d like a copy – I’ve got 48 to give away. As I’m solo-dad this weekend, I’m beached at DragonDrop Centraal (near the back of ASDA, Harrogate) – gotta pop out a couple of times, but only to drop off / pick my Sophie Pi up from a party. Contact me with a way I can contact you if you’re in town today / this evening / fancy grabbing a freebee..  I may even throw in a cup of tea/coffee/glass of wine into the mix!

The book I’m giving is a gem of a read : “A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Mistery. A Booker Prize shortlistee in 1996, this book shows true mastery of wordsmithery. It transported me to a different time and place and left me thinking about it for weeks after – it’s still fairly fresh in my mind after nearly 2 years since I read it.  See the bottom paragraph of my original review blog here, written just after I’d read it.

Each book has a unique number. Readers can become members of the World Book Night website and track the journey of their book and take part in a conversation with subsequent readers.

“World Book Night is a celebration of great writing and the power of books and the pleaure of reading…. be part of the reading revolution” (taken from the back jacket)

These a very cool if not utterly uncool in a sad geek way (a stigma I’ve learned to live with). I don’t care. I want one. If I wear it all day something worthwhile is bound to happens – where upon I’ll hit a button and it saves the last 30 seconds. The (so far) ultimate avoidance of the “I wish I’d caught that on camera” moment. Bluetooth connection to my android phone allows me to remote control it, view it, share the video and images it records straight away here on Dragondrop, flickr, facebook, et al.  It can all be controled from a handy app on my Android phone. No iPhone users – they DON’T have an app for that.

It also works like a standard bluetooth headset so you can make calls hands free. I think I know what I want for Christmas now.. more info : http://www.looxcie.com/

Last week we attended the launch of the Harrogate Fringe Festival. After a general intro from the Harrogate Internation Festival (proper) Director, Graham Chalmers of Gig Scene was introduced. He gushed the passion, like only he can,  about how good this thing could really be. There’s so much creativity in this town and so much creative appreciation of off mainstream stuff that – the feeling seems to be – it really could be the start of something quite special.

There’ll be the widest of sub spectrum acts ‘flown in’ , playing at a host of some old – some new Harrogate venues. A secret venue for instance and “The Harrogate Club” which I’d never heard of but someone told me it’s a lovely Victorian chamber down Victoria Avenue.

There’s a day of more home grown acts – mainly Harrogate and Leeds based bands (including an after party by us lot (FIRE) ‘v’ Bottom of the Bottle. whilst the North Yorkshire Hardcode Punk lot make some noise in Crabtrees ) This is billed as “Festival Fringe Crawl Indie Rock Day” but I much prefer the title “Harrogate Fringe Fringe”.

As it’s the first year, its a bit ‘suck it and see’ but the organisers don’t seem to have used that as an excuse in any way for falling short.   The Fringe highlight for me would probably be Robin Williamson (Incredible String Band) and local boy Karl Culley – both geniuses in their own right. A brilliant pairing who ever came up with that idea. Field Music (they don’t sound like they’re from Sunderland but they are) who this time last week I’d never heard of, who since have featured heavily on my spotify playlist – quite refreshing stuff. The Rothko v Stockhausen guy Mark Stubbs will be doing some kind of lecture by the look of things – could be interesting. As a  package, it’s not  (I’m glad to report) billable as  ’something for everyone’ as that often means ‘something quite mainstream’  - which this seems proudly not, I’m glad to report.

The thing about a good fringe festivals is, it’s not necessarily the acts you ear mark to see before hand that leave the lasting memories but the magical unexpected moments you stumble across that make them special. This fringe looks like it’s got stacks of ammo in the unexpected department.

Harrogate Fringe line up (or ‘highlights’ )

An evening with Bob Harris, Jackson-Webber & Special guest
July 14 Harrogate Theatre

Robin Williamson (ex Incredible String Band) plus Karl Culley
July 15 St Peter’s Church

Poems, Prose & Pints, Creative Writing Workshop & Guest Writer
July 17 & 21 - The Harrogate Club

Haiku Workshop
(Run by Eirene! contact us for details)  - July 17th –  Hornbeam Park

Codebreakers The Story of Enigma
July 17 Harrogate Theatre

Showstopper! The improvised Musical
July 17 Harrogate Theatre

RedHouse presents Music To My Eyes: A Rock n Roll exhibition
July 23 – 25 108 Fine Art Gallery, Crown Place

Kamaca’s Tribute to Gershwin
July 23 Harrogate Theatre

Alex Wilson Salsa Con Soul
July 23 Royal Hall

Fear of Music with David Stubbs of The Wire/Uncut magazines.
July 24 The Harrogate Club

John Otway: Making Success Out of Failure & Chris Simpson of Magna Carta reads Fields of Eden
July 25 The Harrogate Club

Alrnias: Anthropology/art music with Phil Legard.
July 25 Secret Harrogate Location

Esoteric Electronica with Primate Engineer.
July 28 The Harrogate Club

An Evening with Field Music
July 29 Harrogate Theatre

Ralph McTell
July 31 Harrogate Theatre

Festival Fringe Crawl Indie Rock Day
July 31 Monteys / Blues Bar / Rehab / Crabtrees / St Peter‘s Church

Bookings

As soon as I know about booking info, I’ll post it up here – at the moment, unless someone cares to correct me in the comments, there’s no news. Stay tuned!