Zombie wickerman

We went to the Big Chill at the weekend. I've been at least five or six times over the years but never to the current venue - Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire. It's grown a lot since I last went. There's capacity for 35,000 people these days and it never used to be more than 5,000 or 6,000 as far as I can recall. I worried that this might be a bad thing but it's not. The variety and vibrance of a festival that big is always going to be more interesting and they've been going for such a long time now that the organisation is pretty much perfect. We barely had to queue all weekend, everything happened when it was supposed to, getting in and out was incredibly easy... all the little incidental things that can erode your patience and start making a difference to the amount you enjoy a festival were very well taken care of. The kids had a great time and, thanks to a free pass on Saturday night from my saintly and awe-inspiring wife, so did I. I'm paying for it now a bit but that kind of comes with the territory. At least I haven't got Monday morning in the office to worry about.

This is a picture of the enormous zombie wickerman effigy that was burned on Sunday night, after we'd gone home. There was a zombie theme this year, which we didn't know about and which very nearly derailed the whole thing as it freaked out the kids to the extent that they both wanted to come home pretty much straight away. But hey - that was never going to happen.