Formidable festival lady

I went to the St Anne's Well Festival today, a civilised riot of middle-class families pretending they're a bit younger and freer than they really are. You couldn't see the well-manicured lawns for all the tartan picnic rugs and changing mats everywhere. There was cava, there was knitted fruit (I kid you not), there was even a kids' rave tent, complete with nodding DJ and Joe Bananas-style tent next door selling Haribos and sugary drinks by the gallon. The sun shone and the mums and dads kicked back, happy to let the kids run amok for a bit in the hope of a peaceful night later. When this rather formidable lady walked past us I grabbed the camera and shot her without thinking - which is most unlike me actually, I'm usually consumed with self-conscious reserve. I'm glad I got her though - and I'm even more glad she didn't see me getting her.

Another Chill shot

I quite like this one - for me it captures some of the peace of being outside at a festival at night as well as some of the excitement of being inside one of the tents. This is the Coop, although why they didn't just call it the club tent and be done with it I don't know, because that's what it was. This is where the Horsemeat Disco team did their thing after Orbital had rocked the whole festival on Saturday night. HMD are into their good-time, old-school dance music - they played some Michael Jackson and some famous (and some obscure) late-70s disco as well as some more up to date stuff. Most of it worked a treat, although even my Catholic tastes were stretched to the limit by their finale: Down in Africa by Toto. Hmmm. If you ask me there are some guilty pleasures, then there are some tunes that really ought to be allowed to rest in peace. Down in Africa falls into the second category, no doubt about it.

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.