I’m a shark!

Full pic:

I had to get a new smart watch and the one I got has a thing that tells you what your sleep animal is.  Apparently, mine is a shark.

Bearded Theory in brief:

Getting a pre-pitched tent was a great idea.  Definitely doing it again.  I need to get a trolly to get me stuff (lager) from the taxi to the camp site.  I’ve seen one that will fit in my backpack for about £8.

The craft stuff we made went down well and it was a good display:

 

I didn’t take my stuff home, because it rained on and off which ruined them.  I did take home a rose though:

(The person who made them designed them for people to take.)  Underneath the rose is my peg:

These are a BT tradition.

Music:

The four headliners were very good.  English Teacher were probably the worse, they really weren’t ready for a headline slot.  Paul Heaton with Rianne Downey were just as good as the first time I saw them.  Iggy Pop was amazing, though I really didn’t need to see him topless.  That mans body has not aged well at all.  The Manic Street Preachers were a fantastic finale.

Other highlights:

Billy Nomates was as good as I thought she’d be.  I saw far too little of The Bug Club (I was really hungry, in my defence).  The Lottery Winners were on top form.  At the end of their set (as strange and hilarious as ever), Thom said they will headline the festival in the next five years and it wouldn’t surprise me.  Nuala was a new to me act I saw as part of the Beans on Toast takeover of one stage and she managed to deal with a guitar that kept going out of tune to get us singing along with her to songs we hadn’t heard before.  Independent Country were a brilliant band, doing country covers of indie songs.  Slight downer as I tried She Drew the Gun and found I wasn’t a fan (there’s something about the singers voice that grated on me).  Mark Thomas was absolutely hilarious.

My musical highlight, however, was Muireann Bradley.  I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned her before, but it’s quite a remarkable story.  Her father is a session musician, guitarist, and she decided she wanted to learn guitar as well.  Then, she got into combat sports and had to stop the guitar due to a lack of time.  During lockdown, she dove into her dads blues collectionand was inspired to take up the guitar again.  She posted a video on YouTube of her performing a cover and a producer got in touch saying he wanted to make an album with her.  So, at 15 she released an album of covers called I Kept These Old Blues.  She’s since signed to Decca and the album has been remastered and re-released.  If you’re a fan of blues music, particularly finger picking style, I highly recommend it.  Her set was fantastic, not just because of her talent, but because she gave a brief history of each song she sang.

Non musical highlight was the screening of Grease on the Sunday night.  It was the best atmosphere I’ve ever been at to watch a film, probably because everyone was at some stage of intoxication.

Then I missed my train home because of the scheduling of the shuttle buses.  Thankfully, my tickets weren’t checked.

What else?

I’m getting vamped on Monday.  Probably just to check my blood sugar level, make sure that I’m still borderline pre diabetic at best.

I got a new slow cooker.  I tried making coq au vin on Sunday.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying attention and got white wine instead of red.  Fortunately, coq au vin blanc is a thing and it turned out to be very tasty.

I’ll leave you with these pics:

Will