End of the Road 2011

Once again we have been to the fine EOTR festival and I think it was the best ever! The capacity was increased this year, but we also had a new Woods Stage in a big enough area to accommodate everybody. The idea was to relieve the squeeze in the Garden stage area and I think it worked well. We were extremely lucky with the weather which helps keep the atmosphere cheerful. There was a beer festival running throughout the weekend with some lovely local ales on offer. Our favourite was the Entire Stout from Salisburys Hopback Brewery, and I also enjoyed the Gold Spice ale from Sixpenny Handley brewery, right on the festivals doorstep. The food stalls didn’t disappoint - may I recommend the Curry Shed for a range of veggie curries and the Tibetan Kitchen for a lovely rich beef stew with stuffed dumplings.

The most important ingredient to the weekend was obviously the music. Highlights for us were Lykki Li, tUnEyArDs, ‘Allo Darlin’ and Laura Marling. Brakes once again asserted their ground as my favourite live act ever. We have now seen them 6 times and it is always brilliant. The new comedy area was also great – a small stage nestled in a sloped area of the woods. The midnight Storytellers Club and Robin Ince’s Book Club were really busy this year. Less intimate experience but still hugely enjoyable. Anything that persuades M to stay up until 2am on two nights running must be special!

On the craft front their were many more makers stalls this year and I bought a fine set of jewellery from zincwhite.com made from recycled reject colour pencils from the Derwent factory. Truly original and very pretty. Keep and Share were also there offering lessons and an opportunity to make a ribbon scarf for a community project. The book stalls were great too, and like last year I managed to bag a couple of graphic novels at knock down prices. I haven’t even got onto talking about the art and library in the woods…..

Rather than posting a load of photos on the blog itself, click here to see my facebook photo album of the weekend.

I have been absent from the blogosphere for the summer as I have been recovering from a big op in May. Happy to say that all is well and I am due to start a phased return to work next week. I feel more well than I have done in years. You will be glad to hear that I have not wasted my summer sick leave and have been busy on the craft. A lot of what I have been doing are presents for Christmas and birthdays, so I won’t be posting them until after they reach their recipients. Knitting-wise, I made a rather fetching pair of ‘Circle Socks’ for my mum from Noro Sock Yarn, and a Sun Ray tablecloth for Christmas. I used Regia sock yarn as it is machine washable and would come up bigger than lace weight crochet yarn.

I have also found a new fondness for making cards. I am always envious of designers and artists who manage to have an instantly recognisable style, and for the first time, I feel that I have created a range that has a definite individual style. Obviously I am not the first to draw with a scalpel (Rob Ryan has brought this technique to the fore), but I do think they look a bit different to anything I have seen before. See what you think.

Continuing on the art and craft theme, I had a lovely day with my mother-in-law at Walford Mill in Wimborne. As I have said in previous posts we are aiming to furnish the house with original art pieces, and have a new addition to our collection by a very talented artist called Anya Keeley. She uses antique and found objects as the base, and creates scenes with recycled vintage papers outlined with silver soldering. I love the dreamy quality of our sculpture as "Softly the Night is Sleeping”. This isn’t the best quality picture, but you get the idea.

On the vintage/furnishing front, we continue to visit the Bridport Vintage Market each month, and found ourselves a lovely 1960s coffee table with black angled legs and a walnut veneer top.

The Royal Wedding

The big day finally came and went, and I think we all had a jolly good time! As you know if you have been following his blog, I have spent the past month or so knitting the royal family and finally got them finished in time for the big day! We went to our friends for a party to mark the occasion - big thanks to Ben and Veronica for a great party, complete with wedding cake, favours and commemorative mugs! I had an excellent excuse to wear my wedding dress again, and no homage to Kate would be complete without a mock-up of THE ring – here are a few photos to keep you entertained.

This has been just one in a string of good weekends recently, and one notable one was international independent record store day. We got up early to head to Bridport Music, where Billy Bragg played a few songs in store for us! It was a pretty surreal experience, having been a fan since my teens, to be stood at the front of a small shop next to Billy’s son, having the man himself singing some of my favourite songs. I did my bit for the record store by buying a couple of albums I’ve been after for a while.

We then headed back to Dorchester for a debate on voting reform, where by coincidence Billy Bragg was also speaking. Vote YES for AV!!!!

Speaking again of supporting local independent stores, I have been filled with child-like glee since the opening of The Gilded Teapot in Dorchester. Having been brought up with a Mum who was a big drinker of various teas I have long been a fan. It has been too long that we have been without a specialist shop such as this. We had a Whittard’s for a while, but I’m sure anyone who has shopped at a real teashop knows that the big chains don’t really give you an idea of what real tea is about. I seem to be on a mission to try the whole selection of teas and coffees. Given there are close to 100 lines it may take me a while! My current favourites are a black tea flavoured with belgian chocolate truffle (need I go on?) and Sencha Sekura, a green tea with rose petals and cherry. I have also treated myself to this beautiful ‘We Love Kaoru’ teacup and saucer from the same shop. [Please excuse the white balance on these photos – I’m too lazy to edit them at the moment]. I make no apology for the blatent advertising, and to make it clear I am not affiliated with the store in any way, but the more of you I get to shop there, the higher the chance they will succeed and stay so that I can shop there too!!

End of the Road Festival 2010

Having spent the past four days and three nights in a field, I am surprisingly chipper today. Reason? We have been to the lovely EOTR festival for it's 5th anniversary year. We can now be considered veterans of the festival, having been every year except the first. We love it, and this year did not disappoint at all. It started as a very small indie festival at Larmer Tree Gardens in North Dorset (described by one security man yesterday as a festival where you knew practically everyone by name), to a small indie festival at Larmer Tree Gardens in North Dorset. Long may it remain this way. I was a little concerned that it felt bigger and busier this year, and they had day ticketers for the first time, backtracking on a previous conscious ideal to create a community atmosphere where the crowd is the same over the duration. It was fine though, but I beg you - no bigger please!

The first task in getting anywhere these days, is shipping the cats off to the cattery (yes, they are now cats as of this week and kittens no longer). They usually are quite good at getting straight into the boxes of their own accord when you set them down, unlike our old cat that required two of us to push her in under protest. Tilly missed the point this time though:

The second stumbling block is the tent assembly. M and I are usually quite good at putting up the tent, and I'm ashamed to say we have suffered from 'bring a spare house' syndrome with a 5 person tent complete with doormat. This year we had a little 2 person number which was surprisingly spacious. The bringing of a new tent, which neither of us had ever tried putting up before caused slight friction, but plenty short of wanting to do each other bodily mischief.

Notes to self for next year:

Don't take any food other than variety packet of cereal. You won't eat it.
The hamper is over the top for a little tent.
Forget the little chairs too. They're good, but you can't be arsed to carry them all day. So don't.
Why did you think you needed your whole purse for the festival? No-one needs store cards in a field and it doesn't fit in your pocket.

This year, the site opened on Thursday rather than the first day of the festival, Friday. We thought we'd go along to save time and the rush on Friday. EOTR is well known for secret gigs and unadvertised late editions, and this year we were in for a huge surprise. There were only a couple of hundred of us there, if that, when Willy Mason was on!! I don't know how they swung it, but I'm glad they did. He didn't pander to expectations and play his biggest hit 'Oxygen', but I admired him for that. It was a great set with a beautiful rendition of 'Where the Humans Eat'.

This was followed up with a set by Isabel Campbell (Belle & Sebastian) and Mark Lanegan (Queens of the Stone Age) which went down very well in the tent. Meursault, 'Allo Darlin' and Darren Hayman (Hefner) completed the line up. The lovely Somerset Cider Bus was again onsite keeping us warm with mulled cider and an optional shot of brandy. It's something we look forward to all year! The food on site is all good quality stuff and well presented. We particularly looked forward to the Goan Fish Curry luxury kedgeree for breakfast every morning. Here is the Tea Stop converted London Bus, with tea in homely style complete with pot, and dainty cups & saucers. I believe that most the stalls make an appearance at Glasto too.

Even Jesus was there.

I was a little concerned by this sign. Did they realise the valuables weren't meant as donations? They also seemed to be giving away free lost luggage which seemed a little harsh on the bereft owners.

Political satire featured a small part. Here was the door to the toilets (which were notably not horrible).

There are four main stages, and here is the lovely Cate Le Bon (no relation to Simon) on the Garden Stage.

The surrounding permanent structures here are lovely.

There are a few bars all serving ale, including the specially brewed Shephard Neame EOTR Ale, which was pleasant enough. They had a few special ales each day, my favourite being the dubiously named Cobble Wobble. With a 5p deposit on each pint 'glass', a small army of minature glass collectors saw a pocket money oppertunity.

Is this a recipe for disaster? Drinking and knitting would surely lead to dropped stitches - but luckily for me I am proud to say the pattern was maintained throughout the festival. Hoorah for me!

There were quite a few arty crafty types around the place. A few people drawing/painting and I did have company on the knitting front. Two fellow knitters were at work during the comedy sets on Sunday, but my jumper was getting heavier by the end of the weekend, and having dismantled the tent and packed the car I didn't want to lug it around all day and night. The two that did were predictably ribbed (appropriate for knitters, huh?) by the entertainment.

Proof, people, that socks and shoes are cool.

M looked happy as ever. In his defence, he was sat next to a woman who annoyed the crap out of him all afternoon talking about drinking ad nauseum and something about her child talking jibberish being evidence of ghosts. If you know him, you'd understand how he'd react to that. There was a 'Healing Retreat' that we stayed well clear of. I have previous when it comes to arguing with people selling magnets for health benefits and M's BP starts to visibly rise at the sight of anything to do with alternative therapy. I'm a bit more open minded, but have my limits too.

This was Fridays headliner Modest Mouse at work. Honest. We left the set early in order to attend the Comedy Storytellers' club, compered by Sarah Bennetto. A mix of short stand-up sets and a story competition. This year it was "A rock star encounter in 5 words". Tough challenge but most people had a go (we obviously didn't win). With Edwyn Collins playing 'Rip it up' in the background, followed by The New Pornographers, a good time was had.

Continuing the now entrenched tradition, the 'Enchanted Forest' was decorated with thousands of fairy lights. The forest is curated by an artist and is scattered with various art installations.

Included is a small living room stage with piano, usually unoccupied for passers-by to have a go, but occasionally they stage the aforementioned secret gigs. Here we saw Norwegian 'Moddi' play tracks from his new record. He's not cracked the UK yet, but is a hot tip for the future. Judging by previous years, I think we may hear more from him. Last year the festival was opened by a band we'd never heard of before called Mumford & Sons. Every year we have seen acts in close quarters that have gone on to be relatively big on the indie, and sometimes popular music scene. I'm thinking particularly of Laura Marling, Seasick Steve, Brakes, British Sea Power, Broken Family Band...

There is always a library in the forest, and this year the idea was developed to allow people to actually check-out the books until next year with the librarian.

I was glad to see they know their target audience well.

Never to miss a knitting oppertunity. here I am in the library Friday waiting for the first band to start. A lady stopped to ask if she could have a picture of M and I. Apparently, with M reading and me knitting, we looked like 'archetypical nerds'. M was very proud of this. See how knitting a jumper doubles as a modesty-preserver when sat in a very short dress?

Within the library was an interactive art installation, inviting us all to contribute to a continuous scroll on the typewriters. The resulting material would then be edited and performed on Sunday.

They had an author Q&A session every morning before the music started, as advertised here in a giant book.

Last year we had a living room and sofa constructed from turf. Here's a sample of this year's art.

This telephone box wound up being pasted with post-it's by the end of the weekend.

No enchanted forest is complete without a games area. This was again formalised this year with an official tournament on Sunday. In addition to this area there was Scrabble Sunday, Croquet, Viking chess and the Ringo Bingo music quiz. Here we had table tennis, table football, giant cards, giant Jenga, ten-pin bowling and Connect 4.

I'm not going to list all the bands we saw but here are the highlights.

Brakes - we see them every year and we love them. I've seen them 5 times and it has always been brilliant.
Low Anthem - beautiful
Woodpigeon - ditto
Three Trapped Tigers - 'heroic' drumming (M's words)
Daredevil Christopher Wright - we like
Charlie Parr - always excellent
Caribou - I love them. M thinks they are a poor man's LCD soundsystem. Harsh.
Philip Selway (Radiohead) - buy his album.
Ben Ottowell (Gomez) - great set, complete with interpretive dancing by his 4 young sons
Adam Green (Moldy Peaches) - high energy caberet on acid. V fun set. Donned a glittery top from one festival-goer and a fake tash from another. Crowd surfing+++
Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley came back for a DJ set after last years success.

The comedy included half hour segments by Russell Howard, the brilliant Tom Bell and Robin Ince & Michael Legge doing their Righteous Anger: Pointless Ire act fresh from Edinburgh.

Overall, if you've never been, it's worth going next year. I'd rather you didn't though, there are enough of us there each year already!