Rock the Moor
It's just gone midnight, and I'm sitting in the study at home in the dark with a cup of tea. My entire body aches. I'm not sick. Just very, very tired after an awesome day.
We went to “Rock the Moor” – a local music festival.
After getting up bright and early this morning I made several rounds of bacon rolls for everybody for breakfast, before digging my old shorts and a shirt out, and several pairs of mirrored aviators originally bought for a party a few years ago. My other half filled a bag with food, I grabbed the fold-up camping chairs from the attic, then we threw it all in the car and set off.
The queue into the festival pretty much confirmed my already pretty dim view about a small minority of people we all try to avoid in every-day life. Lazy people pushing into the queue because they think they are somehow more privileged than anybody else – who somehow think that the rules everybody else abides by don't apply to them. Idiots.
At least the queue (of several thousand people) moved quickly – which it turns out was because they stopped checking the contents of bags. When we joined the queue it was perhaps a quarter of a mile long, and snaking out on the local major roads. I'm guessing they didn't want to anger the town police too much.
Anyway.
The weather was unexpectedly brilliant. I looked at the forecast yesterday, and made sure the kids all took fleeces and coats with them – they all sat in a heap at the end of our “area” until darkness fell. When I say “our area”, anybody that has been to a music festival will know exactly what I'm talking about. From the moment you enter the main field, it's kind of a polite re-creation of the Oklahoma land-rush as everybody tries to bag half-decent patches of grass a little distance from the main stage to call “home” for the day ahead.
Looking around, I thought “great – there's a bin just over there, and we've got easy access behind us to the stalls, and rides if the kids get bored – forgetting of course that about another six thousand people would fill that space over the next hour or so. Hmmm.
Music festivals aren't about the venue, or the stalls, or the children's attractions though – they are about the music. In many ways this one was a smaller-scale copy of Rewind, with various acts from the 1980s and 90s taking to the stage every half hour or so throughout the afternoon.
There were all sorts – from the Blow Monkeys, to the Christians, Bucks Fizz (and yes, they did tear the girls skirts off mid-way through “Making Your Mind Up”), Hot Chocolate, Roland Gift (of Fine Young Cannibals), Betty Boo, and more.
The run-away show stealing artist – by quite some distance – was Rick Astley. His supporting band sounded fantastic, he sounded better than ever, and I found myself wondering quite why he was forgotten for so many years. Sure, some may love or hate his music (my other half detests all the old Stock Aitken and Waterman tracks), but even she had to admit he pretty much nailed it, and made everybody else look like total and utter amateurs.
As the night drew in, we hung around to see the act closing the show – Level 42. We waited. We waited some more. We all got bitterly cold. We waited even longer. The audience in front of the main stage started to turn on them. There were obviously technical problems going on, but I kept hoping and hoping that they would make us all forget the long cold wait in the dark when they eventually took to the stage.
They didn't make us forget. They just made us wish we had left an hour before.
We listened to one and half tracks of their set before picking our stuff up and leaving. They were forcing it – trying too hard – and if nothing else, cemented the fact that Rick Astley had just trashed them. We later found out that Rick Astley shouldhave played a much longer set, but had to cut short because Roland Gift over-ran massively. I'm guessing there was no stage management worth speaking of.
Anyway – awesome day out, even if Miss 14 went nuclear mid afternoon and didn't talk to anybody for the rest of the day. She blew all her money on a crazy wig, but then sat with her arms folded in silence for the rest of the day, and took no further part – we studiously ignored her.
Our next festival outing is next month (I think) for another local one. Should be fun.