car park chaos follows a rousing night with the Levellers

More rain, and for the first time we hear reports of the car parks, they are a mud bath, people are packing up early, and some are heading home. we do neither, we must be slightly mad to happily go on watching bands, and drinking beer in these conditions. For a moment I wonder why I'm putting up with this, but after coffee and a bacon filled croissant my mood lightens.

The Fabulous Good Time Party Boys are the perfect tonic, in The big Top it's Christmas there's trees and baubles, tinsel, Christmas hats, presents and crackers and some great tunes, the highlights being 'Purple Haze' where they are joined on stage by the Levs and Jon Sevink sets fire to his fiddle, they finish with a rousing 'We Are The Champions' and everything is all right with the world.

Bella Hardy follows with her gentle award winning folk, and the rain eases and then stops. Sheelanagig are lively folk and the beers are flowing. Dennis Hoppers Choppers on the other hand are hard work, heavy slabs of mood, spread from the stage and it's actually difficult not to feel low from it. I pity the poor post drop freak taking shelter it would have blown their minds.

I've never seen Frank Turner before and from the first lines of 'I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous' his lyrics instantly grab me, and the music is incredibly tight from his backing band which includes Chris T-T on keyboards. He's over half way through his set before this political tagged singer does a political number. The whole set is a joy and I rapidly become a fan. All of the tracks are stand out, the lyrics wry and clever but stand out tune for me has to be 'Long Live The Queen' with all proceeds from this latest release going to Breast Cancer Research. Seeing Frank Turner was my highlight of the day, he's a must see act at any festival.

I leave the tent and slide over to the main arena to see a little Fishbone, our friends feel ill and have departed as has one of our teenage charges, and even the guy at the jerk venison stall is feeling ill, feeling in need of some comfort shopping, and some hot food. Our daughter having lost her pal, tags along with us and we find The Bimble Inn surrounded by dry grass, we sit outside eating paninis and Felicity Groom's music and the escape from the mud revives our spirits.

Then Hobo Jones & The Junkyard Dogs plaster grins over our faces, and we leave humming 'Portaloo' to the tune of Abba's Waterloo, after a storming set, the rain returns but we ignore it now, bolstered by 'Gordon Is A Moron' and 'Braindead Ball' keep us upbeat until we reach Flogging Molly who are in terrific jig about form.

It only follows for the Levellers to conclude the evening, with a slightly muted (soundwise) performance, which huddles the crowd closer to the black robot beast infested main stage. The rain stops, although the lip of the roof still unleashes masses of water upon an unsuspecting crowd. The Levs pack in a fair number of new upbeat tunes, alongside classic hits. How they manage to keep the rain at bay through out their set is impressive. The crowd still stretches the length of the field from front of stage to the flaming row of lamp posts.

It only remains for the headliners to play at Mad Planet, Hobo Jones & The Junkyard Dogs, who appear to have been everywhere this weekend return to play in front of atightly knit crowd who sing along in the rain to 'Fat Bottomed Girls', 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go', and their usual tunes, they throw in a cover I've not heard before and then we head back to the tent to chat and give the rain a hard Paddington Bear Stare.

We awoke to yet more rain, slowly packing up our stuff, walking it to the car, then we took down the tent. Did a bit of womble salvage in the stuff people had left behind, watched one of those pop up tents sail across the campsite, bumping into the still clean loos. We took a last look at the weird and wonderful site art around us and wandered up to the car.



Where I got a great arm and legs work out pushing out other people's cars and getting our stuck in some deep wellie high mud. So we waited for a nice tractor to drag us out and got funny looks from other folk on the road all the way home.

Considering the weather we all really enjoyed this trouble free festival, I do wonder if us festival goers are a bit mental. No doubt about it, we'll all be back for more next year, there's something special about this festival whatever the weather.

A big thanks to all those behind the scenes who make this festival so good, to all those stewards who sat through the driving rain on the platform beside us and to the organisers who set up such a lovely eye catching festival and book all those entertaining acts, despite of the weather it's a highlight of the festival calendar.

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