Salsa tunes, wasps, and rock karaoke at Standon's final day

Sunday was a much brighter sunnier day and after I had washed the majority of Pink Panther face paint out of my hair and face, I ventured out and noticed a lot of people coming back from the swimming pool looking very refreshed.

I was dragged into a long queue for coffee, which I was not impressed with because I didn't want one myself, and we had to wait about 15 minutes until my boyfriend got served. To be fair, last year my only complaint with the festival was the lack of food choices on site and this year they really had upped the game with a good few choices of food, and added extras like a traditional ice cream stall, and an old-fashioned cake tent.

I settled down in The Twisted Licks Stage tent at 1pm to catch Reading electro act, Mr. Fogg. Anyone playing at this time of day seemed to have a bit of a graveyard shift because the problem with the festival activities going on until 6am is that it meant there was not a lot of activity at this time of day, excluding the early risers and families with kids.

However once Mr Fogg and his accompanying 3-piece band began playing, the tent started to fill up, as people heard the sounds and drifted in. Mr Fogg started off with quite a gentle set of twinkly sounds joined with the beautiful fragility of his voice, and gradually gained momentum incorporating bigger sounds and bass-filled drum beats. Although the act is called Mr Fogg, his whole band was fantastic and it was great to see that they were really enjoying playing there, as they injected passion into the tracks. His latest release, 'Stung' especially got the crowd going.

I'm going to take this moment to cheesily point out that the only main problem with the festival was people literally getting stung! For some reason the weekend was plagued by wasps in the arena and around the tents and as well as my friend getting stung at one point, it was amusing to walk through the crowd and hear the yelps every now and again or seeing people manically waving their arms running in circles!

I visited The Gabberdashery next, which is a boutique of accessories and clothes, run by Gabby Young who was due to perform that day. I wanted to get my face painted, as I had seen some amazing and beautiful artwork on people's faces around the festival site.

I was informed that the make-up artist was currently away preparing Gabby for her up-coming performance and would be back later so I went to the main stage and settled down with the hordes of people that had gathered to watch the flamboyant Gabby Young and Other Animals.

The group were given huge accolade by the presenter who explained that the flame-haired beauty was doing a huge festival tour this summer and has been followed around by the likes of national papers.

Admittedly when she started, I realised the photo pit was a lot more crowded than it had been so far at the festival. Gabby entered the stage with a flowing, country and western style dress with a tight corset top and a dome shaped bottom of layers. Her bright red hair was adorned with colourful jewellery and she had wispy lines around her eyes; visually she was enchanting. Hearing Gabby speak, she comes across as very cutesy and maybe even slightly child-like but the rich, traditional styled vocals that emanate out of her are definitely something amazing, even if she is not to your taste.

The Other Animals was a great brass band that played out loud brassy sounds and aided her with eclectic backing vocals. Gabby's music is very hard to describe – some of her songs had an air to them as if they were being sung by the character Nancy in Oliver!, whereas others had tinges of opera and big band music, as well as having 50's and 40's inspired tunes. With the aid of her band, she brought a huge, 'fairy-tale' like performance to the stage and had a lot of the crowd, especially children, whimsically dancing along in the boiling sun.

After her performance a lot of people headed up to The Dog Show in front of The Tree Bar. It was too crowded to get a real look in but I had noticed a lot of lovely little mutts at the festival, and this was obviously the reason why. Later on I saw a couple of dogs with prize-winning rosettes and proud owners, which I felt added to the whole family feel of the event.

I caught the Rockaoke next, which had been taking place at various points in the last few days in the Crooked House tent. It was basically karaoke with a live rock band accompanying the singer and it was such good fun! The whole audience in the rammed tent joined in with the rock and indie classics, such as Blur’s Parklife and it’s very hard to sound bad with a rock band supporting you; I actually heard a few people say it was their favourite thing of the weekend. The band accompanying the singers was clearly very talented.

I managed to get my face painted at the Gabberdashery as the make-up artist had returned and it was amazingly cheap as well as being stunningly beautiful.

The Heritage Arts Company were in charge of the whole murder mystery adventure that weekend and every now and again I was reminded that people had involved themselves in this interactive murder mystery quest. For example, at one point I noticed a queue of people with 'Bingham banknotes' queuing outside an old style phone box, which a policeman then popped out off and led them inside one by one to reveal clues!

The Phenomenal Handclap Band were on the main stage next and although I had seen them once already this summer, their playful melodies and lyrics made this performance much better than at Wireless Festival 2010 and the audience seemed much more suited, clapping along to the beats and relaxing in front of the main stage to the tunes.

I was off to grab some food before the evening's acts and to my slight disappointment I realised that most of the food stores had closed or run out of specific meals. The Mexican place was actually counting how many people were in the queue to ensure they could meet that demand and a friend had to wait 15 minutes even when they got to the front of the queue for pasta.
Standon Calling has only started to really boom in popularity in recent years and I have full confidence that this is one of the things that will be easily sorted out as the guys get to know the exact facts and figures of what they are expecting.

After retiring to the painting alcove and making a sufficient amount of mess on pieces of cardboard to add to the already growing collage of artwork, I grabbed a spot in front of the main stage for the headlining act Buena Vista Social Club, and wow what can I say?

Before they came onstage a very tipsy Alex Trenchard came on to a roaring crowd and thanked everybody for making his festival what it is today, ten years on, and introduced the headline act. It was a really touching moment and I can safely say he has a huge fan base!

The vibrant band came onstage and created the best salsa tunes that I have ever heard. Again, it may not be to everyone's taste but it was clear that we were hearing the highest quality in Latino music possible, as the mature band took to the stage and effortlessly played Latino sounds into the night sky. They were joined onstage by Omara Portuondo, 70 years old, and an original member of the Buena Vista Club in Havana. It was absolutely spectacular to see a woman of that age moving about so gracefully in her vibrant orange dress and creating the most beautiful sounds vocally.

The band really got the crowd going as they completely owned their instruments and showed that the oldies do it best! They continuously spoke Spanish to the crowd apart from when the lead singer would look at Omara and say "sexxxxy!" which he did on quite a few occasions to the delight of the crowd!

I listened to the end of the performance sitting at The Tree Bar and looking down at the lights from the main stage, and as I realised it was nearly the end of Standon Calling 2010, I felt slightly sad but also oddly proud at just how far the festival has come in a year, in terms of activities and originality, without losing its charm.

Could it be the best place on Earth? Possibly. Will I be back next year? Without a doubt.

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