The Great Cambridge Folk Festival Trip - part 2

FRIDAY

Quite a mellow start to the day with breakfast at Cowbelles Chuck Wagon, a steak and sawdust type affair (note: nice gets big brownie points for very decent and FRESH cheese baguettes). Returning to the tent afterwards, I noticed a label had been placed on our tent. This was a nomination for being the loudest snorers on site. I'm quite proud of that as you can imagine though to be honest I'm not sure if anyone for certain whether the culprit was Mrs D or myself since both of us are prime candidates.


Snoring for Cambridge

Heading off for to the main fest site, we did the usual festival things. Eat, shop, lie around in drying mud and smoke the occasional festival green gear.

Mmmmm, nice veggie Indian grub. That'll keep the folkies happier than the thought of hoofing down that big wad of dead animal I'm cruisin' on.


These aren't just clouds. These are Marks and Spencer's symbols of the festival weather we were granted; good mixture of half rain, half cloud cloud, half sun. Half baked metaphor too.


Corie and Goose chilling in the sunshine.

The main stage at dusk

The great Cambridge Folk Festival Trip - part 1

Here are some of the pictures I captured on my phone-cam of our trip to Cambridge for the annual Folk Festival. Having been rather sceptical at the thought of spending four days in the company of Joan Baez, Nanci Griffith, not to mention a host of Oirish fiddle-di-dee type flute tootlers, it turned out to be a rather pleasant event, made even more pleasanter by the company of Anna, Ian, Goose and Corie - and of course Mrs Daggersdukc ensconced as she was quite often in her famous bright red and blue "spidey-suit". There were ups and downs, but mainly a good time was had by all.

Thursday
Goose and Corie had bought with them a new tent, as yet unassembled. This was going to be a difficult erection (and putting up the tent would prove quite difficult too bearing in mind it was raining heavily and that damn wind was blowing at force five or more.

This tent isn't going to work, is it?



OK, lets calm down and work this out. The bottom half of Mrs DD's spidey suit is on full display and let's face it - she'll need all the superpowers of Spiderman to add the bottom half of the tent to its outer in that wind.



BUT SHE DID IT - along with a lot of help from Ian that is. Up she rises.

Our tent. Looking smug and ready for temporary festival sleeping

Oh boy. What a cliche. So this is is a folk festival right? Surely the odd rainbow must come into it since folksters and hippies were often the same people and actually believe in some of that gaia/peace and love crud (I am of course aware this is a blatant stereotype but indulge me, pur-leeze). And as if to order, at around 2010, a multi-coloured Mother Nature approved portent of general wellbeing and other such bollocks appeared, right above the main stage. You couldn't pay for this sort of thing to happen. How's your Burt's lumbago, Mrs Jones? Not being ironic here - that was a lovely sight to behold.

More dereliction

I honestly don't go out of my way to find these, but while I was scoping out the area around my possible new employer, at the end of the 369 bus route at Thames View, Barking, these Cadiz Court style beauties found me. There were at least three of these flatblocks. I wil come here again, and get a pictorial sense of the sinister and sad at night. I lived in a tower block for two years and loved it. Admittedly, it was at Warmington Tower, a hall of residence block next to Goldsmiths' College in New Cross, a well maintained place, but I was always jealous of anyone who grew up in one. I spent my childhood in a nice but boring terrace house and live in one now. Thought I love having a garden, I always saw myself moving to a tower, especially one of the higher ones in Hackney - Trowbridge Estate or Holly Street would have been just fine.

Is Barking and Dagenham Council having a bad day with their tower blocks? I really can't see what's wrong with these, besides their generaly closed-down-ness. Anyone local, like Yaki Noodles commentator, know the area better than me and can explain what's going on?

Mrs Dukc on holiday

This is weird. I'm on my own for a few days while Mrs DD visits her N. Irish rellies. I feel...obsolete and empty. Is this what being involuntarily single would feel like all the time?

I never, ever EVER thought I'd ever feel like this. I was quite a happy and a reasonably successful singleton and hardly ever a resentful or jealous one. Nearly always with someone when I wanted to be, plenty of friends, driking 3-4 nights a week - OK, so I couldn't do THAT now, I'm 38 now after all.

Being married changes you in ways you could not expect. Missing her and doing things I'd like to do instead, like read, a little luxury I haven't indulged since...well I'll go into my work woes in another entry since I want an early night tonight and the account would take me half an hour to write at least.

Seven years married August 20th. Does the infamouse itch kick in then? Certainly don't feel like it could now. Being married feels comfortable, familiar and safe, but with enough good banter and sparring to stop the boredom from setting in. Mrs D is a supreme debater though she'd probably deny it.

Wandering around London

Spent yesterday having a pleasant meander along the South Bank with Mrs DD and my favourite niece, Stacey. The Turkish festival which was basically a promo for food and holiday companies, was quite a disappointment, mainly because the venue, Bernie Spain Gardens, near the Oxo building was far too diminutive for the purpose. There should really have been more stalls selling food as well since we could only find three or four. We also bought some of the most disgusting yoghurt-based drink ever. It tasted like warm jizz, no kidding. Uck. Needed a diet coke to clear the taste. The only thing viler than this is Maubi fizz, a Caribbean drink. Its only worse because it lies to you and pretends its going to be a sweet little number. Smell - sweet. Initial taste. Matches smell. Pleasant. A tad sweet but no worse than regular Coke, say. Then 15 seconds afterwards, the bitterest and nastiest aftertaste kicks in. Imagine paint stripper and we're probably not too far away. Its a nasty, unpleasant surprise and how anyone can move onto a second bottle of it is far beyond my ken.

We also took in Tate Modern. We thought we might go see the Dali exhibition, but at £11 a ticket, this may be one I do on my own since Stace was only so-so into it and Lynn's would only get my interpretation of his paintings which seeing as my sight's not up to much anyway, may be a little skew-whiff. Not to mention confused.

The "girls" then went on and booked themselves an afternoon's play at the Globe (Othello) the jammy buggers.

Here's a picture I took of the inside of the old Bankside Power Station, home of Tate Modern, using my new Sony Ericsson K800i camera phone. This is by far the bestest phone snapper I've ever come across. My mate has a 3 megapixel Nokia N95 which I'd like to see strutting its stuff. The results of what this wee phone can do are quite amazing and I'm pretty impressed. Its quite a brick and doesn't do some of the things my Samsung D900 does, such as repeat message alerts ad nauseam, a feature I got to like for its self-annoyance factor. Generally I am extremely happy with it though there was a little jam-up yesterday which a restart cleared. Watch this space I suppose.

Subversive snapping on the Victoria Line

There's nothing unusual about the guy in the photo. Victoria Line tube train. Passenger scene.

EXCEPT...while me and the wife and Nicki were on the Victoria Line, heading towards Walthamstow earlier today, he whipped out his camera and without asking us, started snapping. His camera was a little compact digital, not a mobile, and with a proper flash, which was the firing of which drew my attention. Did he assume that because we were being accompanied by a guide dog that "neither" of us could see?

Wrong!

So not to be out-done, I firstly gave him a hard stare while he snapped his second masterpiece, and secondly, managed to get a picture of him on my mobile. I also asked him to "say cheese" and to be fair to the chap, he was smiling in the shot.

But what a cheek for not asking - even if it was only the dog he was after.