Another Reason To Remember Leicester

Day three. We amble across to Leicester mid afternoon, restricted a little by the Sunday service on the trains. It’s sunny. The mud has baked nicely dry and its firm enough to sit on, as many folk do as Jose Gonzales's band Junip take the main stage for a spot of Spanish guitar laden electro from Sweden.



Indoors it’s instrumental band Errors, a pounding mix of synths, guitar and drums. We’ve seen a few like this recently. They are excellent but instrumental just doesn’t do it for me... they need a vocalist. Wonder if Mark E Smith is still in the building.

We’re back at the main stage just as Low Anthem go totally acoustic and shun all modern forms of amplification. This is fine at your typical spit and sawdust intimate venue but a main stage outdoors... The consequence is that most of quite a large assembled crowd have no idea what’s going on as they perform to solely the first five rows.



Once they plug back in, they have their moments but we want to get front row for Los Campesinos!, so we hurry back indoors, where we hear Gareth sound-checking with a few Mumford swear words, who headline the main stage later.

Sunday was on paper the best day at the festival. Drowned in Sound have sponsored today’s indoor line-up and it’s a pretty good one with LC! followed by Frightened Rabbit and then The Futureheads.

As Los Campesinos! take the stage a quick head count confirms that they are eight strong today. Thankfully there’s lots of room for them on stage this time, plenty of room for Gareth to show off his lack of dancing skills, unlike last time we saw them at the Musician. They turn in a typically perky set, perfect festival music which is perhaps why they pull the biggest indoor crowd of the day.

Their only other previous trip to Leicester, that show at the Musician, is where Gareth tells us they had their merchandise stolen. Now he has another reason to remember Leicester... During the closing ‘Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks’ Gareth gestures to the crowd to clear a space for him to jump into. Then as he leaps he seems to catch a foot on the barrier and goes down head first. If only they’d been someone there to catch him... The band, such professionals, play on regardless and Kim picks up the vocals, meanwhile the crowd peel Gareth off the floor boards and the splinters out of his face. Thankfully he doesn’t seem to be in too bad a shape.



Local Natives are now on the main stage, L approves and they are livelier than I expected. The big news is though that the real ale has run out, so it falls to Frightened Rabbit to lift my rapidly sobering mood. They are another band we've only seen on tiny stages, so also must be revelling in the extra space. They also come now with added polish, a feature of playing so many gigs I suppose.



Scott tells us the rabbits were indeed frightened by a scary flight into Birmingham this morning. They play an oddly short fifty minute set, shorter than LC!

Mumford and Sons’ sound probably suits the outdoor arena. Though I’m not sure how they’ll stretch their limited output to fill a headline slot but there’s plenty of people willing to find out. We linger a while and they sound good, their album transferring to an outdoor arena much better than I thought it would. We have divided loyalties though and nip back indoors to catch the onslaught that is the Futureheads.



Their simple rock sound is a punchy and fitting finale to the weekend.

(Sunday 15th August)

Meet Me By The Knitting Tent

I send L off ahead to the festival as I take in the football. Derby v Cardiff. After the opening day win at Leeds expectation was brought back to earth with the traditional annual defeat to a lower division club in the League Cup. Derby are a consistently inconsistent as ever and lose 2-1. Seems this will be another season like the last one.

L's mission at the festival, should she choose to accept it, is among other things, to report back on X-Factor ‘star’ Diana Vickers... Audience dividing might be a polite way of putting it. She doesn’t watch for long, nor does she linger long in the company of Paul Simon’s offspring Harper either. Though she does brave the front row and the rain for Turin Brakes, who I’m reliably informed were excellent ‘Summer rain, dripping down your face again’, how apt... whatever that song’s about.

I arrive soon after and we rendezvous outside the knitting tent, where else, where I’m told we’re heading inside for a spot of tongue... I mishear, she says Tunng. Which turns out to not be a Norwegian fish dish being sold by one of the many eclectic food sellers but a UK band specialising in something they call folktronica. The hall is packed and it's not even raining, at the moment. Brilliantly quirky.



Then we wade through the mud to the main stage for the hotly tipped Stornoway. Who are more folksy than I expected and pleasant but also rather empty sounding.

Back indoors, Canada’s Caribou take an age to set up but I guess it’s their own stage time they’re wasting. ‘Inventive funk grooves’ my programme says from a chap called Dan Snaith who’s been around in many guises for a decade or more. Seems he can’t make his mind up about his sound and still hasn’t.

That said all the bands indoors are sounding better than those outside in the wind and the rain. Funny that, acoustics are a wonderful thing. Why would any band plump for the outdoor stage?

Then to the continually full Musician Tent from which a pair of female lungs in full flow can be heard. I like a bit of girl rock, so we battle our way inside for the first time and to the front, where we discover Tiffany Page on the far too low stage.



Visibility is still close to nil even near the front but at least you can feel the sweat and the spit off her and her band. I approve but I get tugged away from this rock chick and instead we head to the Rising Stage and a US band called Fool’s Gold who specialise in African rhythms. They deliver a lively and colourful show that appeals to L but they’re not Tiffany...



Nor, back on the main stage, are Brighton’s The Go! Team, who rather appropriately go on a bit, so we head back early to the Musician tent to see who's next to grace the soggy stage left behind by Tiffany Page. We bagsy a good spot in time to see Sunderland’s Frankie And The Heartstrings, who are a kind of 80’s style rock 'n' roll act. We almost make the front row but then get pushed back. It seems you are guaranteed front row only if you have a big camera and maybe a press pass. Note to the Musician, next year can we please have a bigger tent, a higher stage and a press area like they have on the other stages.

Indoors it’s packed for The Fall. I think this is the fourth time I’ve seen The Fall, each one being approximately ten years apart. Perhaps this is the correct spacing for Fall gigs. You either like what Mark E Smith does or you don't. Though sometimes the band are only as good as the musicians Smith assembles around him. Tonight his band are awesome. All they need is a more conventional vocalist... only kidding, that would be missing the point entirely. Despite the blinding musical backdrop the focal point remains Mark E himself, who ambles around the stage bellowing out the lyrics to go with the terrific sounds being produced by his band. It’s a good blend.



The crowd, a mix of the devoted, the confused, the appalled or the simply enthralled (that’s us) lap it up or pop outside to wait for Tinchy Stryder. The tracks, I understand, not being a Fall aficionado, are drawn mainly from their latest album ‘Your Future Our Clutter’, which must be some record. Smith wanders around the stage, twiddling with things, and at one point turfs his wife, Elena Poulou, off her keyboard and then goes on to show why she’s playing it and he isn’t. Then in the end he simply decides the band have done enough for one night, puts his jacket back on and exits stage left. Top that Tinchy...

Which I suppose he may have done... but I doubt it. Though we’re again too rock n roll to stay and find out, as we head off for our train.

(Saturday 14th August)

Summer Sundae Weekender

We’re doing the whole music festival thing on the cheap this year. Well, on a smaller scale at least, travelling only to Leicester and the Summer Sundae Weekender in the grounds of De Montfort Hall. A festival that is now in its tenth year and if, like us, you’re used to huge festivals like Leeds this one is much cosier. You can walk around the entire site and all five stages in around ten minutes. They even sell proper beer. We’re so hip we’re even here for the whole weekend and we have the wristbands to prove it.



This is a festival like no other... perhaps... it has a garden



A knitting tent



And of course the sundaes



And where wellies and mini-skirts are the order of the day

(photo withheld)

And a few bands.

Kyt, a local band and the winner of the BBC East Midlands competition get the honour of opening the main stage. Their music is unfamiliar to us of course, apart from ‘Solsbury Hill’, yes that one. It’s an interesting version. They weren’t bad, drawing a reasonable crowd but the elements intervened and the first of several bouts of rain drove us and many others indoors.

One advantage of Summer Sundae is that De Montfort Hall itself is on hand as a safe haven from such weather but I certainly don’t envy whoever has to wash all the mud out of the carpets come Monday. Nottingham’s Spotlight Kid are the first band to grace the indoor stage. Three guitars, bass and a girl vocalist, more 90’s shoegazing retro but they prove to be the best of the local bands we see across the weekend.



Leicester’s Musician venue have their own tent and we stumbled across Kirsty Almeida in there. Her jazz n blues n stuff seemed very popular with the sat down chilled out crowd, although this might be because of the rain. The Musician presumably had a hand in the nearby real ale tent as well, which is a very welcome sight compared with the usual beer desert that festivals are.

We venture back outside where Charlie And The Martyrs are dabbling with another odd mix of styles on the main stage but it soon starts raining again, so we switch our attention to another Nottingham band Swimming on the indoor stage. They are another band who can’t decide whether they want an 80’s guitar sound or an 80’s keyboard sound and consequently mix in too much of both.



The Phoenix eFestivals tent is mainly for comedy and showing films but when we pop in there for a change of scenery there are some weird choir rehearsals going on. Apparently for a performance later on during the weekend.

There are a few no shows today, artist wise, and quite a few artistes switching stages. We get caught out when we wander back to the main stage to see Fanfarlo but apparently they are stuck on the motorway, allegedly and we get the Mercury nominated Irish singer-songwriter Fionn Regan instead. The sun comes out for him but he does little for me.

Following him though, come the Sunshine Underground to brighten up my day, delivering a typically excellent forty-five minute set and it even stays dry for them.

After which L suggests we take in a couple of Lou Rhodes songs but we leave after only one. She’s so pleasant it's painful. Off for a pint instead. Which I sup listening to comedian Adrian Poynton in the eFestivals tent. He turns from your average unfunny comedian to suddenly quite amusing once he started ad-libbing and picking on his audience. This improved his act no end but did nothing for audience retention as people started to leave out of fear of being his next victim. We move on... to see Teenage Fanclub who haven't changed much since I saw them at Trent Poly decades ago.



They jangled along merrily and inoffensively then and did so today as well, there were even a few tunes I vaguely remembered.

Back to the Musician tent which is packed for Danny and The Champions Of The World. So packed we can't get in, which is a feature of the Musician tent all weekend. It's a riot in there for Danny and co, so I guess he must have been good.

The find of the day are Sheffield’s Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor, collectively known as Slow Club, who are excellent until she stops singing and starts talking. Crikes that accent. Stick to what you’re best at Rebecca, singing. L is so impressed she goes home and orders the album.



All that is left is a choice between headliners Roots Manuva (indoors) or Seasick Steve (outside). We choose Seasick Steve and walk out after two songs. How rock n roll of us. Can’t see the appeal to be honest, yes he was unique and impressive with his guitar playing when he broke through on Later with Jools a few years ago but now... just another blues act or perhaps I just don’t get it, as he seems popular tonight. His guitar playing being whisked away on the gathering wind as we head off for our train home. Nope, we’re not camping.

(Friday 13th August)

If There’s A Race To Be Had, We’ll Find It

The 10k the night before we went away goes well, for both of us. I’m happy with my time but I’m sure I would have been quicker but for the uphill track last lasted for almost the entire second half of the race. 5k of the very straight and the very boring. I wait at the finish, in my personal trainer capacity as well as my supportive partner capacity, hoping for a good time from L. Within four minutes of her target time, that I’m trying to train her up for, would show we're moving in the right direction. She gets within two. Well chuffed and that's just me. Actually I think I’m more pleased than she is.

The next morning we head off down to the New Forest in glorious weather. Once there, in a village just outside Fordingbridge, we set up camp at the dog show... naturally there was a reason for coming down here. Then we head off to sit outside the local pub and soak up some rays.

Friday, the first day of competition, dawns cold and wet, of course. The boys struggle a bit. Doggo gets an elimination though I was pushing him, then goes clear in his second run but is outside the places. MD has a few poles on some tough courses including a tricky Olympia qualifier.

The weather is better on Saturday, well a bit. MD’s only run sees him get a few more poles but Doggo is clear in his two events, including in his Olympia qualifier, although just outside a rather tight time limit.

That’s it for competing for the boys but on Sunday we head into Salisbury for a 10k there. Naturally if there’s a race to be had, we’ll find it. In fact there are many distances to choose from but 10k is enough really. We are on holiday after all. We were all going to do it, the boys included as it’s a dog friendly event. Though I would have had to have started at the back with them which would have been tough psychologically obviously, for the boys as well as for me. Doggo does like to be up front, just like his master. In the end though only L does the race. The weather has turned hot again and it’s just too warm to run the dogs or to leave them in the car. So the three of us settle for a spot of supporting instead.



The football season opens and Derby start with a win, away from home and against Leeds. Seemingly all my Christmases have come at once. Every dawn though, in their case, is usually a false one and they follow this with defeat to League Two Crewe on Tuesday night in the cup. Same old Derby then.

Monday is a trip to the Dorset coast.



Whereas Tuesday and Wednesday see us walking sections of the New Forest. In the rain on Tuesday and in the nice weather that Wednesday brings. There are plenty of horses for MD to get lippy with.



Then Thursday its home time. We have some serious raving to do over the weekend.

(Thursday 12th August)

Holiday Mode

L's in holiday mode already, well, she says she can't be bothered to work.

Typically the weather’s turned foul, right on queue. Not good for holidays or the 10k I have tonight or the outdoor dog training I have this afternoon.

L reckons the holiday situation is easily solved because it'll be romantic in a tent with a bottle of red. Especially if the dogs are in the car and not the tent. Sounds like we’re taking wine then, which is usually a dangerous thing to do. Though, we're at a dog show for the first few days, so probably best to take a few bottles to pass the time.

I’m dogging this afternoon because the club have offered everyone an additional free two hour session. There is an evening session but... we have this run. A 10k from Mickleover, named after a chap who used to be L’s boss when she was 17. Not sure if this is why she wants to run it or not. Hopefully the foul weather will make me want to run faster and I’ll get a good time.

All of which I’ll report back on later, cause now I’m in holiday mode myself.

Back in ten days or so.

(Wednesday 4th August)

There Is A Dark Horse Among Us

It’s odd at home without Daughter. The place seems less like living in Paddington Station without her, which has its benefits, but it’s eerily quiet.

We go away on Thursday and she doesn’t return until Friday. Then when we get back from our trip Son immediately heads off to Newquay. We assumed this was a lads’ trip but no... he’s off with a girl and her parents. He’s a dark horse. Apparently she’s just a girl who's a friend. L says we're not debating that one. That’ll be the old men and women can't be friends issue then.

L’s taking him shopping tomorrow, mainly for swimming trunks, in case he intends partaking in watery frivolities in the surfing capital of the UK and to avoid him having to skinny dip with his friend... and her parents.

L’s not having the best of days, dropping her new watch, forgetting her breakfast and having to wrestle with the telephone system of the tax credits people, predominately to stop them paying us too much. We shouldn't have to do this. If they got everyone’s details right in the first place people wouldn’t have to ring up, then all their lines wouldn’t be busy.

In the evening I head over for dog training, dropping L off on the way so that she can run with some friends. They start and finish at a pub naturally. Well at least I can have a pint when I pick her up.

(Tuesday 3rd August)

Serious Training

Tonight I’m planning my first serious training run as part of my build up to the Nottingham Half Marathon. So I get the bus and walk the rest of the way to work, listening to my book (I’m turning into L), saving my energy for later. I shall do the run straight from work.

Daughter rings. The ‘Rave Shack’ is up and running... and presumably raving. In fact they’ve stripped the shirt off the only boy and written the name of their adopted abode across his bare chest. What with I’m not sure but I hope it’s erasable.

After work, I run from Pride Park to Long Eaton, that’s around nine miles. It’s tough, very tough. My legs ache a lot when I get home and that isn’t supposed to happen. For the first time ever I ran listening to an audiobook rather than music (I am seriously turning into L). I thought this might cause me to run slower but obviously not, if the state of my legs are to be believed.

Despite being well knackered after that, I still decide that I ought to finish cutting the hedge, now that the wasps have been culled. We’re going away on Thursday and I wasn’t sure when I’d get another chance to do it.

The wasp’s nest is very impressive.



Despite all this activity, I still can’t sleep. Perhaps I’m overtired. Who knows? They do say as you get older you require less and less sleep, unless you’re L that is, but at this rate I’ll soon require none at all. Apparently it bottoms out at about four hours a night but I can undercut that.

(Monday 2nd August)