It's the Ashton Court Festival this weekend (more details here and here) - Bristol's very own mini-Glastonbury, only cheaper, with better beer, and no bands you've actually heard of to distract you from the serious business of sitting around in a field getting drunk. I've been for the Saturday for each of the last three years, and the weather has been cloudio (but dry and warm), scorchio and scorchio respectively. Good form, then, but this year's forecast isn't looking too good. Sunday looks worse, mind you.
Not to get all misty-eyed and nostalgic, like I occasionally do about early-1990s trips to Glastonbury, just to annoy people, but when I first went in 2004 it was a fiver to get in (way way back it used to be free) and you could cart in as much booze as you liked; this year it appears that tickets cost £12 on the door, and, more disturbingly, you can't bring in your own booze any more! All out of the festival organisers' control, as it's one of the conditions imposed in order for the festival's licence to be granted, but still, it's a bit of a pain. Luckily the very excellent Bath Ales are one of the local sponsors of the festival and have a substantial beer tent selling a range of their excellent wares (Gem is probably the one to go for, unless it's absolutely roasting, in which case SPA might be a better bet). So I should be all right. Slightly tangentially I find it just very slightly disturbing that the hare logo on the bottle is rather reminiscent of the animated filmic rendering of The Black Rabbit of Inle. No? Just me, then.Actually, looking at the line-up I see the mighty Fall are playing at 9:30 on Saturday night. I generally make a point of not remembering anything after about 6:30 on these occasions, owing to spending too much time in the Bath Ales tent, so don't expect any reports on whether they were any good or not.
3 comments:
Inle's not all its cracked up to be you know, and I should know...
ps, is that the festival that you woke up in a field afterwards (one time), without your socks, missing one lens from your specs and fell over a deer? Or something.
That would be the 2005 festival where I got separated from everyone I was there with, as well as losing my glasses and the pair of flip-flops I'd been wearing, blundered around in the dark (including rampaging through a deer sanctuary, though I didn't see any deer), and eventually had to walk back into Bristol in my bare feet at 1am or something. Ah, the impetuousness of youth. I think some drink may have been involved as well.
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