Serendipity

Memories of long happy nights at the Boxing Club in Reading :-) These pics must have been taken some time in 2002, give or take a year ! Sorry about the grainiess of some of the pics, I was experimenting with high speed film (result of the experiment was a decision not to use it again). Your DJs are Dark Angel and, err I forget ...

To Shefstock this weekend, for a day and a night of festivity and music. First time we've been there, but it has always looked really good in the pictures. Unfortunately we didn't plan well enough for the weather since I didn't take enough dry clothes ! But it was a great little festie anyway and I'm glad we went despite the damp. When it said "50% chance of rain", this proved to mean 50% chance that there would be 100% rain. We lost the toss but won the match with the weather as everyone seemed to be smiling and in good spirits.

We got soaked just putting the tent up and thereafter never really dried out much beyond the "muddy wreck" stage. Fortunately the place we camped was ideally located for the shape of the valley to get 3 or 4 of the major rigs in harmonious balance. For most of the night we had the pounding fast acid beats of the Preston Mad Hatters pointing down the valley from the top entrance; then a trancier rig with some deep progressive sounds - I think the Camouflage Disco - plus a world/folk/jazz stage and a dub/reggae one all mixing in - without even getting out from under our quilt. We thought the fireworks which punctuated the rain throughout the night were a particularly positive and optimistic note !

So I'm afraid we proved to be lightweight festy goers but we had a great time anyway, drinking wine and eating brioche in bed, with four or more distinct rigs somehow swirling and merging around us as if the DJs were all jamming with each other. Basically our own personal chillathon 2007 :-)

Thanks to all the relaxed friendly people involved for a great weekend and we'll see you next year !

Pictures Shefstock 2007

Shamania 2006

Baraka Chillathon 2005

She looks happy !

I wish I had been there. Credit to Digital Frog - browse his wonderful photos (NSFW).

We were sorry to miss you play, Barclay and SNAFU and all our friends. We realised on the Saturday morning that it was Psycle.

We'd had a really busy week. Had thought of doing Pure Filet(TAWTBILI), Nottingham's self-proclaimed “Filthiest Techno night” last week on Saturday (3rd), but decided we really needed to take the stairs to pieces to mend them. So Sat 3rd was spent hacking off plasterboard, which was in turn covering cracked but tough and thick Edwardian (1901-10) or Georgian (1910/20/30/40/early-50's) lath and plaster, off the back of the upper half flight, to reveal the full horror of previous owners' bodgery on the staircase (separate report to come.) Dust masks were much in evidence of course.

Naturally the 4th was spent shouting at the kids to take it slowly on the staircase, clearing up a washing basket full of sharp laths and two rubble sacks rull of misc plaster and plasterboard, wuth some more shouting at kids to take it slowly on the stairs and a bit of vacuuming. Only then was it ready for screwing on support bits, where the treads were cut far too short to reach from side to side of the stairs, and for banging back in all those staircase wedges which still had some wood to support, before cleaning up and showering for dinner time. Phew !

And all week since then it's not let up really. Work is always busy but it is looking as if we may be getting somewhere at last. More on that if and when it comes clearer. If you can have such a things as a “social life online” then I've been struggling to have one and put some effort back into newsgroups in return for all I've read and adsorbed over the years. And I owe loads of people emails including JohnM and his publisher not forgetting catching up on family news. So we had a busy Saturday too and got various other bits of d-i-y done. Come 10pm yesterday (Sat 10th) and time to think of getting ready for Psycle we were just too tired.

So we hope you all had as good a time as we did at home. Cos we had a really nice weekend ! Tune of the night for me at least was probably Duran Duran "Rio Rio" which we listened to on some TV charts show with entertaining videos, a nice followon to our opening the weekend with hours of swing, soul, rock and pop randomness from Niquid and gal via Internet radio from Psystream.net on Friday night :-)

Who was the Mystery Guest ? We think it was someone from Tribe of Frog, we loved the familiar Froggy tunes :) We danced for an hour and three quarters continuously thanks to all those wonderful swirling acid lines. And no folk barging through the dancing pack to get across the dancefloor. Who were the crew in Post Office dayglo vests ? We couldn't get away from the floor until the Frogz finished, only then could we tear ourselves downstairs to hear the second half of Barclay's excellent chillout set. It was a really good night for exorcising the frustrations of the last few months. I have never tripped the light fantastic so much to Rest Proof Clockwork in my life. The final DJ downstairs was another deck wizard, with tunes like "1200 Micrograms" to get us on our feet (in the chillout nochmal). Didn't chuck us out until 2.30 and we eventually got home at about 3am. One of the best Psycles ever I think !

A peacable weekend at Shamania enjoying top psychedelic trance somewhere near Skipton, despite being camped on a pimple-shaped shade-free hilltop with little breeze on the hottest weekend of the year !

Official pics

20th-21st August, 2005. A weekend of real ale, psytrance and chilling with our friends from Baraka at a very relaxed country pub, somewhere in deepest Oxfordshire:

More Chillathon 2005 pics

For some reason, there seem to be a lot of pictures of mud. It was my first and probably (now) only Glastonbury, and I had a great time. I wish I'd taken more pics of the non-mud features of the festival too ... mind you most other people's pics look the same !