Wychwood Festival - 2-4 June 2006
Due to being in Spain for the week I didn't arrive at Wychwood until the Saturday morning. The sky was clear and blue and the sun was beating down, in fact it was hotter than Spain had been! The first person I saw when entering was my friend Karo who I hadn't seen since Reading festival last year. It was nice to see a familiar face and catch up. I made my way to the Oxfam camping area and saw all the stewards who, like Karo I hadn't seen since Reading festival. It was great to catch up with everyone.
After lunch I went to a talk on ethical consumerism, the girls doing the talk were from Ethical Consumer magazine. They talked about why some companies should be boycotted, what other options we have as consumers and how boycotting has worked in the past. Some people in the audience talked about the companies they are boycotting and why and where they prefer to buy things. A very interesting hour! There is a little about boycotting unethical companies on my 'our people, our planet' page with a link to Ethical Consumer magazine.
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I then went to see 3 Daft Monkeys, I had heard about them for years and had been to festivals they had played in the past but for one reason or another never got the chance to see them. They are a very dancable folky band and I really enjoyed them. After that I went to a singing workshop where I had fun singing with a group for an hour. Next was what I had really been waiting for, the comedian Mark Thomas. Although some of the material was the same as when I saw him in November it was an excellent performance and really funny. At the end he invited the audience to ask questions which led him to ramble some more!
I was on my way out to go home when I bumped into Jo who I hadn't seen all winter. She had been in India for a few months and it was lovely to hear her stories and have a chat. I then went home for tea and although I was going to come back for the showing of the Glastonbury film amongst other things I fell asleep! On the Sunday I worked as a supervisor for Oxfam looking after the stewards on duty. We had some extremes of weather from baking heat to torrential rain but we all survived and hopefully all the stewards I looked after enjoyed their Wychwood experience. During my shift my friend Phil turned up from Wales and I also bumped into a few other mates.
After my shift I nipped back home to get Lee, we spent ages looking at all the different percussion instruments on the various stalls and then got some food and watched The Bays. Personally I'm not a great fan of them but Lee quite liked them. Wychwood is a lovely small festival in a nice location, (although looking at a grandstand was wierd! but great to have a festival there rather than a cruel horse race) and the weather made it a great start to the festival season.
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Below are a selection of photographs from the gathering.
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