Green man and clouds

i have just returned from green man festival. this was my sixth year there and out of those six, ONE year had decent weather. so, unless shivering and hiding in a tent for four days is your cup of tea, you go prepared.

i have two modes of camping, and two tents. i have a small tent which goes with a roll mat and sleeping bag and fits in a rucksack and is no fuss. i am perfectly happy with this for short stays or when the weather forecast is not disastrous. then i have green man (or long stay) mode. this has airbed and lights and space for chairs and is very, very waterproof.

 it was more than worth the distress of carrying everything around, as it rained pretty much solidly for the first day and a half there, and fairly regularly thereafter.

serge gave us a scare on the way down by mimicking the noise of a van about to break in two, but is turns out that said noise was just the result of a minor bump causing the rear step and exhaust pipe to occasionally collide. after that she was great, more of that later. here she is at our last festival together (excuse rubbish mobile phone photo):

i love green man. i love the fact that people are nice to each other there. i love the music, the food, the atmosphere, and the fact that it looks like this:

personal highlights, in no particular order, were camping stove haloumi rolls (see below) sweet baboo's various performances, flaming lips, laverbread burger, beirut, losing at scrabble, spencer mcgarry season's orchestral spectacular, crumpets, tindersticks (especially lovely), amazing friends, efterklang, the sound of rain on a tent whilst buried in a duvet, my last trip in serge, and makeshift shelters

the drive home to cardiff from green man is fairly lovely, however, as serge vansbourg will be going up for sale about now and this was our last proper outing, i decided to take an even nicer route home. this had nothing to do with me missing a turn.

i drove though the brecon beacons, actually in a cloud which was fun if a little hairy:

sheep would occasionally run out in front of the van, bizarrely prompting me to question whether or not i would consider eating roadkill (i've been a vegetarian on moral & taste & health grounds for 10 years). i think i decided i didn't object to the thought, but considered it a little pointless and unneccessary- i don't miss or crave meat in any way.

after that i took one of my favourite drives through Brynmawr (i'm familiar with brynmawr through work and a project we run based on the reuse of the abandoned boiler house, which was part of the incredible dunlop semtex rubber factory, the main part of which has sadly been demolished. i might do a blog about this place soon. anyway here's a snap of me at the boiler house taken by one of my students:)

after that it was through the ebbw valley and cwmcarn, with all of its mining towns and beautiful hills and victorian factories. absolutely stunning.

after arriving home it was laundry, shower, baking (vanilla yogurt cakes), and then out for my last alcoholic drinks as a 28 year old. my annual sober six weeks starts today!

wish me luck!

Things what I made and things what I won

Housemate returned from a visit to the homeland with a job lot of rhubarb so I made some of it into chutney:

(5 big sticks of rhubarb, a couple of tomatoes, one large onion, about 1 inch fresh ginger, a sprinkle of coriander & mustard seeds, a chilli, enough muscovado sugar to just about cover the lot, about half a pint of malt vineger, boil until it looks like chutney, remember to sterilise the jars)

I have also been celebrating a couple of quiz wins. I'm not the best at quizzes but always seem to land a good team! my regular, sunday quiz team the less eminent victorians (named after a cartoon in the romilly pub, venue of said quiz) went out at the weekend to spend our accumulated winnings at an italian restaurant. despite going for three courses and not holding back on the wine, we didn't manage to spend the lot. we had a lovely time though and have a perfect excuse to do it again in the near future!

last night then saw victory in the most surreal, funny, creative quiz i've ever been to. (quiz quest @ gwdihw)
we won this wonderful cake:

it has been adorned with our team name. with a quiz theme of red, and a redhead team percentage of 85% (i'm counting myself as 5% due to my occasional redheadedness & the fact that my housemate insists that i am) it was meant to be.

Hols

I am now not due in to work until september.

this means i shall mainly spend my (non-festival) days pottering, hanging around with the chickens, preserving things and preparing to say goodbye to serge vansbourg, my beautiful ford transit minibus, who i will be selling soon. here we are in happier times:

Hoppy Joe

last night, whilst winding down in front of the TV with my housemates, out of the corner of my eye i felt the gaze of an onlooker and heard myself mutter the words "frog. there's a bloody frog in the house" quite calmly, before being overcome by some kind of teenage flappy panic. housemates also did a little bit of a flappy panic, before calming down and endeavouring to catch the little fellow. he had a good old hop around, under the sofa, behind the tv, before they eventually caught him in a tupperware box and returned him to the bottom of the garden.

here he is. is suspect that he just wandered in when the back door was open. but in the colourful corner of my imagination, he was there to avenge the death of hoppy joe, whom i lawnmowered quite accidentally a few weeks back. (excuse the photo, it's through tupperware)

I remained stood on my chair like some kind of idiot until he was out of the door. i did not realise until then that i have inherited my mother's fear of frogs.

Woodsticks and bikes

Hello there. sorry I've been away a while. I'm beginning to suspect that this blog will be a lunchtime hobby, and i've been away from work.

I'll start with a quick update on the near death cycling experiences. I have two to report.
the first was mild as these things go. it occurred yesterday, when I was with friends in Thompson park. we'd decided to use my bike to do some time trials around the perimeter of the top field. as it was my go, I asked what the route was and was told just to follow the path. so i did. what i should have been told was follow the path for a while and then turn left. anyway, my route took me off downhill and round some nasty corners and very nearly sidelong into a tree. the stories of my friends sprinting over to save me the moment i "disappeared" did bring me some pleasure.
The second one was much more annoying. it was this morning as i was cycling along the dual carriageway. i was being overtaken by a car in the outside lane which suddenly decided to take a sharp left across both lanes and very very nearly took me with it. i had to slam on my brakes (good job i have a fully functioning bike now) and managed a feeble "hey!!". they didn't even notice. oh well.

what i really want to talk about is woodstick, which happened on saturday afternoon.

woodstick is a lovely little free, unofficial festival organised by some friends of mine.
they invite bands to play (this year: ivan moult, teflon monkey, hail! the planes, joy of sex, threatmantics, the loves and calvin johnson), then put them on a "stage" made of a gazebo on a grassy bank in the park where they play acoustic sets to an audience made of friends, acquaintances and passers by. the whole site is adorned with bunting and these little fellows:

i'm no reviewer of music so i won't even try, all i can say is that i thoroughly enjoyed everything about the entire day. sitting in a park at a homemade festival with friends is an experience i'd recommend to anybody.
this year the fesival had expanded by a gazebo and an extra table, and i was the coordinator of the cakes. here they are:

(photo by david roberts)
as you can see my crack team of bakers did me proud. there was also a lucky dip, with prizes donated by lots of local music types.

this was woodstick 3.0, and every year any money made (cake donations, lucky dip moneys etc) goes to charity, and therefore i must mention that this year money was raised for CRY, the charity for raising awareness of cardiac risk in the young. here they are: http://www.c-r-y.org.uk/

i really do love it when this kind of event happens and goes well. so well done to nicola and harri for making it happen, for spending months organising and making everything, and for being brave enough to try. well done to cardiff for not being needlessly authoritarian and letting us get on with it. well done to everyone who helped and who turned up and made it such a great event. i really do hope this happens again next year!

Arnie

i should have introduced you yesterday to arnie. one of the three original, ex battery hens we adopted. here she is, around about christmas time:

arnie, as you can see, is now taxidermy. the reason for this being that she was the most amazing looking thing, and moreover, an absolute gem.

here she is back in the day:

the whistling expression is due to beak clipping (i'll try not to use this blog to air my politics too much- but this is a practice totally unneccessary when welfare standards are high) and i've no idea why she only had one wattle, but as i said she was a complete gem, a real character and hilarious to watch. she was also in charge until the day she had to be put to sleep.

(feat. eric & elvis in the background)

I (and them)

hello there. welcome to my first blog. have been cajoled into this... sort of, but I won't knock it 'til i've tried it.

i will probably mostly blog about chickens, cooking, how often i nearly get killed riding my bike, and power tools.

I'll try and give you lots of nice pretty pictures too, like this one:

l-r we have boomhauer, bobby and reginald iolanthe chicken, or reg as she's more commonly known.
forgive their muddy beaks.

so that's the chickens from blog #1 done. (much, much, much more to follow)
cooking- making saag paneer later, will let you know if it is/ was edible.
near bike deaths- two this morning (roadworks & buses), will be taking a nice long detour home so plenty more opportunities to get squished.
power tools- none today due to hand injury caused indirectly by a toolbox. took it as a sign.

i may abandon this format very soon.
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