Sunday, July 19, 2015

Aussie Champagne, a Goblin and a downpour.

Coat hangers.....where do they all come from??

At work recently we had a big clear out. Last Monday evening a few of us stayed late and got rid of all clag that was filling up the storeroom. Cardboard boxes, old display signs, wood, more cardboard, and coat hangers were all found and either thrown away or placed neatly and in an orderly fashion where they can be seen and used. However, since then every time I turn around a coat hanger (or two) will appear on a chair, a desk or shelf. Its just weird, I mean where do they all come from? We now have a box full of them on the top shelf, where they cant escape - but I know they will. The bastards. I will beat them. Happily, we achieved a whole lot of work on the night in question and now have a lovely neat area where we can work through the customer orders in comfort! Next time we may attempt to tidy the workshop......I bet there are coat hangers in there.........

So, its 10am on a Sunday morning, the radio is playing classic tunes (Space Oddity by Bowie at the moment) and my typing fingers have woken up with verve and energy, so have taken control of my body for a while to update the world and coat hangers on the adventures of 'Muffin and English' (Me and Buffy) for the last few weeks......

The biggest event we attended recently was 'Folk Fest' - a huge orgy of a weekend with nakedness, sex, death, aliens and lots of facial hair. Well, the facial hair is true at least.
Its a yearly festival based around but not completely dominated by Folk Music. Its pretty big though with about 80,000 people attending over the 4 day weekend at Birds Hill Park just outside of Winnipeg.

Wilderness Supply has a tent there selling various stuff like camping gear so me and Buffy set up the tent for that before setting up our borrowed 6 person tent and our home for the next three nights.

My mate Blair with the loaded Wilderness Supply trailer!
The tent ready to be set up
We had to move the tent to get the trailer in!
After a good night of listening to music on the main stage we returned to a quiet campground - Unusual we thought as normally there is a lot of drumming, singing and drinking going on around the the various camp fires. We had a wander around the campsite though and after a few beers headed to bed. Unfortunately someone else hadn't read our script and after just 2am, loud music started to blare out of an entertainment tent - bad loud music - really loud. I tried to sleep for an hour or two but even with earplugs it was impossible for me. Now I know I am a grumpy bugar without adequate sleep, so I took the decision to drive the 35 minutes back to town and sleep at home - at least I would get 4 or 5 good hours guaranteed!

Anyway, I returned early the next morning, happy and rested, to find out that the lovely person I an engaged to, had moved the tent and set it up miles away from the original location and well away from the noisy music tent!! Thanks Buff xxxx

So the rest of the remaining three days of Folk Fest was taken up with sitting in our little camping chairs with crowds of people watching good music in a great location. Most of the stages are in 'wooded' locations so you can get plenty of shade to keep out of the blazing sun (it was mid 30 degrees most of the week and up to 40 with the humidity index added) We enjoyed most of the music with one the highlights being an Aussie guitarist called (cheesily) Daniel Champagne. He was great as his guitar playing was just amazing. He has some sort of drum sticker attachment thing that means it sounds like he is playing both guitar and drums. But he does it so fast it is amazing - plus he can play and sing while retuning his guitar as part of the music. I really cant do him justice in a write up so here's a video of him playing another festival.....


 Another person we kept running into was a crazy entertainer called Rushad Egglestone - A classically trained trained Cello player who dresses like a goblin and sings songs about cats meowing and peeing on birds - all very surreal but funny too. He actually led a 'workshop' with a band from Hungary and their strange instruments, a duo of old guys from Greece and Australia on drums and mandolin and a heavy rock guitarist. They played together on stage just 'jamming' and it was awesome! Just crazily good and we were lucky enough to be seated right at the stage!

There were plenty of other good bands and singers  - from Nunavut to Australian and everywhere in between they came from all around the world. One of my favourites being from Australia again - a band called Perch Creek, complete with washboard player - who were brilliant on one of the side stages. Anyway here's a few pics of the people and bands we saw, plus some of us!!

Ready to go!

Entrance wristband

DAY 1 SUNSET

Teal Neil


Buffy Knitting!!

Random horse head

1st night view of main stage

Rushad Egglestone

Daniel Champagne

Arty photo!

Bloke in a Fruit hat!
Fire dancing at night
Buffy enjoying the shade

Dragonflies everywhere
Afternoon snooze in the shade

Joel and Byron enjoying dinner

Arlo Guthrie - great story teller

Perch Creek crazy Washboard dude

Rushad and Hungarian!
Anyway, after 3 good days of entertainment we took down out tent on the Sunday morning and watched the final days music before heading to the main stage for the big finale evening. The show was due to finish at 10.30pm but around 8.30 a huge cloud appeared on the horizon and headed in our direction. What followed was awesome - thunder and lightning and a summer rain storm that soaked us all through. Unfortunately the music all got cancelled at around 9.45 due to the conditions, but it was an epic end to a great weekend - same again next year I think!!

Here it comes.....

Scary skies

Rain

Joel enjoying the weather!!

The beer tent sang 'O canada' as it rained!

Flood!
 So as Bryan Ferry now plays on Sunday Morning radio, its time to check my spelling and stop my typing fingers - they need a rest before returning to type their messages to you in a couple of weeks.
Be good, be safe but more than anything don't dunk your biscuits for too long....

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