Pitch Invasion

This weekend is the Isle of Wight Festival.

They’ve ditched the name ‘Rock Island’, as this was too subtle; confused yokels spent the entire two days stamping around the place a bit saying, “Yep, yeah, it’s rock, right enough...Arrrr,” rather than coming along and paying to see the bands, which is closer to what the organisers had in mind.

In keeping with the spirit of keeping things on an Isle-of-Wight scale, rather than say, copying the successful summer festivals, the festival is being held on my old school cricket pitch. The seductive big-name line ups of the big festivals are being swapped for a potentially less-seductive line up and the fact that the festival is being billed as the world’s first ecologically neutral festival.
Which I wholeheartedly agree with.

To be frank, anyone that has any gripes about paying good money to see Bryan Adams, can fuck off, because I’m going to see Counting Crows, a band on my ‘To See Before I Die/Or They Split Up’ list.

Foster and myself are camping (not together) Ben and Annie might put in an appearance, and Sharon is a possible (not that most blog readers will know who these people are, but trust me, they’re good), and we’re rolling into Newport on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights for after-festival drinking and cavorting.
Newport, once old-man-pub capital of the world, where as sixth-formers we adopted one tudor-style pub and held on for dear life as the locals grumbled away, is now packed with bars. And, bizarrely, young people have appeared to fill them.
It’s been an alcoholic ‘build it and they will come’.

I couldn’t be looking forward to this weekend more.

Mount Doom in a White Transit Van

In my life’s continuing spirit of doing really rather silly things for charity, in a week or so’s time I will attempt to climb the three highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales inside of twenty-four hours.

That’s Ben Nevis, a brisk drive, then Scafell Pike, another gentle coast along our nation’s highways and Snowdon to round off the day.

I have been training for this by walking for about 5 or 6 hours a week for the last two weeks, and I’ll step things up a bit in the week beforehand. So far training has involved walking to and from work, which as an aside saves me £8 in bus fares a week.

Wahey!