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The Family Bandwagon

Our family is spread out across the country and across the world, and what better way to keep in touch than a collaborative digital journal?

Tuesday 8 July 2008

Check it out now - the funk-soul brother

Well, nobody made any suggestions (probably a little bit late to ask I guess) but we still managed to have a nice four-day weekend. Stayed mostly at home on Thursday and Friday, played computer games (I got Warhammer 40,000: Dawn Of War for £10 from Amazon, and it runs flawlessly in Ubuntu/Linux). I had loooooooooong sleeps, whilst Dee actually went to the gym a couple of times (thus making me feel even lazier ... and lovin' it!). Saturday morning we all went to the gym (Dee, Chris and I) and then it was Fatboy Slim in Hyde Park in the afternoon-to-evening!

Actually, there were a few artists on a couple of different stages -- mostly electronic music, DJs, some rappers -- as it was part of the "O2 Wireless Festival". What wireless has to do with music, I don't know; perhaps it's because you can download music over the wifi network, or maybe a salute to the early days of radio? Whatever the case, Chris and I lined up outside the open-air venue -- a 2-metre wall surrounded an area the size of maybe 5 football fields (Hyde Park is huge).

Once we got inside, it was chaos. Well-meaning chaos, music-enjoying chaos, too-much-to-drink-before-lunchtime chaos. Plastic bottles littered the grass in about the same density as the human attendees; lines to the many bar-slash-tents stretched out across the lawn. Around the walls were stalls selling food and trinkets (glow-bracelets, necklaces, flashing lights, the usual dance-club paraphenalia), whilst strategically placed (and bad-smelling) mega-loos serviced the other end of the process. I imagine that most of London was once like a mega-loo -- plastic porta-potties in lines of tens and twenties, the humble pissoir-racks giving the men the previously-untried (and generally unwanted) experience of peeing whilst looking straight at another person (as the urinals were about chest-high and back-to-back). Eww.

Fatboy Slim came on at about 8:30pm (after Robyn, whose pop-style and catchy beats were stuck in my head for days afterwards). I hadn't seen pictures of him before, but he looks more like an English teacher than a popular musician. He spun his mixes, the crowds went wild, and we all bounced to old favourites (We've Come A Long Way, Baby) and new. (Chris made it his job -- no, his solemn calling -- to get as close to the front of the stage as possible. My tolerance for pushing through people was not so high, but I did follow him some of the way.)

When the show was over, a mass-exodus ensued. Expected, inevitable. I tagged along with Joyce and Luke (Chris's friends) whilst they raced to the exit, then came back to find Chris once they were off in Luke's car. The plan was to get a quiet drink somewhere -- the reality was the two of us walking south instead of north, then jumping on the train and getting back to King's Cross station at midnight. Which was just in time for the local pubs to close, so no quiet drink for us!

Sunday Dee and I went to Camden Market (it's fun, that market). We walked there from our place, looked around for a bit, but soon realised that the walking was more fun than the looking, especially when you don't have anything you really need to buy (got Dayna's pressie a while back; otherwise Camden would be a good place to find it!). So we caught up with Chris and Tina for lunch, then wandered back along one of the many canals to home. All the walking meant we didn't feel too bad about having a little pizza for dinner, whilst watching "I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry" on the ol' Xbox.

Good weekend, really! What has everyone else been up to?

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