Thursday 28 August 2008

Greenbelt thoughts

Over the last weekend (22nd -26th August), We were camping at the greenbelt festival in Cheltenham race course. All in all, we came away refreshed, relaxed and revived.

Highlights for us were:
  • Seeing Iain Archer and getting his new album signed by the Northern Ireland finger-picking guitar guru. The new album is great and is getting rapidly listened too
  • Listening to the Ian McMillan Orchestra : the most amazing mix of poetry, folk music, bizarre instruments and northern dialect
  • Discovering that I like poetry (Andy)
  • Overall the music wasn't too great, Seth Lakeman, MxPx , Beth Rowley and Fightstar were the mainstage exceptions. MxPx show improved as they progressed through their set list, with the bass solo(!) in a swing punk number being highly impressive. However, this is topped by the change of the bass guitars! Whenever Mr Herrera felt the need to change between his yellow and red Stingray bass, a roadie would appear from nowhere and with a fluid rotation, he was back in the game playing the new low-end instrument. However, disaster was lurking when the bass player was located on the left of the stage with a newly tuned bass axe waiting 10m away! Instead of running across with said axe, both roadie and Mr bass player lobbed their resplendent instruments at each other simultaneously. Both flew pass each other with no twisting and Mr Herrera caught his bass with the trademark twist of the body and was playing again within a blink of eye to the amazement of Mr Jeanneret and myself.
  • The Mcs on the main stage were shockingly bad, like cringey youth group leaders but worse! Their crowning moment of glory was getting the crowded to chant the star part of Fightstar's name to build up the excitement ... It went like this
  • Mcs: I say Fight, you[crowd] say star, ok?
    Mcs: Fight
    Crowd: Busted!
  • Continuing the Northern Ireland theme was the most Mr(Sure a Dr as he has a Ph.d) Peter rollins from the ikon community/crowd/ring doughnut ... there was lots to unpack from this session and the nice man waited patiently to talk to the streams of people(including us) after his session. Lots of amazing ideas, which are still resonating, there will be more from here later and may even a reflective post!
For the next couple of weeks we will be reading the books by interesting people there (and the manga bible!) and Dog training!

Tuesday 19 August 2008

New Job

I've (Andy) been offered the position of ovóbacsi! Yah!
Ovóbacsi is a kindergarten teacher and I will be working in October as a part-time English speaking preschool teacher.
This is excellent as it pays; enables me to have intensive 1-2-1 Hungarian lesson; do other stuff like privately teach chemistry/maths/physics to uni students and work on the farm/Coding etc

Much bouncing commences!

Friday 15 August 2008

2 weeks back, 47 days to go

Well, lots has happened since the last blog post but unfortunately its not been of the dynamic exciting nature.

We, I think have come back down to earth with bit of bump the harsh reality of what we are really undertaking to do is upon us! That is slightly daunting as neither of us is particularly organised.

We know we are meant to be going so there is no question in that it is just the "getting there" bit which is the next mountain that we have to climb but as with most mountains once you've climbed to the top, there is (usually) an amazing and breathtaking view awaiting you but also a HUGE sense of achievement at the other end. So, come on amazing view I say :)!!!!

Have been procrastinating a little bit today and went out and bought some beads to make a bracelet of some sorts I just had an unbelievable desire to be creative. So, if you see me around sporting an unique bracelet be sure to compliment!!!!
Am VERY excited about going back to Hungary and the new life and all of the things that await us there:) Its a BRILLIANT feeling :)

Also we are heading off to greenbelt next weekend to see what it is likely, Hopefully we will catch Iain Archer (6pm friday at and the main gig is half three sat (in centaur) ) amongst others whilst not drowning