As promised, a short report (and more than one pic) of the Broome Farm Cider Festival. The girlies were absent last year, so ensured that we doubled our presence for this year's festival. With cracking weather, ten of us set sail down the M50 to anchor ho' in our regular plot o'land in the orchard. Two big tents and one luggage hold-come-dressing tent was where we settled for the weekend. It was as good as we remembered it and we were remembered (and missed?!) by more than a few of the regulars.Who doesn't love the girls from Brum crashing a posh-party in the countryside ;) Ceilidh on the Friday night and a line of up bands (and pirates) on the Saturday prompted us to let loose and have a good weekend boogie. And before you ask, there is no good reason (nor bad one) for the fancy dress- rather: Why not?! What else ensured... well, what happens at Cider Fest, stays at Cider Fest... but here are a few pics.
Ceilidh Dancing (essentially Gaelic line dancing)
Cider Market
Cream Tea
Hair wraps and make up to pass day.
From Cider Fest, it was straight to Loerrach, Germany for work for a 3 day on, one week off, one week on stint at the Milka factory. Hooray!
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In between my weeks in Germany, I managed to squeeze in a wine tasting session. Yay for Groupon! 14-squids for a two hour wine tasting session + tapas. This was either going to go really well or really wrong- and I was feeling in a particular bossy-pants mood on the evening (thus setting it up to lean to the latter). I was pleasantly surprised how well the evening went (perhaps with the lubricant of all of the wine), and only managed to Hermoine the host once to correct him on the term subjective vs. objective response in detecting specific flavour notes. He took the correction on and still sent me the wine list from the evening.
The wine list was surprising- three whites, four reds, and a Muscadet all from the High Street. A mix of varietals and a mix of flavour profiles. What was nice was that all of the wines on the list were affordable and interaction was encouraged throughout the night- much different from any of the vineyard tastings that I have been to where they serve you the smallest drop and push you to purchase lots of anything. Different nights throughout the month were focused on a different region, and one thing that I miss from being in Edmonton is a selection of Zinfandel (Red!). So if I was to get anything off affirmative from the evening, it was to be where I can buy a good bottle of Zin.
I also managed to sneak in a quick trip to the big city to check another band off of the list: Beirut. It really pays to like bands on Facebook, because when they are in a city near by and the tickets go on sale (or they have tickets they haven't fully sold), an update usually comes along. I've managed to purchase tickets three times in the past two years in this way, rather than patrolling the Ticketmaster website. Win!
The gig was good- better than good, it was fab! My cheeks were sore from smiling the entire night. The experience was fab because instead of playing their songs as they are on the albums, each song was played in a slightly different style and you knew that this was the only time you would hear the song played in such a special way. And who doesn't love to hear the musicality and power of a brass section live!
With the Saturday in London to myself, the question of the morning was- which market to visit? and I chose to wander back down to Camden. In this visit I decided that Camden trumps Portobello. They are both samey-samey (within themselves rather than comparatively) year on year, where you probably only need to visit once and any return within the same year would be to purchase a known object. But having not been to Camden in over a year, it felt as fresh as it did when I first visited. I like the variety in Camden, there really is more of something for everyone. Portobello is more antique-y, cute, and vintage hipster (and don't even get me started on vintage hipster- I have at least one blog's worth of observations for another time); whereas, you have all of that in Camden next to a stall that sells gas masks and fetish next to a stall that sells fluffy cartoony key rings and bags to the Manga crowd- the mix is what I love.
Back to Brum to go back to Germany to come back again and fill the rest of my September at home cleaning and ironing and ticking tasks off of the list. And I can say that I have (well, Craig did) finally kicked my butt enough to finish one of my arts and crafts August projects- my cork board. My problem with arts and crafts is that I see a good idea and think- I want to have a go at that- I accumulate all the necessary items, start the craft, and get angry with myself half way through. But, I can't stop, so I keep on going and growing angry because of the internal dialogue in my head going "why did you start this?" "because you want something cool and hand-made in your house" "but you could just buy it" "but then you can't brag and say I did it" "why don't you just finish up for now" "because I probably won't ever start it up again" "why don't you just hurry up and do it" "because I can't do it crap- it needs to look good" "AAAARGH but it is so painstaking" "stupid linear OCD"... see, this is why I should steer clear in the first place. And now it's making me anxious because I have one more project that I want to do which is for decorating the dining room. I haven't started yet (apart from accumulating materials), but can't think of any other way in which I want to decorate the dining room, nor can I think of any good excuse to get out of starting. Sigh. In any case, I will leave you with my cork board and the answer "no, I did not drink all of the wine; but, had I thought of this task two years prior, then I would have had all personal corks to attach".
