Festival Madness

On Sunday together with a huge gang of friends and their kids, we descended on the Lounge on the Farm festival, held not surprisingly at a farm in Canterbury. I was sooooo excited as I hadn't been to festival for such a long time and was eager to see if I still had my festival dancing feet. As Sunday morning dawned though, the skies opened and we watched the thunder, lightening and heavy rain battering down. Not good for festival goers or those with no wellies as mine were still in Scotland with the Mackay/McKendry clan, left behind from our trips up there in the 90's. We were not to be put off, however, although when you are also taking a baby complete with buggy and all the paraphanalia it's hard to be minimal with the packing. So off we set complete with rain cover, sunshade, bottles, blankets, walking boots, flipflops, cagouls and sunscreen and got there just as the cloud was clearing and the sun started shining.

It was an amazing day, the atmosphere was brilliant, it was very family orientated with a kids area as well as all the music tents and lots of food tents. With beer in hand we wandered around the site taking it all in. All the kids had a fabulous time, they we were all in the tents grooving with the rest of the ravers. Charlie loved all the music and spent most of the day totally wide-eyed at all the different sights and sounds. He even had time to shake a few tunes of his own with his mate Max. As the evening begun we gave Charlie his last bottle, put him in his pyjamas and settled him down in the buggy at his usual bedtime. We were hoping he would have been asleep for the main act but no, there were far too many things to see and hear and when I took a peek at him he was chuckling to himself and having a really groovy time. So we decided that we would go to see the main act anyway and wandered down to the Cow Shed where Alabama 3 were playing and finishing off the days music. The main man Dr Wayne T Love whipped the crowd up into a frenzy and the funky country styled music began. Unbelievably, Charlie fell asleep during their set. How he managed to do that was beyond me, the music was banging out of the sound system and we had to shout to hear each other.

After the main band had finished Mike and I went to look for the others and as we wandered around the sky suddenly went very black and we watched the most amazing lightning storm followed by torrential rain. We were all in the beer tent watching but unfortunately at the point of the rainstorm, Mike was in the middle of the field trying to rescue our friends belongings and sun umbrella and was left standing under this trying to shelter from the rain. It was a ridiculous idea and I ran out to get him but in those seconds out in the rain the pair of us looked liked we had just stepped out of the shower. Eventually the storm blew over and we made our way back to the car and home. With Charlie safely tucked up in bed the only thing left to do was a hot bath and a cup of hot chocolate.