Greenbelt

There has been a long delay between blogs. I worked for three weeks at the Greenbelt Festival at Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. Some of the days were extraordinarily long, but they were enjoyable and there were no insurmountable problems. I had the impressive-sounding title of Festival Reception Manager, but on many occasions this was little more than a glorified security guard. The work wasn't difficult: checking and issuing vehicle passes, taking deliveries, answering random questions from random passers-by. The long hours prior to the festival were more than compensated for by the short hours during the festival itself. I got to see lots of interesting musical and drama acts, heard fascinating talks on diverse subjects, experienced different forms of worship (including communion for 20,000 people at once) and even got to eat a wide variety of food, ranging from a chocolate fountain to quesadillas.

Ellie spent most of the time just sitting quietly in Festival Reception in her orange-fluoro high-visibility jacket, playing her Nintendo, messaging friends in Australia, goofing off on the Internet and even occasionally doing some maths homework. When the actual festival started, Ellie was able to wander around and do and see the things that she found most interesting. For her, that was mainly the pancake stall! :-)

We lived on the construction site in tiny portable bedrooms called bunkabins (as in bunk cabins). These were surprisingly comfortable and we each had our own tiny en suite bathroom. We were supposedly self-catering, which meant that we prepared our own meals when the festival wasn't actually on, but with no refrigeration for the first week and two hot plates and one saucepan for the entire site crew, there were no gourmet meals. On our second-last day on the site, Ellie and I actually had no food to cook, and no way to leave the site to purchase any. Luckily, some festival caterers had left 60 eggs, 10 loaves of bread and gallons of milk in the communal crew cabin, so we dined on scrambled eggs on toast washed down with drinking chocolate. At least our tumnmies were full.

When Ellie and I eventually arrived in Staverton near Trowbridge, to stay with my good friends and former neighbours, the Fry family, we were asked what we would like for the first evening meal. We just wanted fresh vegetables! :-) We have enjoyed good food and pleasant company ever since.