I am a chap of a certain age, where Dad Dancing is a well known art form, and I like proper music with words and stuff…. and I was lucky enough to have been 15 in 1980 so got the tail end of Punk, through New Wave and the New Romantics….. I also loved the whole second summer of love in 1989 and that whole madchester sound. The 90’s were also pretty epic and I got to see bands like James and Shed 7 – back in the day. When it was announced that both those two bands were going to be doing a gig at High Lodge Thetford as a part of Forest Live – and it was the week before I turned 60, Jo did the obvious thing – and booked us in. Last year, we had gone to the same venue for Sting and Bryan Adams and had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves – so I booked us into the same campsite that provided us with transport to the gig and we looked forward to the event

The thursday was memorable for two reasons – the main one being that it was Michael’s 18th birthday which he celebrated by going to college, voluntarily – he has finished, but he wants to carry on playing with the mech and tech…. it was also Scorchio ! Now, I do not normally criticise anywhere we stay – and i won’t say too much about the campsite – BUT – i had booked, and confirmed by email several months before the event that we would be staying and using the coach service; with that in mind, we had travelled light – both of us were in sandals and shorts. When we arrived we were told that there was no coach service as they had not had the uptake / confirmations to make it financially viable. Now I do not know about that – but i do know that we were given a rough drawn map, and told that it was a mere 3km walk through the forest. OK – lets get set up, as literally just before we left home, a parcel from Amazon had arrived with my new Trail Air 3 Panel Windbreak.

I had been wanting an air windbreak for quite a while – the poled versions seem to always sag, fall over, need a lot of guy ropes and pegging down. Just for sheer novelty value, I actually read the instructions and set it up in less than 15 minutes start to finish – then sat back with a glass of iced cider. For the record, i never bother using the standard pages – I learnt a long time ago that the Mountain Tent Pegs are far better and over the years i have accumulated a fair number! I also don’t ponce abo