A festival? Really?

4 Aug

Last Sunday, the Friaress, youngling and I went to the Llandudno Jazz Festival. There have been lots of signs around, so we thought it might be interesting.

I’ve never been to a music festival before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew it wasn’t exactly going to be like Glastonbury, but they had a main stage and a fringe, so I thought it was likely they’d have some marquees up with three or four acts playing at the same time, maybe some stalls selling music stuff, that sort of thing.

Erm, no. The “main stage” was a marquee with maybe 100-150 seats, and the fringe was basically a beer garden with one small stage, and acts doing sets one after the other.

Now don’t get me wrong, it was quite good. One of the bands was excellent and the others we saw were okay too. The cheese lovers had pizzas cooked in an open pizza oven, whilst I had an excellent steak sandwich, there was nice beer and a fabulous selection of interesting gin.

But a festival? Not so much. It makes you wonder what constitutes a festival? Is it the fact it ran over three days? And what else could they have called it?

Anyway, with the amount of space it took up, I was also pondering whether we could do something similar ourselves? We’d have enough room, and I’m sure we could sort out some sort of catering, get a temporary licence to sell beer (or get someone else to do it – I know some people 🙂 ). We’ve thought about having a fete to raise funds for India, but this could be a real winner. Except we’ve run out of summer, and it has to be paid for early next year.

Still worth considering though. Give it a few years, and we could be the Glasto of North Wales. Just got to sort out parking, insurance, access, permission, acts…