Daughter number one recovered quickly once she had the right antibiotics. She eased into her week at Theatre school in Tunbridge Wells with a couple of half days before managing to stay for the full stretch. The week culminated in the production of 'Wind in the Willows' in the Trinity Theatre on the Friday. My husband celebrated the day with a nasty skateboarding accident. I refused to spend another minute in the hospital there and dropped him at A&E. I couldn't leave fast enough.
I collected him hours later, just in time for the show, with a fractured wrist and a pair of crutches (a painful combination) Luckily the fractured bone was one of the little ones so he didn't need a cast. The show was fantastic and we were very proud parents.
On the 20th August we collected our caravan from Kent and headed to Shambala Festival. This wasn't a last minute thing. We had been looking forward to it all summer. We were working with our Glastonbury family. Work is 'Daemon or Doppleganger'. An art project set up by a close family friend ten years ago. She tours the summer festivals with a marquee and many tonnes of red potters clay.
Revellers are invited to create whatever takes their fancy out of a fist sized piece of clay. She collects them up at the end of the festival and carefully transports them home to Frome where they get fired over the winter. Only the strong survive the journey and the firing process. Over time she has built up a collection of 4+tonnes (she'll correct me if I've got this wrong) of little clay people. They are stored on site, in their own area, at Worthy Farm, Glastonbury.
The more impressive figures get taken on tour the following year and the rest are gathered to make a mini clay festival, complete with mini pyramid stage and little long-drop toilets, in Bella's field. It is truly lovely work. A shift consists of a couple of hours (depending on how many people there are to rotate) meeting people, telling them about the project, handing them clay and a board to work on and watching what they come up with.
People absolutely love it. It is free and there is no suggested time limit. There are no boundary's and no guidelines. I've met people who have come back year after year to make another model. At the end of each day the artists can come back and collect their work to take home if they'd rather. It's a joyous way to spend a couple of hours a day and it comes with significant perks. At Shambala we were camped behind the Marquee in the craft area. Slap bang in the middle of the calm part of the festival. In our caravan, with our friends. It makes the whole experience do-able with kids and even boarders on Luxurious which is not something you'd normally associate with UK summer music festivals.
On the Saturday evening, after we'd closed the front of the marquee (work finishes at 6pm), we set up a table and chairs, table cloths, candles and fairy lights and had a dinner party for My eldest daughter's tenth birthday. My Brother and his lady were there too and it was such a lovely meal. Shambala festival is very beautiful. Small but big enough to be fun. Plenty of kids but lots of attractions for the grown ups after dark. Our girls enjoyed a little bit of freedom and were allowed to explore together for pre-agreed periods of time.
On Monday 25th we took down the Marquee and packed up the caravan (in the rain - not so luxurious!) and drove to Dover where we stayed overnight in a sweet campsite, Did our washing, scrubbed the kids, cleaned the caravan and regrouped. On Tuesday morning we set sail for five days in France.
We were supposed to be heading for Cornwall to spend time with Footsbarn who spent the summer touring the UK, but at the last minute had been called away by the never ending saga of sorting out My Dad's legacy. His hate for paperwork will continue to haunt me for years and it's trail reaches far and wide!
We camped beside the river in Herisson. A stunning medieval village in the centre of France. The weather was gorgeous. We caught up with many friends (Footsbarn are based there so we have a long-term connection with the area). It was a short, sweet break and we were sad to head home again.
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