'Grief, I can't believe it was May when I last blogged. Ooops, I'll try to do better from now on. My excuse is that I haven't been having my Mondays off whilst it's been the College hols and, as Blogger is blocked at work, I've not even been able to catch up in my lunch hours. Anyway, 'normal' service is now resumed.

So, to pick up where we left off... We'd had a 40th birthday, a 100th birthday, then it was Jon's Dad's 60th birthday. It mostly kept off rain for the party on the Saturday (23rd June) but the following weekend when we all (8) went down to a cottage in Devon the weather was awful - that set the tone for the summer really. A nice time was had by all though.

We also managed to fit in a brewery tour of Wadworths in Devizes, home of 6X. This year does seem to be developing a beer theme to it. We had a great evening and saw the cooper (from Yorkshire, but I'm sure it's not his fault), the shire horses and got several free pints - one of which Jon drew himself - and bottles to take home.

Jon had a very wet trip to Le Mans to drink champagne with his Dad at the 24 hour race.

One of my aims for the year was to go to a music festival, but decided that Glastonbury was a bit too big. So we hit on the Trowbridge Village Pump Festival (we know how to live don't we...) partly because it's only a mile from Jon's parents', so if we got flooded out we could walk across the field to a cup of tea and a hot shower! I felt quite smug when a colleague was flooded out at Glastonbury, 'cos the Village Pump was at the end of July and I expected the weather to be much better by then. How wrong I was... It turned out to be the weekend that Tewkesbury and most of Gloucestershire flooded! We got there on Thursday afternoon and drove down a slope in a field to find a place to pitch the tent and couldn't get the car back up! A slight smattering of rain had made the grass a bit damp, so we left it there, pitched the tent and settled down to watch lots of other cars do the same, with varying amounts of success. Anyway, that night was great, with Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick (Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention respectively) kicking off the main stage with some traditional folkie stuff. They ware followed by Seth Lakeman who certainly got everyone leaping about. Lat up were The Levellers at 11.45pm who were brilliant. Jon had heard them at Le Mans, so The Levellers, rain and mud are now synonymous for him! As they now are of a 'certain age' the lead singer said a few times that they weren't used to playing gigs mid-week anymore or coming on stage so late - it was way past his bedtime! I think there was an ad camapign for Crowded House several years ago which said 'You know more Crowded House songs than you realise' and The Levellers are a bit like that. Anyway, they were brill and we had a great evening.

We'd just got into our sleeping bags, sometime after 1.30am, when the rain started and it was torrential, but only a few drips came through the tent so we were very lucky. We'd taken all our wet weather walking gear (over-trousers, boots, etc) so we donned that the next day and strode forth. It got incredibly muddy and flooded very quickly but everyone seemed to have a good time - especially the kids running around in bare feet! We stuck it out until Sunday morning 'cos we wanted to see the Hot House Flowers on Saturday night. They took a while to warm up and were a bit disappointing.

The loos were getting very bad by Sunday and, as we were heading down to Devon on Monday we thought we'd go home and get a good night's sleep (as well as a bath!). We only needed a quick push to get us out of the campsite, but lots of other people needed tractors to drag them out of the mud and up the hills. I had a great time over all - lots of great beer, cider and food - but Jon likes his home comforts so he was a bit ambivalent. OK, he hated it, but coped very well!

Anyway, tips for camping 1. get a cool-bag and freeze everything that you put in it - milk, cartons of juice, etc along with those freezer block things - before you go. This kept the stuff fridge-cold from Thursday afternoon until Sunday morning.