Norman Ralph

This is likely to be my last major blog post before I head off on my road trip of Europe as I have loads of prep to do before we leave and I want to cover that prep in my first blog post from Europe (hopefully Amsterdam).

I am writing this post whilst on the train from Carlisle to Leeds on the famous Carlisle to Settle railway route, it is beautifully sunny outside and the scenery is really something to behold. I really do love the English countryside and I am lucky enough to have experiences some stunning scenery in my time.

The reason for me being on this particular train is the fact I have spent the last few days staying with Sarann and her family whilst enjoying Solfest, a music festival based on the Solway coast. For my long memoried readers, here is a post I made about the festival last time I went.

Solfest always manages to deliver when it comes to acts. For a small festival, I always manage to see a dozen or so really good acts, with maybe four of five that are really outstanding. This year was no different – acts like Alabama 3, James, Eat Static, Utah Saints, Magic Numbers, The Jam and The Damned all being pretty big names.

I particularly enjoyed the old school combination of The Jam and The Damned on the Sunday night, followed a really nice chilled set from The Magic Numbers.

The weekend was great as a little mini break from the pressures of clearing my desk ready for the Europe trip, as well as from the stress of planning and paying for the trip itself. Sarann’s dad makes a great host, and Sarann makes a better chef – even if most of the fare was vegan! I did manage to sneak in a couple of pasties and a sausage and hash brown butty.

All in all a great weekend and well worth the £89 ticket price.

What an amazing weekend!

I attended my last festival of the summer this weekend – Solfest, on the Solway coast up in in Cumbria. It was a really good weekend, it was the ideal combination of good company, good music and brilliant atmosphere. I headed over to Kirkham on Wednesday after dropping Liz off in Potterhanworth so that I could do some of my to-do list before heading up to Solfest on the Friday. Due to traffic and general slowness on my part I didn’t actually get home until tea time, so didn’t really get much done. Ended up watching the England game then heading to bed.

On Thursday I set about my to-do list with some vigour. I managed to clean the car inside and out, pick up some replacement parts for the car and fit them and generally check to see how much work I am going to have to do to get the car through its MOT. I also managed to get all my washing and drying done ready for me to pack for Solfest. I managed to get it all done just in time to pick Michelle up from preston train station as she was flying voer from Jersey specially for the weekend. In the end, the train was about two hours late and I was sat on the platform for most of it. It was boring! Michelle arrived eventually (about 1am) and we headed for home and pretty much went straight to bed as we were leaving at nine the next morning!

The trip up to Solfest was generally uneventful, the roads were quite quiet seeing as it was the start of the Bank Holiday weekend though it did start to get busier throughout the day. We arrived at Sarann’s Dad’s house, with who we were staying for the weekend, at about lunchtime. We ate then headed out to Allonby to eat ice cream and walk on the beach. We had met up with Matt by this time too (Kat was also about, but was stewarding at the festival). We hit the festival about five o’clock.

One of the big surprises for me was how full the festival felt. Solfest is a relatively small, family orientated festival with about 5000 ticket holders and about 2000 stewards etc. The festival site itself wasn’t tiny yet the place felt full without being overcrowded. The next big surprise came when checking the programme for the weekend and discovering that Ben’s Brother were booked to play on the Bar Stage – the smallest venue at the festival. This surprised me as Ben’s Brother are currently enjoying quite a high level of chart and radio success and are tipped to headline some of the major summer festivals next year such as Leeds/Reading and V. I dawned on me that their debut album has only very recently been released and they must have been booked for the festival many months ago. I had to see them seeing as it was likely the last time they would be playing such an intimate venue!

They were well worth the entry fee to the festival alone. Sometimes I am disappointed by bands like Ben’s Brother when they play live but this was not the case. In many ways I preferred their live set to their album – which it must be said is a really good album, one I would recommend to anyone – as they managed to really get the audience going with their mix of classic indie guitar riffs and soulful singing. We caught a few other bands on the Friday night including the everpresent festival band that is Ozric’s Tentacles (well worth catching if you can).

Saturday was always going to be a highlight for me – Badly Drawn Boy, The Undertones and Chumbawumba all had slots on the mainstage with the former bands headlining! What a combination – Badly Drawn Boy followed by The Undertones. You would not see it anywhere else! The amazing acoustic sounds of Silent Sigh followed by Teenage Kicks!! It was an amazing night. One of the best evenings of live entertainment in my life!

Sunday was not an obvious highlight for me musicwise. There was pretty much only one band I was bothered about and that was the final act of the festival on the main stage – the everpresent Levellers. However, Solfest had one last surprise for me and it went by the name of Show of Hands. Show of Hands are an English folk group that plays a combination of traditional folk, sea shanties and rock music. They were stunning. I actually watched their set mesmerised by them. I am going to stick my neck out and say I don’t think anything has ever moved me quite so much as their music. I loved every second of their set and could have listened to them all night.

All in all it wa sa massively successful festival and I would like to extend some thank yous. Firstly, I would like to thank everyone involved with Solfest for putting on such a warm and friendly festival. Secondly I would like to thank Michelle, Kat, Matt, Ciara, Toni and Caitlin for helping make the weekend a massive success by being cool festival buddies. A special thanks to Sarann for insisting we went and making sure we all had an amazing time and a massive thanks to Sarann’s Dad for putting up with a house full of students for four days, for feeding us and for generally providing for our every whim!

I recommend this festival to all. I literally cannot wait for next year’s tickets to go on sale!!

As I am sure many of you are aware my life has been in somewhat of a state of flux recently. New housemates, new girlfriend, new friends, new job, new starts, new found enjoyment of life etc etc all add up to something resembling upheaval in my life. I am not generally one for getting too flustered by most things, in fact it is often pointed out as a personality flaw that I tend to not to publicly experience highs or lows.

Well, I thought I would take a few moments and take some sort of stock of where I am at the moment and what I think of a few things.

I will start with my domestic situation. It has come to my attention that I tend to play quite a downer on my family, particularly my parents and that is something that does not accurately reflect my current relationships with both my mother and my father. My mother is a proverbial god send. I do not know where I would be without her. We do not agree on everything and we have been known to have some rather passionate disagreements over the years. I will say though, that we are probably as close now as we have ever been. She is my confidant and the one I seem to turn too when things are hard. I realise that she does tend to only see the worse side of me when we get together, but then I do seem to only turn to her when I am at a loss and cannot fathom any other solution. Anyway, thanks for everything you have done and probably will do over the next few years!

My father is a different matter altogether. He has been absent since I was very young and hence I have never really experienced a father-son relationship with him. To be honest, it was never something that I felt was necessary, not until I moved to Leeds and started to look at my life and try to make some head or tails of it. Since then it has been something of a rollercoaster, with a lot of downs along the way. At the moment though, there seems to be something amiss as we have barely spoken (through no lack of trying on my part) for a a few months now.

Now, onto the good news. Liz and I are flourishing. I think it is safe to say that the initial honey moon period is probably over and yet we are still as strong as ever. Which is always a good sign. I know I have a habit of jumping into these things with both feet, but I feel that if something is worth doing and caring about then its worth doing properly and with all of your heart. It brings to mind one of my favoured quotations, although the name of the quoter escapes me temporarily….”Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” It always manages to instill me with a sense of duty and inspiration to go out and achieve whatever it is I am aiming for. In summary then, I am in love.

The current friends situation is also quite rosy with no great fallings out going on or any on the horizon. I am probably not paying enough attention to all my friends across the country, but I think I am doing OK. As mentioned previously, I have found a new level of relationship with many of the people I know. Namely, Si and George. Mine and Sarann’s relationship also seems to be going from strength to strength at the moment. I am really loving living with her. I think the closeness of our working relationship over the Summer has really helped and done a massive favour for our personal relationship. I now consider her one of my very closest friends. Otherwise a lot of my friendships are as steady as they ever were and I am still loving my new housemates! It’s turning out to be a lot of fun!

I have been reading a lot this Summer, mainly around atheism and related topics. I am hoping to really get my teeth into running A-Soc this year as Secretary. I’m looking forward to taking a more active role within union politics too. I have a lot to say about a lot of things, not just religion based, although that is my area of knowledge at the moment, and I definitely feel I have a future in politics. I realise that my relatively right wing attitude can often be construed as unhelpful and unproductive in a student environment, but I feel that a lot of my ideas are fairly central and often liberal in nature. I am very much a centre-right thinking person. With traditionally conservative views on crime, punishment, immigration and capitalism. Although my views on families, homosexuality and religion are particularly liberal in stance.

In other news, I am looking forward to Solfest in August, going to prague with Liz for my birthday and the start of the new term. I can’t wait to see how my rediscovered zest for life will be transferred to my work and study environment.

Roll on the rest of Summer!