Another weekend between the months of May and September, another weekend festival, I’ve done this loads of times and to be honest, the thought of wandering around a muddy field all day with camera in hand, ready to shoot anything I deemed worthy was starting to grate. With UK festivals, you are 100% reliant upon the weather, yes folks, we Brits like to plan EVERYTHING around the weather, organising a barbecue at home? check the forecast, attending little Johnnie’s summer fayre to raise funds for a new roof for the bike shelter?, you guessed it, check the forecast! we are OBSESSED with it and for good reason too!

I was in London the week leading up to the SHINDIG WEEKENDER and knowing that I was only able to attend the Sunday of the event, I wasn’t really THAT bothered about what the big man had in store for us, granted, I’d be shooting pics undercover for most of the day so a bit of rain wasn’t going to worry me too much, I checked the forecast and what do you know, thunder. Lightning and rain ALL DAY long! I even took a screenshot of my phone to prove it to you!

We woke on the Sunday and after spending what seemed like an age gathering the family together, packing a cool bag and checking directions, we were off…..90 mins up the A303 to a small village called Bruton in the heart of Somerset for what I hoped would be one hell of a festival!

Upon arrival, we were shown to a parking space and gathered our essentials for the day. Owing to a very poor internet connection, it took the lady in the ticket booth a while to check that our printed details matched those on record but after a few minutes, we were skipping along merrily, entering the main section of the event.

The Shindig Weekender is made up of a number of areas, mainly ‘The Dig Inn’ which hosted all of the big bands and the ‘Ghetto Funk Nightclub’ which played host to the DJ’s later in the afternoon and would take the revellers into the wee small hours (whilst us lightweights with young children retired at a semi-reasonable time of the evening!)

It didn’t take long to realise that 99% of the attendees had left their inhibitions along with their coats and bags back at the tents and replaced them with a myriad of colourful costumes that would make the Mardi Gras pale in significance! I saw middle aged men in morph suits, bearded chaps covered in glitter wearing fairy wings and even a young lady wearing patent red leather thigh high boots whilst walking her ‘dog’ (partner), I guess it takes all sorts but to be able to do this in public, without many folk batting an eyelid takes some doing, welcome to SHINDIG!

After finding our friends, we wandered over to The Dig Inn to catch ‘Oh My God It’s the Church’ do their thing. Despite having seen these guys a number of times at various festivals over the years, they never fail to make me chuckle, their risqué jokes may appear to some, a little close to the bone but from my point of view, was all good humour and looking around the room, everyone shared my views!

I took a walk around the various stalls selling food and drinks and it was great to see that there really was something for everyone, plenty of gluten free and vegan grub was on offer throughout the festival, I opted to share a portion of BBQ fries with my youngest, funnily enough, I didn’t see many of them as he had to keep ‘wandering off’ to look at something and by the time he returned, I was presented with a few crispy bits in the bottom of the cone, thanks! We took a wander around the kids area, there was so much to do, I struggled to drag my youngest out of there as he had just mastered the art of plate spinning and was 5 minutes away to becoming an expert with the diablo! I chatted to a lady who was weaving a basket at one of the many workshops taking place, she was 2-3 hours into it and looked like she needed another 5-6 hours to finish, I forgot to go back at the end to see if she was still there, weaving away under candlelight!

Located at the bottom end of the site (past The Dig Inn) was an area that looked like an aircraft graveyard, helicopters had kids climbing in and out of them, jet engine casings were being used as temporary chillout areas and there were even a few dodgem and waltzer cars dotted about the area for people to sit and relax in. We had a good look around the various sculptures that had been expertly crafted and my youngest was soon to point out a very rude looking ‘Terminator’ styled robot with his middle finger protruding! After a few minutes in ‘Seth’s Rocket Lounge’ we decamped to the Tropical Tea Party that was really going off and after a gutful of dry ice and contracted drum ‘n bass fever (a condition picked up after spending more than 5 minutes in a DNB tent with no earplugs) we exited the arena and thought we’d relax on the grass bank with a delicious ice cream, watching the world go by.

DJ sets by ALLERGIES and HONG KONG PING PONG kept the crowds dancing all afternoon whilst the sun beat down on us all (no sign of that rain or thunder BTW!) and before long it was 8pm, time for two super talented tightrope walkers to perform a wonderful display above the main area of the festival, we ‘ooed’ and we ‘arrred’ as the two daring artists tiptoed across a 100 metre line, passing each other a couple of times and even found time to perform headstands and other feats that folk shouldn’t really be doing on a tightrope, suspended a good 60 feet above the ground with no safety harnesses….

We decamped to the area outside of the Ghetto Funk Nightclub where a bunch of men dressed as grannies were attempting to setup some sort of an event that looked like a drunken event from ‘It’s a Knockout’ and were wandering/staggering about, trying to recruit ‘horses’ to take part in the ‘GRAN NATIONAL’, something I just HAD to take pics of, we even managed to get one of our party involved and he ended up wearing a blindfold as his ‘gran’ jumped on his back after tackling an obstacle course. The whole thing descended into absolute chaos after a few minutes, nobody really knowing what was happening and resulted in everyone falling over, laughing and having a great time!

As the sun set, we rolled up our picnic blankets and wandered past STARDUST which was really kicking off, the crowd had more than doubled in size by now (I dare say that many were busy sleeping off Saturday night hangovers until mid-afternoon!) By the time we reached The Digg Inn to see Soul II Soul, you weren’t able to get into the tent so we stood outside waiting for Jazzie B and his band to entertain us and entertain us they did with the classics from yesteryear including “Keep on Movin” and of course “Back to Life” which featured the amazing vocal talents of Caron Wheeler and an amazing trio of backing singers who sounded incredible!

Come the end of their set, our two kids were starting to ask “when are we going home”, which translates to, “can we leave now as we’ve spent all our money on pop and ice cream and its too dark to play football anymore and there are scary tattooed men wandering round dressed as unicorns”. So it was with heavy hearts that we gave in to their demands and romped up the hill towards the car. I would have loved to have stuck around to see Stereo MC’s but it was not to be, maybe next year we will bring our tent and stay up a little later knowing that we don’t have to drive anywhere.

Highlights from the day for me?

·       Mobile record shop

·       Tightrope walkers

·       Amount of friendly stewards and staff who were only too happy to help

·       Relaxed, family friendly atmosphere

·       Dedicated children’s area

·       Variety of reasonably priced food and drinks available

As we packed up the car, we took one last look over the valley that was awash with flashing coloured lights, the dull thud of bass escaping from the tents and the sounds of people having the times of their lives, until next year Shindig! 

Just a FINAL note to say that tickets for 2019's SHINDIG Weekender are already on sale and are selling FAST, to make sure you're a part of this fab festival next year, I strongly suggest you get them sorted NOW, click HERE to buy them before it's too late!