Festival of World Cultures

I don't know what the thinking was on the pert of the organisers, but the decision to move the Festival of World Cultures from the end of August to the end of July paid off big time this year. The forecast wasn't good, but thankfully the forecasters got it wrong and it'd be hard to imagine better conditions for an event such as this.

Carl and I were ater joining in than we'd originally planned, so we didn't really get to see much of an actually cultural nature. The band entertaining the crowd at Newtownsmith Green were really good, and I enjoyed them big time - all fifteen or twenty minutes that we heard. The buzz was mighty, the crowds were the biggest for several years, and it was all pretty damn good. We'd checked a few things on the web first, and got a programme to bring around with us a what's-on reminder. After Newtown smith we fancied the sound of what was due on in the Kingston hotel at 7.30 and made our way there, soaking up the atmosphere as we went, coming across this private party along the way and generally following the crowd towards the Kingston.

It took us a while, telling one another that it was the good old Irish tradition of unpunctuality which was responsible for nothing happening on the stage in the Kingston garden. We were far from alone in hanging around the garden, and a group of young lads beside us managed to keep us amused, only too anxious to pose for the camera. Actually, I was very close to using this as today's blip, or maybe this or this. After hanging around for a while we finally tumbled to the fact that the group we were interested in were actually performing inside the Kingston rather than on the garden stage. Ah well ...

By the time we got the the Royal Marine hotel things had pecked up on their stage, and the bouncers were moving people off the grassed area and back up towards the hotel building. We hung around there for a while, enjoying the last of the balmy open-air atmosphere until the hunger pangs kicked in. We ate (very pleasantly) in Bits & Pizzas on Patrick Street, retired to Carl's place afterwards and watched a bit of Das weisse Band, a German movie we've been meaning to catch up with. What we saw seemed to be warming up to something good, but we didn't survive the full course.