Here we are 2 weeks away from the festival, it's been a long and interesting journey. State of mind is calm, probably because we've forgotten something huge. The last month has been very busy of course and lots of it for me has been out of the office, in the van or on site. I seem to of had the odd ciggy after 3 years without one so it's not without it's stresses (our mesh fence blow down today, but not away)

We are about sold out. We have sold a number of tickets beyond our expectations. We will have in excess of 1800 guests including their kids to entertain and look after on July 17th. Of course that's great, but we now need to deliver and so much depends on the weather.

So we now sit on the 2 week conveyor belt, having to make quick decisions, becoming increasingly less patient with people on the phone, not having the time to worry about who you've just upset. So until after the festival, when we move onto the trials of setting up your second festival or quite possibly the legal ramifications caused by the first one, ta ta.

Trying out cocktail recipes tonight for the bar whilst vaguely watching Mexico vs France. All based on our Yorkshire supplier of Sloe Gin.

All 3 of their recipes are really nice.

One of the more enjoyable festival tasks I've completed today.

Fancy some crisps now.

Of course we are in the thick of it now.

I've started thinking that at least in just over 5 weeks it will all be over. People keep saying, 'you should just try to enjoy it'. On the day with everything going well and the sun out I might allow myself that luxury for a moment.

I would like my wife back. Kate is utterly miserable 70% of the time, the weight of the organising is taking it's toll despite everything going well. Small hiccups tend to have a disproportionately large impact like food retailers who say they are coming deciding not to without telling you.

Despite Mother-in-law sticking the stamps on the ticket letters anywhere other than in the top right corner and me forgetting the stamps completely on those tickets to our European friends the ticketing seems to of gone well so far fingers crossed. I've basically thrown IT at the problem and brought the largest envelope labels possible in order that shitty Word at least stands half a chance getting all the address on.

I now have a van, but don't have time to savor it. I'm slowly grinding down Tesco by ordering 100 bottles of 2 ltr still water every day until I've got 500. They wouldn't let me order 500 in one go despite as much charm as I could muster at the information desk.

We are running the bar ourselves and doing lots of the food. Kate has ordered £195 worth of carrot cake. If I had time to be concerned this would be a warning sign that things are getting slightly out of hand. I know it's a dense cake, as cakes go, but hang on a mo honey.

We're fast approaching break even point on ticket sales, so can't complain. We've got quite a lot more press lined up including some telly. BBC Look North want to do a piece on us which will make a change from them reading out the press releases from the emergency services.

There's nothing like some high profile national press to oil the wheels of pretty much everything. We had a feature in this weekends Sunday Times Culture magazine 100 top festivals and suddenly regional press and telly are emailing US and the ticket sales take a healthy bounce. Quite how long this will last is of course totally unknown.

A fella from a rather larger and more established festival in the North emailed today after reading the article. The email contained the offer of help and advice and general good vibes - I wonder how long we'll remain friends, but we festival organisers all seem to share the same problems.

We're going to have loads of swingballs at DSF. In order that the quality of the festival is not judged by the quality of it's swingballs we decided to test some. Below is what happens to an £8 swingball set in 5 minutes if you work from home, getting steadily more wound up and feel the joy of cutting loose in the back garden around tea time.

Argos do one that doesn't fall apart and we'll have lots of those. I did break the tedium for the staff in Tesco today by buying 20 hula hoops and have them all fall off the conveyer at the till.

So, footie trip to Barcelona resulted within an hour in the loss of my wallet on the tube, a 2-2 draw against the team of Spanish air traffic controllers and on the whole a great weekend despite the early hiccup. Believe everything you hear about Barcelona petty crime and then some. I apparently came close to scoring with my first touch but I don't remember it like that myself.

Onwards and hopefully upwards...

It's been the hardest two weeks so far, and it's pretty much all been down to difficulties booking bands. I lost it at one point and the word 'divorce' was mentioned. Not since Kate and I went kayaking in Florida and we inadvertently drifted into an allegator infested swamp, and I 'slightly' lost the plot, has Kate had to use such shock tactics.

DSF is new and untested and partly due to our committment to be kid friendly, slight uncool perhaps compared to other older, more established and hipper fests. Consequently booking really great bands has been much harder than I thought. But despite this we have finally got a line up we only dared dream about a month ago. Thank you Claire.

I finally feel that we have got something to shout about, and a festival programme that I would find hard to resist. We now have to make sure that everyone finds out about it.

I'm 40 today. The second half (fingers crossed) of my life didn't start very well as I had to go back to bed for a couple of hours nap. This exhaustion was due to a day spent with Andy asking shops in four local market towns to put up our posters in their windows, very tiring for an office bum like me. I was pleasantly surprised how lovely everyone was that day apart from the witch in the Thirsk elderly ladies hair dressers. We also avoided the local carpet mafia who are also staging an event on July 17th and are turning up the heat in the PVC roadside banner war.

The need for a proper van is increasing again, as we speak my Golf has an 8ft bar sticking out the back of it. Our garage owning friend is looking out for a sensible Transit for me. I have however found that VW transporters come with added 'lifestyle' which I shall find hard to resist despite the premium in price.

Only a week until Tuesday night football plays a team of Spanish Air Traffic Controllers in Barcelona. Hopefully a collision free game.

What to blog about and what to leave out.

All the best stuff requires me to ask the wife, 'do you think I should/could blog about this?' Well as I have the feeling we're on a train that we can't get off, I might as well.

We are getting to know our big firm of solicitors pretty well. Now that our licence has finally landed on the doormat we are apparently treading on the toes of a fella who runs a North Yorkshire music venue with the word 'Shed' in it's title. If it's not one thing it's another. Said title is also trade marked, although most people's immediate reaction to the finer details is - 'you what?' We have been expecting a letter from his solicitors through the post for the last 3 weeks, perhaps he's thought better of it, most likely not. No doubt we'll see who runs out of money first. It's at times like these you need a wealthy father-in-law who is about to sell off a plot of land for a motorway service station on the new widened A1(M) near the A61 between Ripon and Thirsk (Northbound). Chance would be a fine thing.

I really wish I'd done law at school. If you put on your own festival you run into legal issues very very quickly. Heaven knows what we'll do when Tescos do a stocktake of their very handy home delivery boxes. Or when the police knock on the door after the 3 by 8 ft festival banner I hastily stapled to the Boroughbridge/Ripon roundabout fence blows away in high winds and sticks to the windscreen of a school bus etc etc..

Tickets are selling well though. We've sold 1/4 of what we need to sell to break even and we have some good press and marketing lined up. Best of these is a feature in the Sunday Times festival guide due out in May. It's going to be a David and Golith piece with us vs Vince Power. He sounds like a festival superhero, and perhaps is. His festival has Bob Dylan as it's headline this year and so it's all about an established 'festival god' and us, the festival rookies.

We are having some photos done tomorrow for this (Kate off to hairdressers in morning, I might have a shave.)

I have put our friend Chrissie in charge of 'festival madness', he is an ideal candidate. As he puts it, 'an honorary role with real value'. This is not to suggest that our event will be in any way out of control, but as I've said before, many of the things that are best about festivals are not those which are foreseen by the organisers (see my post about Kendall Calling and Helen Roddy.) Chris has taken on this post which much relish and in the process has brought me 8 doors. Madness, like I say.

See below our new advertising initiative which will no doubt lead to more trouble of one sort or another...

Regular listeners to this blog might of realised that it has disappeared, reappeared, been disconnected, edited and hacked about over the last few months. I've not been able to talk about what has been going on for fear of screwing up all manner of sensitive things.

We have been having an interesting time with our licence. All festivals need to be licenced by their local authority and without a licence you can't have a festival over 500 people. We have on the whole been lucky that our licence application has been supported by the majority of our neighbours with one exception, the caravan park which is adjacent to Baldersby park. I used to love the idea of living in a static caravan dead cheap, getting it well toasty inside, saving up money to buy a loony Subaru and nice guitar. I'm slightly put off now. The couple who run it do not want a music festival anywhere near them. We can understand why anyone might hold this view. I went to see them before we put in the application and I was not surprised that they opposed the licence.

It was an interesting chat, during which I was told that youngsters can damage their ears through listening to loud music and that we should bring back national service. I think we should bring it back for oldies as they seem by far the keenest. So yes, it was always going to be tricky.

The licence application has to go out to lots of different bodies, the police, environmental health and many many more. None of these had any objections (or representations as they are called) except environment health who were concerned about noise levels. We have had to have an independent noise control report commissioned which satisfied the enviromental officier that we could meet the required noise guidelines.

So we went off to Harrogate council chambers for our licence hearing at the end of January. Us vs the caravan site plus our local councilor who the caravan site had asked to represent them. Walking in there we had the feeling that we were going to get stitched up. We had however spent some money on a licencing solicitor who whilst not being by our side that day had prepped our case for us. Three councilors, one from each party had to make the decision, they were advised by a council solicitor so they couldn't to make up the law, WILLY NILLY, as they went along.

I suppose we are now used to the fact that if you stick your head above the parapet you'll get shot down. In our heads we have always thought we were doing something good. But we left this hearing feeling that nobody liked us much - especially the Tory councillor after I quoted Harrogate Councils's own licencing policy back at him. No one likes a smart arse. 

We got our licence at this hearing subject to appeal, but only after having the contents of this blog used against us for which I felt pretty foolish and a little angry.

One of the caravan park residents had come along to support the case of the site owners. He said that the festival would be 'toxic' for the caravan site. Up to this point the only thing that is toxic is the overflow from the site's septic tanks which seep into the park's drainage after a heavy bank holiday weekend of toilet flushing. I wish I'd said this at the time, but don't honestly think it would of helped our case. He also said that the noise from the event would be 'intolerable'.

Being allowed to 'cross examine' this fella I asked him what evidence he had that the noise would be intolerable. (A piece of case law, Thwaites brewery vs Wirrell council, basically states that there has to be evidence that an event - in our case - will be too loud, too dangerous, too whatever.) He said that his son was 'a senior sound engineer' and that HE said it would be 'intolerable'. I used to be a sound engineer and I could tolerate just about anything. I never met a 'senior' one, it's not that sort of profession. I suppose it's the sort of job description that might comfort a disappointed Dad [meow]. In the end he didn't have any evidence he even had a son at all (although I'm sure he does.) I wouldn't of mentioned this here if this guy hadn't been so up himself.

So, blogs can get you into trouble so this one will remain detached from our main festival site.

We are certainly starting to feel the pressure. We have 3 kids and 2 businesses to run as well as doing the festival. I worry about the wheels coming off. The kids have started to realise that all we talk about is the festival, and whilst trying our best to not neglect them we are concious that they are not getting as much time as we could give them. We have various views on this which make us feel better about it but we're not sure they hold water.

I have just finished Harry Potter 6 and must say that I am drawing some comfort from Harry's struggle, he'll have to up his game for book 7 though after that pitiful display against Snape.  But we are selling tickets, and 50% of these sales are bringing their kids with them. I'm really cuffed about this. I'm sure this is a really high figure and means that our marketing messages are getting through. Our plans for the kids stuff are now way further forward than the art and confirmed bands. The bands are making us a little jittery. It seems to me like a big game of musical chairs, with bands being the people and the festivals being the chairs. We are hoping to pick up some bands from Latitude which is on the same weekend as us. We have offers in for various bands we love but until other festivals (bigger ones) had decided we are not able to do much. I seems to be just the way it works.

On the Tuesday night football front I've fallen foul to a weird groin strain which won't go away. Hoping it gets better for Barcelona match.

You: Do you know what, Sophie from the highways department of this borough council in which I work would probably love to come to the Deer Shed Festival, she could bring her kids, coz it's dead family friendly. I think I'll send her an email now and include their web site address (www.deershedfestival.com) and Facebook page (www.facebook.com/deershed), she spends lots of time on Facebook instead of ordering in vital stocks of grit for rural roads. Someone's wife could have an embarassing slide into a hedge in her Volvo between Boroughbridge and Skelton if she doesn't sort it.

Sophie: Wow, that festival looks great! I'll become a fan of their Facebook page right away and discuss coming with my hubby later tonight after driving swiftly home on a road with no snow on it.

You: That's great, Sophie says she may well come to the festival. This word of mouth thing really works well. I might even put up some posters in the kitchen area of this large public sector department, others are bound to see them whilst waiting for the kettle to boil. The Deer Shed owe me a free pint of that lovely silky smooth local Hambleton ale they're going to have for my efforts!

Sophie: What I'd love right now is a toasted tea cake.

You: I bet that there are loads of other people who work in big companies who could spread the word, or who perhaps belong to sports teams ...

You get the idea.

I've not had the restful Christmas I would of liked, mostly due to George Clooney's new film (Up In The Air - looks good) being nominated for 6 Golden Globes and me having to make a load more online banner ads than I would otherwise of had to do. To say I'm stressed is a massive understatement, having worked on this job through most of the holidays. It's certainly a scary step up in profile for my Paramount work. The last film I did was Friday 13th part 12 (I ask you) where after painstakingly animating knives slashing their way through the screen for The Sun 'homepage takeover' we were told that the Sun was a 'family' newspaper and wouldn't tolerate such violence on it's site. Perhaps sex and violence are indeed separate after all. 

Still, good to be busy and offsetting our spiralling festival costs, the number of tickets we need to sell to break even keeps creeping up. I still think of Wilf's death bed test as the dark clouds start to form over my head and it helps.

But hey, we have indie legends The Wedding Present headlining our first ever festival. I must of listened to 'Interstate 5' over 50 times over the holidays, such a massive track - go www.deershedfestival.com/music.aspx for a listen. We are chuffed. We think it places us just where we want to be musically in the festival market and it will make booking the rest of the lineup over the next few months so much easier.

Lots of thought gone into marketing messages too, bringing up some interesting discussions. For example if 2 weeks before the festival you decide that you need to sell loads more tickets should you target outside of your demographic? Our festival will appeal to families, 25-35 year old seasoned festival goers, Wedding Present fans and the folks that come along to our In The Dock nights at the Thirsk Courthouse. We are not going to strongly appeal to 16-20 year olds because we are targeting families. 16-20 year olds will go to Leeds Festival and have a much better time. The issue being really that we don't really particularly want 16-20 year olds because they tend to get hideously high/low/drunk (bless 'um) and our more grown up audience would leave saying that the festival was really good apart from that one group of lads/lasses that fell over their tent at 3 in the morning landing on top of their kids etc etc... and never come back or recommend it to their mates. This is not something we had thought about until our friend (Dr Marketing) brought it up. He never got any trouble at his 2000+ dance nights because the website had pink on it and it never appealed anyone who was likely to cause them a headache on the night. Wise.

Other news, today is Andy's first day working for us at mission control [office photo to follow]. We hope he can make good sandwiches. Andy will work on marketing and loads of other random jobs. Our office is starting to look like a call centre - the drum kit has had to go elsewhere.

In other other news, my mastery of the internet has built us a ticketing system and festival tickets are now on sale through PayPal. Be the first guinea pig to test it at www.deershedfestival.com/tickets.aspx and win an unwanted Christmas present :)

Christmas here already. We seem to have reached the half way point between starting to organise the festival and the date at which it will happen.

I think we are generally in good shape.

We have booked our headline act, which we're very excited about (to be announced after Christmas) We have our web site live and ticketing system built and tested. Our licence application is starting to throw up issues that will need ironing out, but after one wobbly day where we thought the whole thing might go belly up, we believe we are back on track.

We are employing our friend Andy part time in the New Year to handle whatever festival tasks we throw at him and we're delighted he has agreed to help out. After talking to a couple of marketing gurus recently I'm more confident than before that we have got the emphasis right as far as our 'offering' is concerned.

Here are some rather inspiring pics of Baldersby Park and the Deer Sheds taken yesterday at minus 6 degrees. What is stoping festivals having Wombles do the litter picking? Some legal hurdles no doubt.

Merry Christmas xx

Loads going on at the moment and I must admit to allowing myself to become quite excited.

The licence application has finally gone in after loads and loads of work by Kate and Smithy, quite a slog to get it all together. Now follows a period of one month during which people can raise concerns about our plans, fingers crossed. Kate looks knackered.

The web site is now live, www.deershedfestival.com, I've just finished the ticketing sales system (not live yet) but need to write some terms and conditions before it's ready to go. We know who we are likely to have headlining but we need it confirmed before it's anywhere near official. We are listening a more new bands than we have ever done in our lives before.

I've written a vague marketing plan and Paul and I are off to see Paul's brother in-law in Sheffield. He's doing a marketing degree but also used to promote big big club nights a few years ago. Just the man to have read over my first ever marketing plan which I'm quite chuffed with. Not sure what he'll make of us wandering round York on a Saturday dressed up in reindeer costumes with the red noses removed.

As I speak Kate is chatting to a delightful couple of ladies who organise very cool markets who we would like organise all the stalls that we are going to have at the festival. I really like going round the shops at festivals, buying presents for the kids, it's sometimes a really welcome change of scene and you can't have too many skull tattoos.

We also have now got a Facebook fan page

Please please become a fan if you haven't already and tell everyone else about it.

In other news I scored 5 goals at Tuesday night football in what can only be described as a 'one in a thousand year event' (to use the flood statistics terminology.) This week I was back to scoring no goals and the ball hitting my foot and bouncing straight off. Very disappointing. We have the Tuesday night football Xmas party this week complete with wags and disco. Lush.

I suppose I am personally, today at least, going through one of the many anticipated festival lows.

I've been semi entrusted with marketing the festival. If I'm honest, I've never marketed anything in my life before. Marketing is such a broad term. Yes, we can do internet, print posters and the obvious stuff but neither Kate nor I have got time to REALLY get stuck in, like if we were on the dole - going to every gig and flyering the entire audience, flyering festival car parks, walking up to people in the street who look groovy like they might come - the stuff you would do if your life depended upon it (which it does.)

The band we really really want to headline I'm not sure we'll get and for the last few weeks since Claire's visit I've been semi pinning my hopes on this coming off, hence the downer. The chances I think could be quite slim, and will inevitably come down to money. Bands sell festivals of course (?) but we want a proportion of the audience to come because we've INSISTED on it because we've convinced them it will be great through the power of MARKETING. I need to make some phone calls and find a some spunky fella who can help. It might be just paranoia whilst we have no bands to create a buzz, but I suppose it's best addressed now because it is the one identified weaknesses in the otherwise top team.

We're already getting lots of requests to play at the Deer Shed, nice and thanks, but what we really need are keen and spunky marketeers. Please please get in touch.

I'm having the usual tussle with the website design. There are no shortage of sites to rip off. There is a festival site design cliche which involves sticking lots of illustrations of big tops, tents, stages etc onto a photo of the empty site in order to create some sort of best scenario snapshot. We have no pictures from last years festival and the deer shed doesn't look great at the moment as the grass is regrowing after the new site entrance going in so I can't even get any new shots. We could possibly do something at night to conjure up some atmos. The website as I stare at it now on the smug Mac looks ok, but this morning it looked like NHS direct (my favourite), far too clinical. I'm starting to think that very few festival sites look that good anyway and are thrown together as more pressing issues raise their heads.

Yesterday I was looking rather desperately at what other festival websites look like. All had loads of photos of lasts year's bands on stage and people having an ace time. One site in America had 800 bands on over 8 days, ffs. We have 12.

Finally, and well off topic but a bit more cheery, for those who are keen to know how Tuesday night football is going, last night we won 4-3 (I think) and I scored 2 of them (defo). Riding the wave of well being following this game I booked my place on the Tuesday night football European tour to Barcelona where we are going to play a local side (gulp) in May next year around the time of my 40th birthday. Can't think of a better way to spend it. Of course by then we might of sold some tickets eh?

Just said bye bye to our friend Claire. Claire is an old friend who works for a major London live music agent. We always knew it would be a coup to have her book our stages for us, and she's on with it and using the word 'we' to describe the festival. After being asked loads of times who we are going to have playing, we are a little closer today. We've got 12 slots to fill over a day and night, 3 of which are already vaguely accounted for leaving 9 up for grabs. I must admin that Claire's visit has given me more confidence that we can pull this off. We have a shopping list of bands for her to go after. It would be improper to list them here at this stage much as I'd like to.

Finally got to meet up with tent man Roland. I met him at Jolly Days, a posh camping site in a beautiful woodland setting near York. Roland has made them all of their bigger tents, he looks like one of the 3 musketeers, we had a good long detailed chat about tents and rain shelters. The rain is such a big issue. We are coming round to thinking that it is easier to keep people dry by handing out ponchos than building bespoke shelters. If the ground is wet you can use ponchos or plastic sheets to sit on. So the tent thing is a bit up in the air like so much else.

Kate is as I type on the phone to another old friend Liz, who used to be a manager in various HMVs in the smoke. Hoping she'll be up for helping organise casual festival staff. Her fella and her went to a festival every weekend last year. He also works for HMV and recently was very involved with HMV's buy out of various music venues, he's met everyone who's anyone in the music world. I'm hoping that he'll be able to give us some tips for next years big break through artists..

The J Tillman gig (a Fleet Fox) was a great success and Kate and I managed it without the domestic that we used to have at around 5pm on the day after the gig. Thanks to all who came and all that helped. We had a lot of new faces, all good.

The artists we have on at the courthouse will usually stay over at our house on the night of the gig. I'm sure it worries them more than it worries us, no one wants to wake up with a stranger in the bed as once happened to Boo Hewerdine. I had to, Snow White like, make seven beds for the seven members of the band and crew. Making beds is the hardest work I've ever done, except when I worked on a mobile grain cleaning unit when I was 18 and had to lift 50kg sacks. Another job my Mum got me which I didn't get sacked from, and only later found out why. Our friend Wilf says catching 100 specific chickens out of a shed of 1000 is harder.

Someone has to have youngest daughter's princess bed. This time it was Jason. The princess bed is a small double four poster that we've draped in pink cloth. It was abandoned in a house my father-in-law rented out along with various uniforms (police woman, nurse, french maid) and interesting accessories - you get the idea. I hope the rightful owner doesn't ever want it back as it was a pig to get up the stairs. It is not very comfy either, presumably down to the small pea beneath the mattress.

So, a good gig. I didn't do the sound so could drink lots of the Hambleton Ale cask beer that we got for the first time. Stefan was the sound guy and we ended up with just a single microphone on stage, it sounded great. We also did a survey on the night, asking questions about the sort of festival our crowd would like, if at all.

Everyone was more than happy to fill it out and we got some interesting responses. We asked, amongst other things, what sort of bands people would like to see. For example 'local bands', 'well known headliners' or 'up and coming hipsters'. We put 'tribute bands' on the list, just to see. Thankfully our audience went out of their way NOT to check that option, many putting NO! NO! NO! next to it. Phew. We are on the festival day going head to head with a Thirsk show put on by some nice folks from the North Yorkshire carpet mafia. Last year they put on an Abba tribute and sold 1800 or so tickets. The venn diagram of our event and theirs will not have much overlap, to the relief of both parties I'm sure.

We asked specifically what bands they'd like to see. Today we've spotified The Decemberists, Midlake, Band Of Horses, Birdman Rallies. Surely to 'spotify' is now a verb. We asked what might make the festival a success. If people suggested anything here it was good loos, someone wanted no teenagers. We'll try to get some good ones, perhaps insisting on Duke Of Edinburgh Award Scheme bronze medal is a minimum requirement. We are looking at building some composting toilets though, just looking into the legal and scientific details, have a look at Comfy Crappers (bad site and name). Going to the loo at the festival shouldn't be the miserable experience it so often is, and the people have spoken.

STILL no word from Rolly the tent man or from Helen Roddy. Thinking of naming something after Helen Roddy, like the Helen Roddy stage or similar.

It has been a positive week in festivalland.

Jim and Stego are on with alterations to the deers sheds. We are fixing drains, building roads and putting a 'hard standing' in front of the sheds.

It is a 10 ton digger, for all you digger fans.

We met up with Mike, our traffic management expert who also seems to know everything about festival infrastucture. He lives in the next village to us and is happy to advise us for some free gig tickets. It is possibly the one best singular thing that has happened so far to the organisation to meet this chap. We have already rearranged the site plan based upon issues that he highlighted. The big issue is not destroying your site with heavy traffic before the festival has even started during the setup.

Kate's sister Hannah, who crafts a killer press release has just agree to do our festival press. Possibly the one best singular thing that has happened so far to the organisation since the last one.

Still no sign of Roland, the country's busiest maker of bespoke tents, but below one of his creations just to put you on...

There are some 'glass half empty' people about. I don't expect everyone to be a fan of music, and live music in particular. I don't understand golf but people seem to have genuine passion for it. So when people say 'why would I want to stand in a field all day listening to bands?' I do sympathise if the only gig you've ever been to is Robbie Williams. It does annoy me though when 'artists' don't appreciate that someone is prepared to put their own money on the line to do something GOOD. Not worthy good or charitable good, but good good, to search out the outstanding and unique.

If there's not an ill targeted arts council grant available they're not interested. We glibly await what happens next year, if the funding axe falls heavily on the arts (and it's 2 - 0 with the referee looking at his watch...)

Some people's glasses are half full. Like the fella I spoke to who's company runs all the car parking at some very large festivals indeed. Turns out he lives only a mile or so from us. He couldn't of been more enthusiastic about what we're doing and we're meeting up this week. Top.

Latest news, and to carry on the now tired glasses theme, Kate's glass couldn't be fuller (snore) after she got an A*****++ in her booze licence exam. Roland the tent man coming this week, hoorah. I also found the lovely and mysterious Helen Roddy on Facebook (see a few posts down) and invited her to be my friend, no word yet...weird...

As well as our first request for festival tickets I've personally had some very good news. We might have to buy a van. It might be unavoidable, in fact it is probably necessary. I can feel the envy as you read.

I'm sure I'm not the only fella who feels a sense of legitimacy and belonging behind the wheel of a Ford Transit. The feeling that one might be doing a proper useful job, like building a house or delivering paint. That someone might not realise you are a middle class pen pushing, keyboard poking idiot.

I used to have an old red Astra van which I inherited from my mother-in-law's business. It was great, not as great as a transit but still a van. I drove it to work in Leeds in my new job as an IT technical consultant, the managing director was not too happy about having given a customer facing role to someone who couldn't of chosen a more inappropriate vehicle for client meetings. His name was Guy Hodges, I always thought he should be in a band called Guy Hodges and the Hedges. He once got my name wrong twice, calling me Paul before correcting himself and calling me Martin, such was the impact I made in that job. I once went up to Perth council and gave the 'worst training session we've ever had'. My hostile views of the public sector started here.

The red van used to go with me down to London when we were reletting our flat and I used to have to go into various builders and plumbing merchants. I tried to make it through an entire visit to the plumming shop without getting found out. It started well, I got out of van outside the shop, pencil behind ear tape measure in pocket, essentially I looked like a plumber. I asked the fella behind the counter if he knew any good plummers, he assumes that mean to install some hi-tech central heating system. What's the job he asks? Changing some taps I say. Much chortling behind trade counter - it's not rocket science says one - not unless your rocket has got taps on it, says another. Huff.

Anyway I aspire to owning a van, useful for general festival humping and mountain biking trips. Kate says it will have to be parked at the back of the house, I've yet to tackle her properly on this. Presumably so it doesn't intimidate the Volvo. Girls don't understand.

In other festival news, a terrible start to the PR campaign to get the local villagers onside as our highways contractor (who is putting in the new festival entrance) diggers through the village's main BT phone line cable. No less than 4 BT vans turn up and work into the night to fix it. Such are the unforeseeables. I can already hear the mumblings in the pubs. Might have to go on the PR offensive and call in Max what's his face.

I've put up a simple festival holding page at www.deershedfestival.com. It doesn't say much but it will serve to get the site onto Google's listings and as high up a search for 'Yorkshire festival' as possible.

There is much to do at the festival site to get it ready, but we're making a start. Below a picture from this weekend's party, burning lots of the wood from the trees cleared to make way for the new site entrance (next pic)

For all you in the sarf who can't remember the word for those rectangular yellow things that appear in fields sometimes (bales) I've included some pictures of some handy rural farm vehicles for educational purposes. These can be casually dropped into conversation at Clapham dinner parties and are bound to impress.

First up is father-in-laws Manitou forklift (he loves it). Running at 3 miles to the gallon, it has serious grunt and is very handy in the garden for moving sheds, even full ones. The Maserati of forklifts.

Here is what is called a Gator, made by John Deer, but the 5 year olds will know this already because it is green, all John Deer stuff is green. Not as much fun as the previously knicked Honda quad bike, but a safer and completely legal way to transport small children.

After months of drawing rubbish festival logos in me moleskin diary Matt Pattinson has struck again within a few hours of receiving his In The Dock newsletter, thanks Matt, the feeling is that it's a winner

I must admit to being very pleased when a theme develops for a blog posting. The theme this time is stuff that is dull as. This theme was reinforced having just had a meeting with our very nice financial adviser Martin. Martin, who I'm sure thinks I'm an idiot (but would never let on) has to watch me glaze over again as he and Kate discuss what proportion of our savings should go into corporate bonds and then me whitter on about how on his next visit could he find us an investment with a bit more PIZAZZ!!!

I've been glazing over quite alot recently. Kate, Smithy and I had a meeting about the licence application and the health and safety document that we have to write. Smithy, who as you will remember shares my first name, my hobbies and my haircut has only gone and bought an almost identical pair of specs to mine. This means that we both now look like a white version of Howard of the Halifax TV ads. I have to insist that he removes them if we're both out in public.

Anyway, who would work in health and safety? What would you think about working in a government department that other countries simply do not feel the need for? You can't help but love the French. Kate and Smithy come close to an argument over whether anyone would ask a roadie for his health and safety assessment before setting foot on the festival site. In my twenties I had a stint on the road with a band called Sunhouse (another story), often sharing a hotel room with our roadie Nick from Edinburgh. Having taken more drugs than [insert your best known hellraiser here] Nick couldn't go to sleep without the telly on, his body odour was legendary and he certainly hadn't done his risk assessment the day a year or two ago when I heard he had fallen down a flight of stairs and barely, and I mean BARELY, cheated death.

I suspect if he'd done his health and safety risk assessment properly he'd wouldn't of allowed himself out of bed that morning. It is with this view of the roadie lifestyle that Kate refuses to stand next to any roadie with a clipboard. Quite right, although, we don't want to be sued if anything heavy falls out of the sky. Can't help but feel all the H & S stuff is an exercise in bureaucratic box ticking but if we need to do it, do it we shall. The licence is king.

Anyway, deeply dull.

Lastly on a dull note, I've made a start on our web based contacts database. Due to Microsofts usual inability to build anything truely useful for less than £20,000 I've constructed a database within which you can classify contacts. You will also be able do the following sort of thing - email all contacts who are festival ticket buyers AND who have kids AND have been to J Tillman. It will be an absolutely spamtastic marketing tool. Outlook obviously supports lists of contacts but not contacts belonging to one or many other groups and filtering thereof. Told you it was dull.

I've not gone for a pint after footie tonight so I'd better blog instead innit. One goal for me in a quite subdued game. One of my midlife [crisis] goals is to not be the worst player at Tuesday night football which I've been going to for 18 months. Recently I've been doing much better, I generally blame my Dad for my late start at footie competence. I'm sure reading 2 Sunday papers cover to cover whilst listening to Wagner didn't leave much park time (but you are forgiven.) Other midlife goals include ramping my mountain bike 6ft into the air and having a hit single, can't blame my Dad for these.

As we're in the process of filling in the licence forms for the festival I've been to see some of the people who live around the site, so far I've been to see a neighbouring farm and static caravan park. I also have to write to all the local parish councils and let them know what we are planning before they find out by other means.

I think it is fair to say that some I've talked to are somewhat worried by what we are planning, security of property being at the top of the list of concerns. Some of these concerns are legitimate and others are not as quantifyable, but ultimately these concerns need to be put to rest as far as is possible and we need to deliver on any promises around the time of the festival. The continuation of the licence depends upon it. Dull.

After looking at these stretch tents we had a really helpful visit from tent expert Alex, who put us in touch with tent expert Rolly. Both these guys make tents to order out of traditional canvas and I'm really excited to see some pictures of the sort of tents Rolly could make for us. I'll post them here when I get hold of them.

I've also bought a picture off the very talented David Setter AKA the Compulsive Scribbler. He is a facebook friend of our friend Matt Pattinson. Matt is a brilliant illustrator who has over the years not given in to commercial pressure (i.e. he's broke) and has done exactly what he wants to do. We're hoping that both of these guys will be at the festival doing workshops, selling their stuff and contributing to our graffiti doodle wall. Hopefully we can get at least one more contempory artist or illustrator from Matt or David's recommendations.

Overall the sort of festival we're going to have is coming into focus, with 2 music stages and a kids tent being the main three areas of entertainment. We're going to be spending money on 10 bands and a handful of other acts (caberet, comedy, spoken word.) We're doing quality not quantity and I can foresee lots of heated discussions amongst us as to who we approach and ultimately book. There will be no fillers.

After countless scribbles I also think that I've cracked the logo and I've just registered www.deershedfestival.com (don't hold your breath). One thing I'm not sure about though is whether this blog should feature on the festival site itself. Kate says it should, but then what commercial enterprise contains such random ramblings?

Just back off holiday. Blimey the English stick out on beaches in the South of France, only me with specs on and a sensible hat - don't even mention body hair. Even more in love with the Volvo after 1000+ smooooth motorway miles with the aircon on and the cruise control cynically pegged at 89.5mph and the complete works of J K Rowling keeping the kids from endless I-spy.

On return J Tillman tickets have now sold out pretty much.

This weeks big issues apart from mopping up the mess from 2 weeks without web access (if you run a web business like me) are to talk to the man who owns the caravan park adjacent to our festival site, sort out the main festival tent, create a contacts database, and make a start on the festival website without which no marketing activity can proceed.

The tent thing is interesting. We have for a while fancied what is called a 'stretch tent'. These are pretty new and very sophisticated looking. Only a handfull of companies hire these out, none of whom are in the North of England. The hire price seems to be about one third of the purchase price which is obviously making us wonder whether we can buy one to use ourselves but also to hire out. Much depends upon business link grants as to whether we go ahead we think. Suffice to say as far as tents go they are lush (to the max).

The website will probably start life as a holding page of some sort. Not sure whether to include the contents of this blog on it as sometimes you can know too much about the fragile state of an organisation's foundations. Starting to think that I'm thinking about the branding of this thing too hard. If you design stuff for a living like I sometimes do having a totally blank canvas (i.e. no logo or anything and a brief which you can change) is a bit daunting.

The main problem with this festival is that the other things in your life do not stop. Kids have to be looked after still, the garage needs tidying (just finished that including getting some dubious items into the non-recyclables skip at the tip, under the noses of the Nazi waste operatives - a small victory against the council) Both Kate and I have our own businesses which take priority over festival organisation if we want to ever go on holiday again.

A twenty something very sweet girl walks past wearing a pink tshirt and shorts that are almost hotpants, the back of her tshirt reads 'Not too shoddy Helen Roddy'. True.

A mum of three stood by her tent mentions to her friend something about her new £4000 boob job. All us boys stop in us tracks eager to see the results and she is happy to obligue. Very friendly. We tip our hats to the skill of the surgeon like gents.

Our next door neighbours in the camp site are trying to boil a kettle with a small handful of grass, hay at best.

A 15 minute slice of Kendal Calling, a three day festival near Penrith. The above is furthur evidence that the best things at this kind of festival are not the bands but the people. About one third of which have some sort of fancy dress/face paint. This festival formula is unlikely to be followed that closely by us, but after 3 tins of IPA and some very good company I could swear that I was journeying a class A experience. So infectious is the atmosphere, so friendly are the revellers and so much to look at, and laugh at.

The usual roller coaster of emotions and fragile festival states of mind - all based upon the weather and levels of various stimulants.

On the whole a good vibes, good value weekend for the audience who are mostly under thirty and local we presume. £70 for the weekend, £5 to park. The Streets/The Zutons/Ash headline the main stage. I don't catch any band which I really like. I'm sure there were some. We spend half of Saturday sat in the camp site drinking tea, coffee, whisky and canada dry whilst chatting. My favourite period of the festival, make mental note.

Late Saturday night brings a slight public domestic between Kate and me. If you get up at 7.30am with a hangover and consume 10 tins of cheap lager over the next 10 hours by 11 pm you've had enough and your tent with self inflating mattress beckons.

But much food for thought on a jolly weekend in the lakes.

Not very welcoming is it.

I love branding.

These days there are alot of festivals innit. How to make your festival different and convey those differences successfully.

I was thinking about the festival website last night, thinking about websites is what I do for a living, but it is always challenging no matter how straight-forward you think a job is going to be.

We need a website doing pretty quickly, even though it is going to be an ongoing work in progress until the festival is done. You can't do any other marketing activity until you have a site to point people at.

I've written down a few pointers for myself, which could easily change.

The site needs appear cool to the music fans, parents and any other demographic we have. This is leading me to feature targeted festival content very strongly on the homepage, almost in a magazine style. With a section for music, art, kids, nature, camping. We need to show an understanding of what we're putting on and pull people in very quickly.

Check out some local competition www.limetreefestival.co.uk (note Latitude logo font - fancy stooping so low as to rip off Latitude) This is a standard bright festival site, the no brainer option - we need to appear more high brow than this. It's not a circus or a fairground we're putting on, there will be no rave tent.

All this is subtle, most festivals have a lot in common on the face of it. We need to convey cool, intelligent and fun in such a way that it's the only show in town.

Now having second thoughts on the below post, I've emailed the crew to get their thoughts, and get laughed at.

"It'll never go my boy, not in a month of Sundays" Grandpa Potts, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Now, this might turn out to be a right unnecessary diversion.

In a nutshell we want to be a Latitude up north. Latitude is a high quality middle class UK festival in Suffolk. Suffolk is 'handy' for Londoners but not if you live up here.

Thing is, it appears at least, that there is no festival called Longitude. We've just registered longitudefestival.com and .co.uk which I was surprised where free. Whether these two domains are doomed to follow my other failed domain projects time will tell.

I registered www.mcshag.com hoping for a relaxation of the prostitution laws, and supposing that there would be a market on the high street for a standardised sexual experience - brothel etique varies enormously (I've heard). Not that well thought through, but it did bring new meaning to 'supersize me' :| Another, not quite so mental but still unrealised is www.pubsalad.com, let you explore that unfinished site for yourself. I have doomed plans for a site dedicated to the spiritual side of mountain biking called 'god rides a hardtail' or similar as if I've not got enough to be doing.

On the face of it this Longitude thing is a cynical move, a cheap marketing ploy which piggy backs on someone else's hard work. It may well be taken this way UNLESS the quality of our festival matches or exceeds that of Latitude. We too have an obelisk, a lake and some woods.

It's not quite as stupid an idea as it first seems (UPDATE - no, it is). We need to do some digging into potential trade mark complications, but a google search on longitude festival brings up nothing. Not sure what festival republic are going to make of it. Horse head in the bed.

As I've mentioned before Kate and I have been putting on small gigs in the Courthouse in Thirsk for 2 or 3 years now, we do 4 or 5 a year and call them 'In The Dock'. The venue is lovely, a converted courthouse with high ceilings, a great PA and lighting gig – a lottery funded venture if there ever was one.

The venue holds 70, which we always manage to sell. We do it in a cafe style with tables and it makes for a really intimate gig. Above all else we look after the artists, the audience really listens and appreciates and buy lots of CDs. I'm sure it is the highlight of quite a few tours, and I know that sounds like us blowing our own trumpets but this is what the artists say. All good.

Anyway, these shows tick along, selling out each time and we don't have to make much marketing effort. All this is changing which is unexpected. I had thought that once we started talking about festivals these Thirsk gigs would become much less important, but they are more important than ever.

They are a marketing opportunity of course, we expect lots of people who come to them to also come to the Deer Shed, we're likely to have some of the In The Dock artists back to play the second stage in the park. But also we've just had J Tillman confirmed for a show later this year. He is the drummer from the Fleet Foxes no less and is an artist in his own right. This is a bit of a coup, the Fleet Foxes are the thinking man's festival band of the moment and these sorts of associations are extremely helpful to say the least.

Each new In The Dock show we publicise (and we think we ought to make more effort) will be a dry run for the festival. We should know who the local journalists are who could make a difference (if any) but we don't. We're also doing a survey aimed at our Thirsk audience asking them what sort of festival they might like to come to, and hoping they don't all want a top tribute band.

I've also been thinking about branding, I love branding, much more interesting than business link funding which I can't even bring myself to write about. I've got quite a few ideas for logos and websites, the researching of which took me to the Latitude web site. We've never been to Latitude but it is clearly what we are aiming at. High quality, with arts and literature (not just music), in a beautiful setting. Good vibes. And a source of ideas waiting to be plundered...

We had a big meet last night. Seven of us who are interested and keen.

We all went down to the site, the overall vibe was very positive, many had not seen the site before and were impressed and 'feeling it'.

Kate got a number of funding ideas and strategies out of it from a fella we know Andy, who is a curator and used to work at The Tate in St. Ives. I must admit that the funding side of things leaves me cold. I understand that it is very important for the arty stuff we want to do but it usually means jumping through somebody else's bureaucratic hoops, and it goes against the grain for me. This is why you need a team innit.

Much more exciting for me was some great ideas from the guys regarding site layout especially in regards to keeping the thing as weather proof as possible. We also had quite a heated discussion about music line up, with Kate and I verging on a public domestic.

We have a limited budget for music (of course.) We have a favour that we could pull in from a certain late 80's indie band, but the feeling round the table is that we shouldn't go down that route. We need to make this festival different. How often do you go to a festival and come back saying that Dreadzone (or whoever is headlining) was the best act. Never for me. You just have to look at the recent Glasto coverage on the BBC. Blur aside all the big old headlines were dull as, we know the songs and with the best will in the world they don't add much more on the night.

I like wandering about (like last time we were at Wickerman in Scotland) and happening cross bands in random tents, usually catching the last few songs of some ace outfit you've never heard of. The country is packed with brilliant acts that will never enjoy high billing or high festival fees but nevertheless will have people raving at work the next day after having parted with a tenner for a CD, and people like feeling like they've discovered them themselves.

This is decided as far as I'm concerned and it's a strong marketing angle too. Put your trust in us, dear punter, to lay on a great line up who you haven't heard of. It's what we do at our gigs in Thirsk, people come on trust now. It's that whole problem regarding how people spend their valuable leisure time. Going to see an unknown is a risk, going to the Showcase or to see a Madness tribute isn't. With an unknown the highs are higher and the lows are lower, it's a question of how you like to live your life, Dead Poets Society, carpe deim and all that...

How ambitious should you be?

Everything about organising this is quantifiable EXCEPT how many people will buy tickets. It is a COMPLETE unknown. That affects the budget which affects what sort of festival you can put on.

The realisation that you can't have everything that you want - last night we downgraded from two stages to one and the whole thing moved back into the comfort zone, but it is easy to get carried away.

We have a certain amount of money that we are prepared to lose on this event. This amount is calculated to just pass the 'death bed' test. This is a test used often by our friend Wilf. Wilf (nickname) is a local farmer who puts most of his life's decisions to the 'death bed' test. Basically when that day comes do you wish that you'd done X thing, or not - most things pass. Wilf is going to be put in charge of procurement as he spends a large % of his leisure time on ebay, buying bicycle attachments. He has the most bonkers bike rig you'll ever see which can accommodate himself and 4 kids under 7, I'll try to get a photo of it. Anyway an obsession with ebay and a list from me off desirable things and a year to find them should pay off. I've not asked him yet.

I'm in charge of marketing this. In charge of parting 500 or so unknown folks with £30 (or so.) One reason for doing a blog, other than therapy and to avoid paying work, is to have some marketing material upfront, a year ahead. I did just notice that a person I don't know has been reading it, god knows how they found it (do tell!)

Father-in-law has a field or two adjacent to the A1, I'm thinking that a banner or two on the side of the road would reach a lot of people. 'They' say you need to hit people 3 times with a message (in this case exposure to the festival) before they act, not sure how true this is...

We do need representatives within large organisations to champion us, like hospitals, councils etc.. Perhaps for a free ticket after reaching so many ticket sales.

Bit random this post, sorry bout that. That's the Guardian put off.