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...