Battle for the bands

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..