Les Anglais!

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.