Rocking Your World Friday week 24

Week 24?  Gosh, we’re almost half way through the year!! Time is as ever flying by shockingly fast.

And on that note, the first thing I am grateful for this week is these RYWF posts … It’s so easy to get to the end of a year, and think “what did we do this year???” and forget half of it.  I am really looking forward to sitting down (with a bottle of Magners, because I don’t really do the wine thing) on New Years Eve and re-reading all of these posts and re-remembering what a brilliant time we have had.

So – where were we?

Work last week was crazy busy, so for once I was grateful of a client meeting in London last Friday, just because it got me out of the office for the day.  The meeting was up on Oxford Street and there were still union jacks everywhere from the jubilee celebrations, it looked nice and festive.  Oh and right next door to where we had our meeting there was a little kiosk selling the BEST cookies ever.  So that was a nice change of a day.

On Saturday I spent most of the day making pom poms for international yarn bombing day – it’s very relaxing, pom pom making, I can recommend it to anyone :)  Here’s the full story

Sunday brought the highlight of my week – in fact one of the highlights of my year.

But before we get to that, can I just say that I want to chuck out a big chunk of gratitude to one thing – the WEATHER.

Yes, I know you will now all think I’m mad, as it feels like it has rained non stop for weeks.  BUT there hasn’t been a single thing that we have planned so far this year that has been ruined by bad weather.  We’ve been so lucky.  Yes there have been plenty of wet days, but these have been the days we planned to be mainly indoors anyway, so it didn’t matter.  So thank you to the weather by rocking my world by always playing nice when we’ve need it to.

So yes, Sunday was a case in point.  Because that was the day we went to the Download rock festival.  Thursday and Friday at Download had, by all accounts, been awful, constant rain, ankle deep liquid mud, it quickly picked up a new nickname:

Saturday the rain stopped, but apparently that just turned the liquid mud into something akin to quicksand and people were getting stuck in it left right and centre, and worse, injured : (

But Sunday?  Our day?  The mud was all dried up, and it was glorious sunshine all day!  I don’t know which one of the pantheon of ancient gods I have appeased, but I’m grateful for the personal good weather service :)

We had a FANTASTIC day – so many great bands to see!  The only disappointment for me was that I missed the Dropkick Murphys set as it clashed with Soundgarden :( But as I’ve seen the Dropkicks countless times before and have never seen Soundgarden, Chris Cornell & co won that clash hands down for me (Jay went to see the Dropkicks though, so at least one of us saw them)

The bands I DID get to see were:

(deep breath)

• DevilDriver
• We Are The Ocean
• August Burns Red (we had never heard of these before but they were excellent)
• Anthrax (I've been following this lot for, ahem, almost 30 years (god I’m so old) and I still love them in general, and the wonderful Scott Ian in particular, to bits)

• Shadows Fall (BEST dreadlocks eva!)

• Black Label Society (only watched one song)
• Sebastian Bach (screechy awful noise, watched less than one song)
• Lamb Of God (who I enjoyed a LOT, more than I thought I would)

• Shinedown (who were really good although one of my friends thinks the singer was miming….)
• Refused (Swedish dork-punks, excellent)
• The mighty mighty Soundgarden (no relation to the Mighty Mighty Bosstones :) ) – Soundgarden were the main reason I was there and they definitely didn’t disappoint.  CC was in fine voice and they played a great set.

• Rise Against - only saw half their set which was a pity but we have seen them a few times in recent years, ......

.....  and we didn’t want to miss any of…..

• BLACK SABBATH – the headliners.  Who, sacriligeous as it is, I wasn’t overly fussed about seeing until a week or two before the gig when it kind of hit me that I was going to see Black Freaking Sabbath!!! :D  Pretty much without whom, none of the other music I love would have ever existed.

Ozzy might be 63 but he can still jump! :)

All in all a great day soaking up the sunshine and world class live music in equal measures

(NB all the live pics above are half inched from the festival's website, I didn't get that close! :) )

On Monday I was grateful for the ability to work from home, as I was really not feeling up to the trek to the office after about 3 hours sleep and the long drive home.  So let's hear it for technology!

On Tuesday I had a loooong day as had to drive back up to the East Midlands for a client meeting late in the afternoon in Nottingham which meant getting home late.  That's not such a good thing, but the mileage I can claim back on expenses is :)

"most played" on my phone

I spent the evening updating the music on my phone - as my new (ish) phone has a whopping 16 Gb storage, yet I have just been listening to the same old same old stuff that I could fit onto my old 4 Gb SD card.  Download (along with one of my fellow circle journal artists reminding me how fab the first Disturbed album was) gave me the push I needed to get around to taking advantage of all that extra space, and fill up my phone with TONS of great music.

I've been pretty much permanently attached to it ever since - even walking around in town with my headphones in which I haven't done in years, I'd forgotten how surreal that is - like you are in a movie and you can hear the soundtrack playing :)

And, just to top off this particularly Rockin' week, on Thursday we booked our tickets for this November's Warped festival at Ally Pally:

This will be the kids' first proper festival, and with a great line up (Lost Prophets, Bring Me The Horizon, Less Than Jake, Funeral For A Friend, Bowling For Soup, New Found Glory, and loads of other bands) plus the skateboard competitions and crazy golf etc, it should be a lot of fun for the whole family.

|m|      :)

So I'd better rock on over to Virginia's blog (see what I did there? ;) ) and link this post up......

Feel free to come and join us and share some rockin' moments of your own.....