Bestival - yay!

Gawd, I'm late to the "I went to Bestival" bandwagon aren't I? It was only, er, about a month ago. Jeez Llara! What can I say? I'm a busy chick and I don't always have time to do the blogging.

Something else you should know about me is that, when I've had a few, I find it acceptable to pull this face in pictures...

Note the long since faded and very much past its best rainbow on my face. I'm obsessed with rainbows lately. We've had SO many recently in Edinburgh. Don't believe me? Check out my instagram @llarasnappedwhat (plug, plug).

So, once we'd made the journey to Southampton (taxi, flight, train, bus) ferry terminal, we hopped on the ferry. They had cider in the car park and everything, which was nice. Another thing you should know - not about me this time: it seems that everyone, everyone on the south coast owns a boat. Regardez (I can say that cause it's so close to France):

Boats, boats, boats everywhere!

And so to Bestival. It's an ace festival. A tiny bit big for my liking, if anything, but so visual and captivating and stuff going on everywhere. You could spend the whole weekend doing stuff that didn't involve seeing bands at big stages. Like...going to the cinema, starring in your own film, going on a helter skelter, climbing up the inside of an odd wooden house, watching the fancy dress parade, polka-ing to a crazy Romanian gypsy sounding DJ in the polka tent, mooching about the forest, tobogganing, shopping and generally filling your face with all kinds of delicious food. I love festival food these days!

Cinema | tents | swan on a stick, obvs | Africa bar | make your own blockbuster | amazing view across the festival

At night, the festival becomes so atmospheric with parties in what look like ramshackle houses, the smallest bar ever (in something resembling a garden shed), faux abandoned cars peeking out of mist and all kinds of other goodness!

All kinds of neon crap. By crap, I means AWESOMENESS. I climbed to the top window of the little house. How I didn't do myself a mischief, I do not know.

In spite of there being some huge acts at the festival (hello Stevie Wonder. Totally brill, as it happens), my favourite ones were Scroobius Pip and a random flamenco band with some guy Sadie Frost used to shag in it. Scroobius was just mesmerising and SO much fun. Ditto the flamenco band. We danced our asses off to those guys! Give me that lot over Florence and her wailing ear splitting machine any day! Sorry Flo fans...

Left: flamenco guys | middle: Scroobius Pip. I wonder if that's his real name | right: spooky shit.

Absorb the colour and strangeness...I'd like to hang glittery stars all over my house. I'm not sure how Mr Scribbler would feel about that.

And finally (cause everyone loves and 'and finally' story, right? Especially ones that involve small animals or local initiatives. This involves neither.), here I am promoting the ass off the schuh Welly Exchange in my specially-customised-so-as-to-maximise-warm-sun-on-pasty-Scottish-skin t-shirt. It was such a warm weekend. I miss the warmth.

Who's got orange glittery fingernails and a message for you guys? This gal!

Little Scribbler: goes to Camp Bestival!

Yay! Camp Bestival: the child friendly boutique festival with fun stuff for fancy parents too! Seriously, Camp Bestival is the classiest festival I've ever had the pleasure of. And, unlike the Scottish festivals I'm more likely to be at, it wasn't a mud bath either - double Brucie bonus!

Being a pretty child unfriendly person (children, I don't hate you, I just don't want you and don't want to hear you scream), I thought Camp B might be my worst nightmare. But, it's just so enjoyable that you can't help but be charmed by it and, to be honest, all the small folk kind of add to the fun atmosphere (where else would you get a miniature wooden portaloo?). Plus, the kiddie nature of it means that, while people are chilling and having a drink, it's just in a dead nice relaxed way, as opposed to being right radge (Scottish word alert) and lairy.

One of the other things that's ace about it is that there's so much to do: they have a spoken word tent, arts and crafts for lil 'uns, classic album play-backs in the castle (I know!), AMAZING food, pillow fights, jousting, a delightful forest walk (see creepy, yet awesome, pics below) and more! So even if the line-up is rubbish (which it kind of was), it doesn't matter. We spent a couple of hours sitting on the ground in the sun watching whatever came on next at the tiny bandstand in the field. It was just lovely.

So, while I reckon I'm not ready to pack in the lairy mudfests (Rockness was brilliant fun this year), the poshie-fest has totally won me over too. Roll on Bestival...

I loved the Sunday Best record label stall, with props made entirely from cardboard! My buddies tried to get in to play at the cardboard castle but they were too big.

Sadly, we did not flick our own veg. Insert joke here.

Biggest, most spectacular bubbles ever, blown out of what looked like a giant fishing net. Totes fish friendly way of utilising one of those. Plus, delicious food. My scallops don't look much here but they were divine!

Night time forest walk in the Dingly Dell. Yes, the Dingly Dell. I had a great chat in here with a very small child about seeing fairies. Sometimes it's important to uphold the dream.

Spreading the good word of the schuh welly exchange (that's why I was there) and some more spookiness.

Top left - my real hair. Bottom left - I didn't buy those leggings. I should have. I shall look out for them at Bestival. I can't play the piano but they were everywhere.

As promised - Oxegen

Oxegen festival was a couple of weeks back now - how time flies when you're having fun/working/going to t'gym/catching up with folk/watching shit tv/shopping online*. I was there with work for the Schuh Welly Exchange, which I've mentioned on here before. You'll get the gist from the tent front though...

*delete as applicable

Here are the wellies just waiting to be tried on!

It was great fun chatting to people at the festival and also having the opportunity to be involved in something that's working for a good cause - people literally couldn't believe that all they had to do was hand over their festival muddied shoes and we'd give them a brand new pair of wellies. Woop!

But it wasn't all work...

Oh no, we had time for some eating, drinking exploring and, of course, for some bands and dancing!

Dancing like a loon...

Dress (£5 in sale) and sunnies: H&M, hairband: bought in San Fran on honeymoon. Pal: Dave

Neil and I comparing massive wine bottle sized hands...

And as I mentioned, we had a great time checking out bands - mainly bigger folk since it was mostly in the evening that we were free...

Two Door Cinema Club. And people.

The Strokes. I die. Mr Scribbler was forewarned that if I didn't come home it was because I'd run off with Fabrizio Moretti, AKA one of the finest men EVER.

Liam slept all the way through the Beady Eye set. They were better than I expected.

The Arctic Monkeys. Also better than expected and Alex Turner got hot too! Score. Basically music festivals turn me into a perv.

The Foo Fighters. Honest. No, really!

We enjoyed that lot. This lot not so much...

I suspect U 100%, absolutely can beat a burger...especially their burgers.

Mr Mankini. Tell your eyes I'm sorry. They say a problem shared is a problem halved though. So, by rights, for everyone of you who sees this, my eyes will gradually heal. Yes, I realise I'm the one who took a picture of it.

A festival with no-one there!

Really. Because I was up at Rockness on Thursday to check that the Schuh Welly Exchange (more in a mo') was looking alright so, for the first time ever, I got to go to a partially built festival. It lacked atmosphere (duh) but it was kinda fun to be there before it got all manky and muddy and before everything kicked off. Consider this mainly to be a post in pictures.

Festival dressing in Scotland = thin layers for warmth/coolness. Rucksack for your crap and flat boots (wellies are better! I'm fairly sure my boots now have an indelible whiff of cow poo.)

Sunglasses. Cause sometimes the sun shines in Scotland. And sometimes it's bright even when it's cloudy. These were free from work. They were K-Swiss branded but, as I'm not a K-Swiss fan I removed the branding with nail polish remover. Ha!

Even if you're only at a festival for the day, these are essentials.

So do you want to see the festival half built and sans people?

 Great! Here it is...

Empty.

Will the main stage be finished on time!?

Big and indeed, wheely.

The most stunning location, right at the end of Loch Ness. Can you see the Loch Ness Monster?

The view from behind the Schuh Welly Exchange - breath taking!

Building one of the bars - they weren't this posh at festivals when I was younger!

Apparently 'haggis or death' involves competitively eating haggis and, when a horn is sounded, downing a shot of Buckfast. Sounds like something I DON'T want to do when the only facilities are portaloos!

So, by now, you may be wondering (and if not, you really need to start reading the words or having a greater sense of curiosity about random things) what the Schuh Welly Exchange is. In a nutshell, you turn up at the festival in trainers/sandals whatever. You realise it ALWAYS rain at festivals and you're a soggy footed doofus. You take your soggy/dirty/ill advised shoes to the Schuh Welly Exchange and you swap them FOR FREE(!) for a shiny new pair of wellies! No joke. The old shoes go to a charity (the Newlife Foundation) who either re-sell or recycle them, raising money for disabled and terminally ill children in the UK, which means money to a good cause AND virtually no landfill on account of the recycling! Yay! Here's the tent...

And time to go home! I decided to be a train station spotter, rather than a train spotter coming home:

How gorgeous is the station in Pitlochry? So cute!

All of these pictures were taken from my train seat. They're not the best quality but I thought it felt more like a story when they were all shot from the exact same place - no cheating and moving to get a better shot. I think people thought I was weird. Or a tourist. Or both.

Gorgeous evening

The tiny glints of light are from the sun's rays reflected on windows in Edinburgh. The pictures were taken from the other side of the Firth of Forth.

The Forth Road Bridge in the gloaming. The gloaming is old Scots for dusk time.

The bridge from the train. The evening light was just beautiful.

And home! My street in the last of the evening light. By this time it was about 11pm. I love summer.