Racist Hogroast

It's all kicking off in Chelmsford City today.  I'd assumed that the high police presence was all about VFest but it turns out there's a riot goin' on. For those of you who aren't down with da goss' of da 'Ford, they're planning to build a shiny new mosque on a rundown industrial estate in the, ahem, city centre (still can't take myself seriously saying that). The EDL have taken issue with this and are organising some kind of angry, semi-evolved, anti-cosmopolitanism march thing (for the record the new mosque is being built as part of a complex with a Waitrose, which will really shake-up Chelmsford's 96% white-British demographic, the EDL must be quaking). United Chelmsford (not a football team) have organised a counter march.  So far, with the backdrop of V weekend, sounds like the most interesting thing to happen in Chelmsford since, erm, 1381?

What got my goat (and I know I shouldn't blog when I'm irked as it comes out as a hotchpotch of poorly expressed and easily misconstrued bobbins), was I got handed a 'free hogroast' flier by someone trying to get me to go to a nearby church. Now, maybe it was a coincidence and maybe I'm reading too much into it but part of me thinks that giving out pig products (on a day when even the farmers' market wasn't selling pork) looks a bit like you're trying to court the far right rather than those people that might be supporting a mosque. WWJD?

Right, rant over, in other news i went to Hot Tub Cinema last night.  Odd that sitting in a hot tub with six strangers on a roof in Hackney gets relegated to the 'in other news' bit.  And i didn't even mention that I saw Richard III the other day - that Rylance fellow, he can act.

...To The Imitation Zone

Standon Calling is probably my favourite festival. Don't get me wrong, V and Reading serve a purpose and I've had a couple of great Glastonburys but I just think I've grown out of big festivals.  Even Bestival, the first time I went it was all fun and excitement; the last time I went it took me over twelve hours to get there which just takes the shine off it a little bit.

Standon Calling though. It's great. Showers. Good toilets. The kind of bands I want to see. Good food. Few queues. Limited idiots. And it's only an hour's drive away. Best Fest.  No messin. 

That said the idiot quotient was obviously higher than I thought as ****** **** were filming there. Now I don't know if you've seen ****** **** but it's about as bad as it's possible to make television (which is why it's not getting a mention). It's a half-hour TOWIE-themed Blackberry commercial and every bit as bad as that sounds. I feel that my whole Standon experience has been tainted. I'd heard through the Essex grapevine that we were on it, so I turned my brain off and steeled my eyes for punishment. 

The juxtaposition was almost worth the tedium. One of my mates was shown wearing a full home-made duck costume, quickly followed by someone in a shop-bought Indian headdress saying 'do you think we're we're the only ones that have made an effort with fancy dress'. The correct answer was 'No, fake girl, other people have made more effort than we have.  We're just wearing what the ****** **** stylist put us in.'

Incidentally someone there asked if I'd made my costume. I was wearing a limp cardboard horse.  I thought it was fairly obvious that I had, but it did make me wonder whether there is a market for slightly rubbish but high effort fancy dress. #possiblecareeropportunity