Politics, Hey...

I'm really enjoying politics at the moment, but feel that if I talk about it I'll say something obvious and / or trite and / or sounds like sixth form nonsense and / or I disagree with and / or regret before the rolling news cycle is out. So I'll talk about the things that happen in urban parks instead.

Castle Park, Colchester: Food and Drink Festival
In my head this was going to be sitting in the park in the sun eating and drinking all day.  In the real world that didn't happen. It was way too muddy to do any sitting; just muddy enough to do some sinking. I did manage to forcefeed weird foods into randoms though - who doesn't love shooting oysters?

Queens Square, Bristol: Comedy Garden
I chose badly.
Bad choice 1. I should have gone to Grillstock - meat and music, hmmmm.
Bad choice 2. I should have seen the Pajama Men. Instead I saw Arthur Smith and John Shuttleworth.

Arthur Smith I mainly know from panel shows, in my head I expected him to be miserable but doing fairly intelligent jokes. In reality he was just doing lowest common denominator bobbins - "ooh, I done a swear, how risque?" An utter waste of twenty minutes.

I knew nothing of John Shuttleworth.  Just had a vague knowledge of the name. Turns out he's completely cult.  Everyone else in the audience knew every word to every song and found every facial malformation cassock wettingly hilarious. Whereas I just didn't understand why a middle aged man was pretending to be a middle aged man.

Admirals Park, Chelmsford: Beer Festival
It's the premier event in Chelmsford's social calendar. The one time of the year that I can still guarantee bumping into people that I've known for all of the time yet not seen in ages. Plus there's beer. And a park. And sun.

Chalkwell Park, Southend: Village Green
The Stereo MCs look a lot like a "Just Say No, Kids" advert but at the same time haven't really changed since they were getting themselves connected twenty odd years ago. They were a lot of fun. Billy Bragg, not so much.