Positive week with highlights from Isle of Wight festival
Week commencing Monday, 17 June 2024
Festival Bus
Quantified Self
This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 5/7. 76%. Morning walks: 0/3 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 0/4. Total steps: 76,589
Life
Did you return last week for the thrilling finale of the Washing Machine saga? I forgot to add it to my weeknotes. They sent a new machine. It’s remarkable how, when it’s not working, the effort engulfed my day-to-day. Whereas after they had replaced it, not a second thought. This one has a digital countdown—genuinely 21st century.
I read today about Sir Rod Stewart’s need to defend his support of Ukraine after he was apparently booed at a concert in Germany on Friday night. Sad world in which we live.
Wednesday evening to the Isle of Wight. There were some tight connections, but I thought I’d make the 7:20pm sailing only to be thwarted one station away. So, I went and did my grocery shopping. Apple Maps’ directions to Tesco were lousy (including trying to send me through a park with locked gates).
Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Isle of Wight festival. The weather, atmosphere and music were all great. My feet hurt from the amount of standing I needed to do. It was a painful walk to back to the bus on Sunday evening. There were a lot of highlights. I need to write up the experience.
Related: Souther Vectis ran an excellent service.
Media
I watched a video about dishwashers and discovered my machine has space for dishwasher powder in the first wash before the pod is released. Hat tip: Tom Scott.
We spent 10 hours at the flat before returning to the festival site. Today’s shuttle bus was an old Southern Vectis vehicle (it still featured branded informational posters), but it was – obviously – being used elsewhere in the country at the moment. I remarked that it had come home for a holiday. It had carpet on the upper deck ceiling. We didn’t sit at the front today as it was too warm; I am not sure the furry ceiling helped with the heat. We have been fortunate with the weather this weekend. All those wet-weather clothes remained in Ryde.
Once again, arrival was marked by the purchase of coffee. I craved a bacon bun, which proved – surprisingly – elusive until I found a burger stand near the main stage selling them. It was one of the nicest bacon sandwiches I’ve had. We repeated yesterday’s moves of getting to the Main Stage area early and holding a place towards the front. The backstage crew had been busy overnight installing confetti canons for Green Day and adding a platform that extended the stage area into the crowd. We’d have moved closer to that if my thinking had been more intelligent.
Beverley Knight was first and early, opening with “Greatest Day”. I’ve seen Beverley many times, and she’s an outstanding performer. I was surprised she was first on the list for the day. She started with a reasonable, for lunchtime, crowd around the Main Stage. She’d pulled many more people to the stage by the time she finished her set. Another wonderful performance featuring a great mix of her old and new songs and a cover of Radiohead’s “Just”. As she said, nobody can imagine a soul sister performing that song. It worked. There’s a version on BBC Sounds.
Next up, Kyliefied, a Kylie tribute act, was a lot of fun in the Electro Love tent. PY and I did not join in with the “Locomotion” chain that went around, but we laughed. It was another power walk across the festival site back to see McFly. I think McFly are underrated (I don’t know by whom, but it’s a sense, and I am sticking with it) because their set is such fun with a list of songs that you will know. I was disappointed we were so far back, but there was no way to get closer. I could just about see Tom was wearing a Green Day t-shirt in honour of tonight’s headliners, and Harry’s t-shirt labelled him as the drummer.
Zara Larsson was next. There was a noticeable switchover in the age of the crowd at the front. I only recognised “Symphony.” Her show was slick, but I wonder if it would have been better in a stadium rather than a field. The youngsters loved it, so what do I know?
We took some time out for food. This afternoon was chorizo-flavoured Mac’n’Cheese. Again, we sat on the grass near the Big Top and enjoyed the sunshine. We headed back to the Main Stage for “Simple Minds”. As far as PY was concerned, these were today’s headliners. I can’t explain why I was never a fan, so I only recognised the biggest hits, probably “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” and “Alive and Kicking” — it was another example of a video show that occasionally seemed to forget that we wanted to see the performers. The fans thought it superb.
Afterwards, we wandered to the Cirque de la Quirk stage. There was a bar opposite. For the first time across the weekend, I tried the fruit cider that PY had been drinking, and I wished I’d had it more often. Stone Cold Hustle, a large-ish (7 or 8-piece) funk band, was grooving providing the perfect laid-back soundtrack as evening approached.
After almost three days on my feet, walking was starting to get painful. We found some benches made of pallets and managed to sit for half an hour. We don’t bring foldable chairs because we want to avoid being stuck with them, mainly because I like being as close to the stages as possible, and chairs are banned in key areas. But I was very grateful to be able to sit down.
Sunday’s headliners, who closed the show, were Green Day, another band I am not familiar with. However, when many people I know found out they were the main act of the day, they said without hesitation we should stay. And we did for most of the show.
It was brilliant. From the inflatable aeroplane dropping merch onto the crowd to those confetti canons, we saw earlier via bringing a fan, Mollie, from the audience to perform on stage with them, it was great. Somewhere around “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” we decided to do another beat-the-crowd shuffle to the bus, hoping to catch a rerun of the set on Sky Arts. We missed the rerun (but caught the bus). Apparently, it’s on later in the week. Dinner was from the kebab shop on Union Street.
Earlier today, the provisional size of the UK and Gibraltar electorate voting in the EU referendum was shown as 46,499,537 1 and we now have to wait for the 382 local voting areas to count and announce. The counting areas for Sunderland & Foyle in Northern Ireland predicted that their counts would be announced around 12:30am which, as far as I can tell, seems to be the earliest announcement. 2
The Chair of the Electoral Commission is the Chief Counting Officer responsible for certifying the outcome of the referendum and will be based in Manchester Town Hall. The Chief Counting Officer will only declare the national referendum result from there once all regional totals and the total for Northern Ireland have been approved and declared. 3
The estimated time for the national declaration is around breakfast time on Friday 24 June, although there is considerable uncertainty about when this will be given that it is dependent on all 382 local totals being declared. 4
The final electorate for the referendum cannot be confirmed until 9pm on polling day: EU referendum count information, | The Electoral Commission
There’s a handy spreadsheet outlining the estimated declaration times for each local counting area embedded within “EU Referendum count processes and results” | The Electoral Commission
As we go to the polls to vote on the referendum that asks “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?” 1 a poll by Sky News,
shows that on the issue of respect, half of voters (50%) say they now have less of it for politicians, compared with 8% who say they have engendered more respect during the campaign. 2
while Professor Michael Dougan of The University of Liverpool Law School commented,
I have just watched with increasing dismay as this referendum debate has unfolded. I have to say although the remain campaign have not exactly covered themselves in glory at points with their use of dodgy statistics, I think the leave campaign has degenerated in to dishonesty really on an industrial scale. There is no other way to put it, on an industrial scale. 3 (Video)
Regardless of what happens over the next few hours, I hope the level of political debate – both in quality of the words and the tone and style in which it is conducted – improves significantly soon. How much lower can we all sink?
