We’re still moping from a weekend of fail, but in the interest of good (romcom based) structure I’m going to come to that later. In the sad lull at the beginning of the third act, before the prescribed happy ending.

Our first summer festival of the year was Lounge on the Farm, in the eerily (considering the grimness of the weather up north) sunny Canterbury. The festival was a strange mix of hippies and security guards, and was all rather ‘lovely,’ in as much as there wasn’t people screaming and falling over in their own puke and piss with their pants around their ankles and passing out without anyone even noticing. In fact, it was quite the opposite, with everything shutting at 12am, and everyone going to bed, leaving us wandering around in a confused state, pretending to look for things in the grass to pass the time.

This weekend was going to be great, with shows in Carlisle, NARC fest in Newcastle and Truck festival in Oxford, but during soundcheck in Newcastle my keyboard became possessed by a ghost and started doing things by itself. Then it stopped working. I hadn’t realised how much we rely on all the sounds I’ve built up on that machine, it’s rather pesky- with a violin, bass or drum fault it’s quite easy to borrow someone else’s at short notice, but my semi-rare Supernova II, along with all the sounds I’ve been making over the past few years, are all pretty vital, and irreplacable.

So, we cancelled NARC and Truck at the last minute. And went home with sad faces. Right now it’s getting fixed, AND I’m buying a back-up so that it’ll never happen again, although having two synths is semi-quite-ridiculous-core. I’ve promised myself a rather empty promise of never doing a FAIL ever, ever again.

On the plus side, we spent the time in Newcastle with Sarah from Lanterns on the Lake, drank a lot and listened to many, many an 80’s classic into the next morning. And then went to the seaside.