On 14th May we bravely left behind the relative security of Hertfordshire for the vast wilderness of the Dorset coast. Despite some dodgy directions from the RAC website which resulted indriving up and down the same stretch of road several times for about an hour, and an unscheduled pitstop at Basinstoke to buy sleeping bags which morphed into discounted-CD buying marathon, we eventually arrived at our destination - the Home Educators Festival.

The organisers had very kindly put us up in a cottage, which not only had full seventies decor including brown/lime green combo carpets in the bathroom, but a couple of interesting features.....The first one we named 'Stairs To Nowhere' (although Leon came up with the theory that they were some kind of gateway to Hogwarts)...

On the Saturday night, we played a great set with Tarantism. The atmosphere was fantastic - the kids were sitting down, so we told then to stand up - and they did. Then we told them to dance - and they did. If only life was so easy. We then jammed the night away with the mighty 100% band, not laying our weary heads on the pillow til gone 5am. Stu had the pleasure of sharing a slightly soiled mattress on the floor with Leon, whilst Julia got the sofa...ha ha ha.

On Sunday, Leon got up bright and early (what kind of rock and roll star is he?) to go and mingle with his fellow festival goers and indulge in the quaint delights of pottery, drum workshops, skinning small animals, whittling sporks out of ancient mammoth bones....you get the idea.

Here is a picture of Leon playing a very small guitar and looking rather 'shady' in many ways. The tent in the background was where we got our free vegetarian grub. Mmmmm, free grub....precious grub....

In the meantime, Julia and Stuart were sensibly lazing on the floor/sofa...I mean, resting ready for the gig ahead. When the hour become more reasonable, they got up and walked to the nearby beach.

This, of course, was rather tiring, and so Stuart and Julia then needed to do some more resting.

Stuart coccooned himself in his sleeping bag like a little maggot.

According to Stuart, if you look closely at a maggot's face, they always look like they are smiling. So this is Stuart's impression of a happy maggot face.

On Sunday evening, we played a set and enjoyed ourselves even more than we had on the Saturday night. The crowd were just fantastic. We then got to watch the amazing 100% play - and they brought the house down. It was a fantastic night, followed by more jamming until the not-so-small hours, after which Julia got locked out and only narrowly escaped pneumonia by waking up Leon by shouting 'Oi!' loudly and throwing a plastic bottle filled with piss (not hers) at his window repeatedly for about ten minutes.

Monday, we drove home. The return journey was much shorter due to lack of detours to Basingstoke shopping centre and the fact that Julia directed herself instead of giving Leon the map...

We hope to play Hes Fes again next year...if they'll have us.................