Marooned in a deserted corner of the Secret Garden Party

We've waved goodbye to Bob the hire van, washed most of the mud off our various clothes & products & cashed up...Secret Garden party is officially over...

This was the festival that we were most excited about doing this year, not only because it's really hard to get in to but also because it fell on my birthday weekend! We arrived at the site on Wednesday at 10am prepared for a long wait, we'd already been warned that there would be delays in order to protect the ground as much as possible. After a slightly worrying moment when we were parked in a field miles away from our pitch & told we would have to carry everything there the horror on our faces persuaded the steward to give us a delivery pass & we joined the queue waiting to get on...

Four hours later after the ferris wheel had been driven backwards & forwards & finally sited in the opposite field & having convinced the stewards to let us leave our van behind our stall we were on site & ready to set up.

 At first we were delighted with our pitch, we were at the end of a line of food traders on one side & part of a trio of traders next to the kid's area on the other. Perfect! Not in the melee of the main arena with all it's associated issues but in a calm corner where hopefully lots of families would see our stall & be tempted in.

Sadly however at Secret Garden Party this year, calm meant deserted as we spent four days watching for hordes of customers that never materialised even on Sunday after the quagmire had been tramped down & the walkways were passable again. We'd close up around 9pm each evening & head out to the stages in the other field & feel completely overwhelmed by the sheer mass of people who were steadfastly staying close to the music & alcohol & seemed dead set on consuming as many hallucinogenic substances as possible.

So from a monetary standpoint this weekend was a washout ...

But you can never keep a Lovely down for long & there were brightly coloured jewelly moments during the festival too.

Our honorary Lovely for the weekend Emily Brady (designer of our Faeries) was probably the brightest of them all bringing her own brand of joyful crazy to the Lovely team & her artistic skills. Our fellow traders were brilliant company especially 'Mum' next door Janet with her toy stall (whose company name I have rubbishly forgotten to write down) & my birthday twin Theresa & Ellie of Eclectica all of whom kept us cheerful & giggling. We had some very cute customers, who came back modelling their purchases.

The site itself was pretty amazing with wood sculptures, fire pits, bijou stages in bars playing an eclectic mix of music, the bonkersness of the Badger stage, the floating stage in the middle of the lake that you had to take a boat too (we didn't have the chance but it looked stunning) & a giant hay statue of a fox (or wolf...opinions vary). And last but by no means least the boys in the Charge & Store lorry who kept us seeing the funny side of it all, even when we really didn't want to!

My birthday was Lovely too with birthday wishes & presents from our fellow traders &
we had a hilarious afternoon with Gin cocktails, pink fizz & cake followed by some of the best fireworks I've ever seen...just for me naturally!

Now we're home again, Emily is recovering from a hideous cough that plagued her all week, I've caught up on paper work (well I've moved all my filing into one terrifying pile at least!) & we're dusting ourselves off & getting ready to be all enthusiastic about this weekend's Fairy Festival in Enfield...

Wings at the ready!

Mud Mud Glorious Mud!

Well whatever the hippos think I must admit that I've had enough of mud for this year! Our stock is mud encrusted, we've just cleaned our walls off for the second time this year & I'm not entirely sure that my apparently enviable tan wont wash off if I have the opportunity for more showers!

 Our stall at Penn Festival

Having spent the second weekend in July at the lovely but ulitmately very muddy Penn Festival with our friends Nic & Frank of Sixteen I thought we might have done our mud for the season but after a weekend where a trip to the toilet
felt as Frank described it 'like taking a treck through the Amazon jungle' honestly I'd hoped for some better weather...

Now Emily spent this week again with Nic of Sixteen doing a handmade & vintage fair in Milton Keynes shopping centre as part of the MK Fringe festival. Now you'd have thought that Emily had the better end of that deal wouldn't you...

But...Nic's car died on the way to day 3 of the MK fair & our Dad & Brother came to the rescue driving over to get them to the fair & home again & apparently Thursday brought all the rude people out to complain about our products...But on Sunday she went to our regular Duckpond Market in Ruislip, where she caught up with our lovely Duckpond friends & generally had a Lovely time.

And I spent the week at Larmer Tree Festival, up to my eyeballs in mud!

 

Silke in the flood outside my stall

 But...

I got to glory in a double rainbow after a what felt like a hundred years of rain
& to appreciate the dam that our neighbours built to keep the tide of mud from engulfing our stalls & which over the course of the weekend was added to

 until in the end it was a glorious creation & quite the talking point of the festival
it was even filmed! although we didn't find out what for.

I also found that in adversity traders absolutely stick together, there were three stalls that were particularly affected by the flood plains of Larmer tree & yet we had help from other stalls to gather woodchip to stem the tide & there was a real
feeling of solidarity among stallholders that we haven't really encountered at festivals before.

 The Flood, in my stall!

It just goes to show, when the chips are down, mud is thicker than water...couldn't resist, actually when it really counted this week at Larmer tree, there was a fellow trader to laugh, cry & comiserate with!
My thanks must also go to Silke of Dakini Leathercrafts who kindly drove, kept me company & fed me all week & performed her hero feat when my stall flooded & dragged back 3 wheelybin loads of woodchip to keep the tides at bay!

As I'm writing this we're all packed to head of to Cambridgshire for Secret Garden Party Fetival tomorrow & keeping everything crossed that we wont have the same mud issues again.

So I'm going to ask...as Saturday is my birthday & all I would really like is for the weather to be good...please could you all make a wish with me & see if we can all change the weather together & bring on the sun...whatever happens we're determined to enjoy the experience!