Pt II. Raining Blood.

June

I surfed Newquay again this time with Gemma, Paul and Tom. Chatting lots about music, life and other good shit with Gemma whilst driving for hours. Watergate was OK, pretty small and Tom didnt try and kill me(3 attempts so far).  Town beach not bad, not great. We camped, it rained a lot. Apparently it was the old lady's diamond jubilee. Sounds like a great time to get out of London. The rain was to become a daily feature of life in June and July, in what can only be described as a normal London summer service.

8th June Download Festival.  Serious shitfest. Mud being the operative word here. Words can not do justice to what James and I experienced when we turned up on that Friday night. Foolishly dragging about 30Kg of camping gear through mud, trying to find a small space for a tent after walking miles in a muddy refugee camp. We learned a lot about festivals. James pulled a muscle in his back,  we were ankle deep in thick mud with no idea where to go. I burned a hole in my tent, times were desperate. Nobody looked happy anywhere, and come midnight we were involved in a Mexican standoff with 15 annoyed 20yr olds -because we found a 'space' in the middle of their setup. Sorry guys, but we certainly weren't gonna be moving. Every dirty metalhead for themselves. We missed more great bands than we saw. Turns out this festival shit needs military planning. Next year we resolved to go to a European festival like soundwave. Somewhere hot and dry! We drank a bottle of rum and smoked in the rain and wind and cursed the gods of heavy metal.

Miserable conditions aside, things actually got better once Metallica hit the stage 24hours later on the Saturday night. The sun came out, 20 years since the Black album came out. Was a good set, but I'm over it. They played the album backwards which was clever, seeing as the last songs are pretty lame.

Metallica going through the motions.

Sunday was sunny, things were much happier. Other good bands we saw were Dropkick Murphys(always good) Rise Against, Tenacious D, Kyuss, Refused, Soundgarden (briefly) and of course the mighty Black Sabbath. Worst band I saw was Kids in glass houses, clearly fake emo poseur wankers that need high velocity stones throwing at them. Ahem.

The highlight and lowlight for me came at the same moment. On the Donington racetrack walk back to our camp after Black Sabbath, we saw a stationary crowd of about 30 people in a tight huddle. Chanting. What the hell is going on? We bundled in and to our surprise two guys were playing chess! and the crowd were chanting CHESS, CHESS, CHESS! I've never witnessed anything like it. Until a steward broke it up and I lost James' Oakley sunglasses in the ensuing melee. Fuck.

Gaslight Anthem, came saw and lit up the Koko. Such a great show, such a great band. Brian jumped off the royal box (if you can call it that) Eddie Vedder style. I was standing underneath it. their new album turned out to be pretty good too.

View from the crowd.

I was skating a lot more than usual, I was feeling really fit from cycling, and also just not getting near the sea made me want to hit hills. Mad sessions in Gospel Oak, Primrose Hill and just loving the boards all over again. I sold my Dervish, and bought a Longboard Larry Salamander and a Kebbek Barnet, I'm still very happy with both.



 Then I went a fucked my knee up.

I was skating the miniramp in Enfield just killing time, met some cat who was shredding hard amongst the zombie scooter hordes, I was pushing myself a bit more and maybe rushing to get a ride before the scooter came back round when I hung up my back truck on the coping, back foot slipped off behind me. cue Mark doing the splits with front foot on the board and back foot on the ramp in freefall. Felt my knee over extend massively and wrench my MCL ligament. Shiteola.

That was mid-June. I could walk, but not jump, run, twist or kick small children (not really). It was a bad sprain, very sore, it kept me out of action for 6 god damn weeks. The first was hell. The physio told me it was OK, but that I was indeed an idiot (in French accent - much worse) but she was nice and I will defintiely go back next time I hurt myself for more abuse. So I had to sit out Hog Hill part 2 at the end of the month. Bummer.

But every cloud has a silver lining. Who know's. I'd like to think this there might be a plan. The weekend was great, I wasn't bored, I hung out with everyone and camped out in the forest a little frustrated that I couldn't skate, climb trees or slackline. So I drank beer, ate food, hung out at the camp fire and some other extra curricular activities. The kids in the camp were going crazy on benches and wet downhill grass, there were more injuries on the campsite than the skate track. On Sunday James came down and took a bunch of good photo's, I continued to do my best to look like a kook - not skating, finally got a good picture of the whole NS crew and made a new friend in Cristina.

That was that.