The day after we got home from Greece we were back on the the road, heading down to Devon for Beautiful Days, the festival founded by folk rock and anarcho-punk band, The Levellers in 2003.
We arrived on site at 1pm and spent the next two days setting up the stall, existing on day-old cheese sandwiches, dressed in the same clothes we'd left home in. By Wednesday evening we were finally ready and celebrated with bucket baths and cans of Lidl lager.
The festival gates opened to the public at midday on Thursday.
We had a brilliant day, catching up with regular customers and old friends. By the time we rolled down the shop front at midnight we'd had one of our best Beautiful Days trading days ever.
On Friday morning we opened at 10am. The previous day had been drizzly and the forecast was for more of the same. We had heavy rain for an hour or so but as the ground was so parched it dried up in no time.
Beautiful Days officially opened on Friday with The Levellers playing the Big Top at 2pm. It makes me giggle when people ask us what bands we're going to see, this is the view from our stall so the answer is all of them!
Just when we thought we'd escaped the rain the heavens opened and it bucketed it down for an hour or so. Neighbour Sean from Chillo (below) was well-prepared unlike us, who'd packed our festival bags whilst still in Greek mode with not a waterproof or warm garment between us! Fortunately the wet stuff cleared up leaving us with a gloriously sunny evening.
The line up on the main stage included The Undertones (fantastic), the always brilliant Billy Bragg and the amazing Skindred who tore the house down making the headliners, Super Furry Animals, somewhat of an anticlimax.
The Mexican wedding dress I'd packed was chosen for its good looks rather than practicality and I was freezing when the sun set. I gave my horned headdress a break this year and went for bastard massive flowers instead headband (also created by the fabulous Catherine from Asbeau)
Pegging is a thing at Beautiful Days. The festival goers decorate clothes pegs and clip them to unsuspecting people over the weekend. Here's one of the many I found attached to me.
In a moment of madness, Jon had donated his 1960s Finnish fake fur coat to the rails. Luckily nobody had bought it at Womad so he reclaimed it and found a fellow furry fan.
We met artisan jewellery maker, Rachel and husband Matthew at End of the Road over a decade ago. Their beautiful daughter Freya turned 16 over the weekend and a ticket to Beautiful Days was one of her presents.
I've pinched this photo from Rachel's Facebook page ...
We met Katie and her mum, Jess at Beautiful Days three years ago. She was also celebrating her 16th birthday weekend. How amazing are her make-up skills?
It had been another record-breaking trading day.
We shut up shop at 11.30pm and met up with Chillo's Michelle and Sean at the Magic Tea Pot and sat outside chatting until late into the night, nursing mugs of tea. It was so cold that Jon slept in his clothes!
Summer returned on Saturday!
How amazing are these painted stones? We found three in our shop over the weekend.
Katie bought this dress from us the previous evening, how cool does she look?
Her mum (Jess) bought this 1970s Hawaiian maxi dress from us and loved it so much that she left the shop wearing it.
Walsall post-punk band duo Big Special were fantastic and we were thrilled when they popped into the shop and bought a few things.
Madness headlined on Saturday night. With the exception of Prince Buster and Night Boat to Cairo neither of us were ever fans but they did put on a good show.
We closed at 11.30pm and headed up the hill to the Bimble Inn with a bag of beers, meeting up with Michelle and Sean and chatting into the early hours.
Despite the late night we were still up and open by 10am. Every year Beautiful Days has a Sunday dress-up theme and this year it was 1970s, no problem for us, we just wore our usual clothes but it certainly helped our sales!
A very happy (and lovely) customer!
I've been Facebook friends with Janice for years and met her husband Steve at Glastonbury a few years ago but it was the first time we'd ever met and we got on like a house on fire. That's Beautiful Days legend, Vodka Jelly Man, who kept us topped up all weekend!
Our fab friends from Rocket Records.
Our food trader mates are always offering to feed us, if we took everyone up on their genorousity we'd probably never have to cook for ourselves ever again. We couldn't resist a couple of Dorian's wood fired pizzas, though.
Lyn found this original Biba dress in a charity shop last year, what a fit!
Another visit from festival headliners...these are the uber cool and totally awesome Nova Twins.
At 10pm we closed the shop for the final time and were joined by Rachel and Matt to watch The Levellers from our VIP viewing platform aka our pitch.
Monday was a long day, the stall breakdown took six hours and the traffic between Devon and Bristol was terrible, we really did earn those posh pies at Gloucester Services.
Beautiful Days was utterly brilliant, we smashed all previous sales records, hung out with lots of fabulous folk, saw some brilliant bands and, four days on, we're still shattered. This week we've mostly been running around getting ready for End of the Road, no rest for the wicked!
Thanks for reading, see you in September!
