Thursday, September 30, 2010

Thames Festival has Lady Luck on its side.

Yikes, it has been a while since my last posting.... my trip to the USA (both the packing, organising, travel and hanging out) has kept me busy, but I will try to get back on it now!

I gotta think back a couple of weeks to early September and the Thames Festival. Wowwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! I love the Thames Festival, and this year did not disappoint! My leggies were so tired for a couple of days afterwards, which is always a good sign...

The Thames Festival which runs along the river Thames (funnily enough...), all the way from the London Eye, along the Southbank up to Tower Bridge, has been taking place every September for the past five years or so. It is a free festival, running over Saturday and Sunday, and features live music, dancing, food, drinks, arts & crafts stalls, activities, a nighttime carnival procession, circus performers, art installations, and ends with a huge fireworks display on the Sunday night.






Luckily, this year, despite a slightly drizzly forecast for Saturday, the whole weekend ended up being sunny and warm and was highly attended. To be honest, although I could talk about all the weird and wonderful things that I wanted to check out over the weekend, I cannot really comment much on anything other than the Lady Luck stage, which is where I stayed put for the entirety of the festival!






This year the Lady Luck stage and dance floor, run by DJ El Nino and Lady Kamikaze, was set up right outside the Tate Modern, by the Millennium Bridge. It was a great location, which, I think offered the chance for better promotion and easier access than where it was set up at Potters Fields park last year, which felt quite far along, away from all the other activities.








Anyway, so, given that I have been a house hermit of late (trying to save money for my trip to SF) this was pretty much the most perfect weekend of fun that I had been craving. Lots of friends and familiar faces, great music, fab dance floor, al fresco dancing, perfect weather and a super fun party atmosphere.






As well as the DJs, there were bands playing every hour, which offered a variety of styles to mix things up a bit. I really enjoyed The Muleskinners, The Jive Aces (always fun!) and Sugar Ray Ford, Zephyrs of Swing.




So, as mentioned, I stayed put at the Lady Luck stage to get my dance fix, but there were so many other things that I would have liked to have checked out, including Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, C.W. Stoneking and Ska Cubano, who were playing on a different stage (unfortunately, this stage was quite a walk from where I was, so it would have been a bit of a pain to to go there and then come back, and with the theory 'if it aint broke, don't fix it', I decided that as I was having fun where I was, I would just stay there).






I am already looking forward to next year's Thames Festival!

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