A welcome flurry of jobs

Howdy, we’ve been kinda busy, which has been unexpected but very welcome. It was helped along by me getting my SIA door supervisor licence and for a change Paul enjoyed some days off on a little campsite just outside of Lancaster. I also got my first vaccine whilst I was there, which meant I was feeling pretty grotty for a couple of days, but we moved to a sea view campsite for the weekend so at least I had a nice view from my sickbed.

After the course we wound our way up the west coast and into Scotland and popped in for dinner and drinks with Jane and Willie at Macdonald Mansion, it was such a treat to see them as we hadn’t seen them for a couple of years and with the fire pit, food and drinks we were made to feel very welcome. Daisy was due a service by this time so a few days at Pauls parents in Fife were booked in and I got the chance to meet a couple of Pauls old friends, Kerry and Colin, that had recently moved into a beautiful place in the area.

We’d only just picked Daisy back up from the garage when Paul got the call that he would be needed to work at the G7 summit in 2 days’ time and consequently could he be in Derby the following day to get his lift down to Cornwall. Although not ideal you’d be stupid to turn down 4 weeks work, so we drove to Derby, frantically made lists, packed bags and went shopping for all the things he’d need for a month away from Daisy. At some point on the route down from Scotland Daisy started making an awful squealing noise and as I had a few days to kill in Derby that was the first thing I was going to have to sort.

Daisy got sorted just in time for me to join the camping trip that Ian and Michala had organised, and whilst it felt very strange being on my own in Daisy it was lovely to be able to join friends in a field for some camping fun. Having secured my own work at G7, but not on the security side, I planned to spend a few days driving down the country to Cornwall, meet up with Paul for maybe an evening then start my job for the week of parking cars on one of the police transport / food hubs. It worked quite well as Paul managed to wangle a day off and there was an amazing pub a few mins from his security village that allowed motorhomes to stay over, so we did the tourist thing and went to Lands End and drove around the coast before having way too much food and drink at the Engine Inn, Cripplease. Sadly, on route from Derby to Cornwall Daisy had again started making a strange noise, this time it was a knocking noise from a wheel and so whilst Paul worked, I found a garage that could squeeze her in to get fixed.

G7 was an experience, mainly because of the Cornish mizzle that descended and didn’t lift for 4 full days, so my beautiful view was totally obscured for most of the week but also because I was working at a completely different site to Paul, so this was once again a completely new experience for me working an event in Daisy without him. I did get to go and join him and use my SIA licence for the first time as they needed security to watch the Carbis Bay hotel, whilst they removed all the summit related stuff from that location. It was a stunning location right on the beach front, which meant one early morning I spotted a Seal in the waves just off the beach.

Next stop for us was Bigfoot Festival. As this was a new festival for this year, they were running it under the step 3 government guidelines, which meant it was only going to be 4000 capacity and everyone had to provide proof of a negative test before entering. We were quite used to testing every 3 days by now as we’d both had to do it at G7, and this was going to be the same for all staff at Bigfoot as well and we were looking forward to working with a brand new to us company for this event. It really was glorious to be in a field with live music, people and bars again and we had brilliant day time shifts which meant we had plenty of time to enjoy the festival for a few hours in the evening. Highlights for me were dancing all the way to the front during the DJ Yoda set, drinking with new and old friends and a band I’d never heard of called the Wytches, who even had a small but full on lively mosh pit for their set.

All in all, it was a brilliant little festival, we had a great team and I look forward to it expanding next year and hopefully we’ll be back to work it again. I will miss the covid compliant crowd control audience pods they installed at the main stage as they made finding friends and dancing much easier.

We had a bit of a break before the next scheduled work which worked out really well with Solstice and a friends birthday celebrations all happening at Ashbourne Campsite next to Glastonbury, so we headed there for a few chillout days.

The next work we had lined up was Latitude Festival, which neither of us had worked previously but had heard good things about, so we travelled across the country over to Suffolk, stopping briefly for Paul to get his second jab. Latitude was going to be run as a government test event and as they could space out the build time a bit more it was going to be 4 weeks work for us, plus it was running a busy production gate which whilst Paul had done similar for other festivals was something I’d never done before and I was half worried and half looking forward to the challenge.

It actually went really well and as we were camped and working with the same production crew every day, we made a few friends and settled into a good working rhythm, which was a good thing as there were times when the working 12 hr days, being on your feet non-stop, being so busy you just wanted to cry, the crazy weather and the insects very nearly broke me. I did manage to drag myself in to see the festival 2 out of 3 nights and the site really is beautiful with hidden stages and wooded areas but the knockout set came from the Chemical Brothers on the main stage.

We also had extra stress as we had a few issues with Daisy (again) whilst we were there. Her MOT was due during the festival build period but having thrown a lot of money at her over the past month or so we assumed she’d fly through her MOT without a hitch, how very silly of us to think this. She failed on multiple and some very serious items, one of them being some possibly terminal welding.

Thankfully between new friends we’d made at Latitude and old friends having local connections we managed to get emergency accommodation for a couple of nights and someone to patch Daisy up before the end of the festival. This just meant we needed to get some niggly little things fixed and a retest done before we could hit the road again properly and again local knowledge and a fab little 4x4 garage came through for us and thankfully Daisy is now back on the road, although we do believe our time with her is numbered.

We were meant to have a few days chill back at Glastonbury but this time actually on the festival site at a new campsite they were opening for this year only, Worthy Pastures. We were both really looking forward to having a nose around the site without hordes of people there but sadly getting Daisy back on her wheels had to take priority and so we cancelled. Our next stop was going to be in Leeds and as we had a few days to get there we did get a night on a campsite, but this was mainly to deep clean all the Latitude dust out of her and us before hitting the next event, plus I got my second jab on route.

Mamma Mia was to be our next venture as they were bringing the theatre stage show for an 18-day run on the grounds of Harewood House, this would be a first for them as normally they tour theatres and inside venues, so going external with their show was a huge undertaking. We were going to be part of the night security team for the entire 4.5-week build, show days and break and as the evening performances started just as we clocked on shift lucky us were going to be hearing a lot of ABBA songs.