Singin' in the Rain

So, I feel like I've been indoctrinated to the English festival thing, even if I haven't (yet) done a full camping weekend at the likes of Glastonbury or Isle of Wight or T in the Park. I haven't given up completely on Reading, but the people I was supposed to be going with have pretty much backed out, claiming money issues.

Anywho, we arrived at Hyde Park in a little patch of sun, and spent 20 minutes or so in Speakers' Corner, listening to various people try to shout over the top of each other, as they each held forth on whatever was near and dear to their heart, on a typical Speaker's Corner type Sunday. As we then headed for the entrance to the festival area of Hyde Park, we commented on how we might just be getting lucky as far as the weather. We should have known better!! It rained for most of the time we were there, and was really chucking it down at various points in time. But my lovely American flagish type knock-off stetson kept my head pretty dry, and I had luckily worn my gore-tex boots and raincoat. So my jeans were about the only things to get wet and muddy.

My favourite acts of the evening were Jet, Chris Cornell and Aerosmith. I snaked my way through the crowd to get close to the stage for Jet, and ended up behind a group of guys with Jo next to me. One of the guys kept turning his head, to the point where I figured out something was up. He then got out a camera and starting trying to take self-portrait pictures with his buddy by holding his own camera at arm's length, but the angle was a bit odd. I kept hiding behind his tall mate to keep out of the picture, so he finally just dropped all pretense, turned around and started taking pictures of me. Long story short, we made some new friends, two guys from England and their mate from New Zealand.

Aerosmith played an awesome set, although it was toooo short. They started late, and were not allowed to carry on past official festival ending time, around 10:30pm. Steven Tyler apologised to the crowd, and said the police were throwing everybody out. But their encore number was "Walk This Way" with a special appearance by Run DMC. I don't think they've performed the song live with Run DMC since the Grammys performance awhile back, so the crowd just went wild! Rain notwithstanding, it was a great night!!!