A weekend in Chelmsford

Where to begin. How about friday morning. Having failed to find any wellies, we set off for Hylands Park, Chelmsford for this year's V festival.

The line up wasn't quite as good as previous years (including V2005 that I didn't go to) but it is always good fun, and this year was no different.

After erecting a huge tent, with no less than 4 rooms and plenty of cold pizza for dinner on friday night, Saturday started with the heaviest rain I've stood in for a long long time. The rain was just in time for The Bombay Bicycle Club who had won the Road to V competition to open the festival. Despite the monsterous rain, they put on a pretty good show, How Are You being my favourite song of theirs.

The Dead 60s, The Divine Comedy, The Magic Numbers, and Bloc Party preceeded the (unexpected) band of the day We Are Scientists. They sounded great, looked like they were enjoying themselves and generally put on a good show, I'll be getting their album. The always entertaining Beck followed, and the day ended with Radiohead, who were suitably weird, but all of that was forgiven when the closed with Creep.

Sunday began with the second band who convinced me to buy their album The Boy Least Likely To. Nice is one of the least descriptive words in the english language, but it seems to suit them. As does poppy, fun, happy, melodic, along with the question "Why were they on so early?"

The energetic The Grates were next before an afternoon at the Channel 4 Stage. Morning Runner were OK. The Feeling sounded great and were good fun, as were one of the day's top 3: Delays. V regular Paul Weller was only OK. But another regular Faithless, put on an amazing show. They were another of the top 3 of the day, the final of the 3 being the last band of the weekend Razorlight, despite taking a break between pretty much every song.

We got up at 6am to beat the monday morning traffic and were home before 9am, and so spent monday doing very little, apart from having a good wash, my first since friday morning.

Next year: Glastonbury!