30 Years

Yesterday was the day of the Newtown Festival, the 30th annual Newtown Festival to be precise. It was a bright and quite warm day, but thankfully less savagely hot and humid than in recent years past. Still definitely 30+ sunscreen weather though.

Temporary shade on sale.

It was as crowded as always this year, although it did feel slightly less of a crush than last year. Last year was incredibly hot and humid, and I wilted quite fast. This year I stuck it out for a few hours, but the crowds and heat stopped me from really buying anything this year. Except a bucket sized cup of homemade lemonade and the ubiquitous Turkish gözleme that is. (I swear, gather more than 6 members of the public together in Sydney, and someone will put up a gözleme stand.)

Crowd crush. Curious fact, the guy on the right in the black tee is the ex of a friend, I didn't spot him until I checked the shot afterwards.

Retailer numbers didn't seem to be down on previous years, and there seemed to be plenty of retail therapy being exercised. What recession? If there is one it hasn't dented the cheap sunglasses, ironic tee shirt and cotton fishermen's pants markets.

Jackie Jackie Jackie!

I met up with my friends Ian and Steve, and their Jack Russell terrier Jack. We wandered, ate, cooed at lots of gorgeous dogs and I perved (hot weather + pretty men, what's a boy to do?). I avoided sunburn and dehydration, which had been one of my aims.

Fantastic bellydance troop that were perfoming to a sort of electronica meets Indian music fusion.

In the afternoon I had an invite to join James for his birthday drinks, so I headed home for a much needed disco nap. It's amazing what 20 minutes of shut eye can do for the elderly! An hour later I had cleansed, groomed and polished and was on my way to drinks with James. Drinks turned into more drinks, turned into a bit of a pub crawl, turned into dinner with James, Sam, Patrick and myself. Lovely! (Some pics to come.)

There wasn't much breeze to get these windsocks doing their stuff.

James has written a blog post about his birthday drinkies, a surprisingly large percentage of which is about men's toilets. Make of that what you will.