Back in London, back at work...

It doesn't feel as much like "back to reality" as perhaps it should, though. The whole Festival experience is so intense that it feels almost more real than daily life. I sit here in the office now and I feel as though I've been off a lot longer than four days. So WOMAD was the reality and this is the dream, not the other way around...

It was a good WOMAD. Interestingly, I'd been a little concerned beforehand by the line-up as there wasn't much I'd heard of or that really stood up and grabbed me. But in the field (as it were - quite literally in a field!), that simply meant I skipped a lot of the headline acts and went to the less well-known ones.

Result: Mongolian rock rocks; Finnish new-folk/jazz fusion is dreamy (& the double bass player was incredibly cute); Stornoway are excellent, so was Khyam Allami, so was Javier Conde, so were Bibi Tanga and the Selenites, the amazing Muntu Valdo, and the Hungarian gypsy string orchestra. Gil Scott-Heron was excellent; but so were the (to me) unheard-of Cedric Watson and Bijou Creole, and Dan Sultan and his band. I spent Sunday morning in a choral singing workshop, part of one evening learning how to make Finnish Summer Vegetable soup (at a cookery workshop hosted by the cute bass player! - ah, sweet...), and danced so much that my feet are still sore today.