Fatbelt: notch 2

Working on Greenbelt FM was like being hit by a freight train carrying a hundred hippopotomi who each had swallowed a tonne of feathers which in turn had fallen off an angry hoard of overweight ducks whose sole diet for six years had been anvils, chainmail and dark matter.

Only, a lot more enjoyable.

>Tuesday

I came back from the Greenbelt Festival on Tuesday. I never did succeed with my on-site blog, as promised on my previous post here; I didn't have time. I've worked at Greenbelt before, as a journalist in the 90s, but nothing quite compares to what I achieved at the weekend.

It was an equally heavy and enjoyable experience. Heavy because of the workload and the ridiculous hours - 13 hours on the first day with two 15 minute breaks really is like being hit by a train. Heavy in the sixties sense because it was one of the strangest things I have done - £1,000 of free BBC training while esconced on a sodden racecourse.

>Auntie

But enjoyable because in effect I got to present programmes for Auntie Beeb. Enjoyable because of the really nice team, because of the sheer intensity of it all, and because of all the thumbs-up I kept seeing when I looked up from the desk during a show.

I missed Bill Drummond's The 17. I missed Sir Lord Bedingfield. I missed everything I wanted to see, and perhaps I'm most gutted about The Seven Basic Plots Of Storytelling and The Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain.

But I did get to produce and present programmes, interview an escaped goat and Norman Kember (not together), live-commentate on a two hour event, and help run a brace late-night shindigs in the process. I also discovered a remarkable one-night cure for the common cold.

>Serial

I could keep waffling, and often do, but I'm going to pretend to be the Daily Mail and serialise my Greenbelt experience.

So then, coming up next on 'notch 3' of my Fatbelt blogs will be me being shouted at by the BBC, me catching an escaped goat, and me standing on a stage wondering why Jim Morrison has lost his voice. But before that, here's Dexy's Midnight Runners-- oops, hard habit to break.