Saturday dawned freezing cold, and as I stumbled onto site to find tea, the last of the all night crowd, were staggering off to bed through the morning mist, flat cans of Stella welded to their hands. It had clearly been a good night.
Music kicked off again around lunchtime, across the site. It’s probably fair to say that, as last year, the lineup for Thimbleberry is unlikely to be one of the main things that draw you to Thimbleberry. No one in our group of 10+ had ever heard of any of the bands playing, with the exception of Space Ritual. That said, this is quite liberating, as rather than working your festival by the stage timetable, you simply lurk around the site, until you find something you like, then go and watch it.
The bands that really stuck out for me over the weekend, were 8 piece Ska nutters, the Tonics, from Coventry, who played a combination of Ska standards, and original material. Also playing Friday night were New Wave Porn, an extremely proficient, though slightly camp funk 4 piece from Runcorn.
A welcome addition to the weekends proceedings were comedy slots between acts on both the main stages. Featuring Pete White, Maynard Flipflap, Mike Hancock and the thoroughly marvelous Rory Motion. These guys took a little heckling from random drunken morons, but dealt with it well, and I hope to see them back again.
After another very late night in the dance tent, we awoke to find the site not only colder than the day before, but also raining. The stages kicked off around lunchtime again, but it was clear that some festival goers, frozen and soaked, had made the decision to head off to Stanhope with the excuse of the football, despite the fact that there were still acts onstage, including Vanilla Moon from last year. Pretty soon, it was time for us to head off too.
Overall, I still love Thimbleberry. It’s a great old fashioned festival, high on party atmosphere, and a bit low on organization. It has a spontaneity and atmosphere that I’ve not seen at any other festival since the early nineties, and is pretty much constantly raging non stop from the point you arrive, to the time you fall over. Random conversations abound, and it’s a great place to make lifelong friends with people who you won’t see again, or even remember clearly 10 minutes later.
That said, I wonder just how long it can survive. The site was constantly buzzing with rumours of serious licensing problems, and while I obviously can’t confirm or deny that, it wouldn’t surprise me. Organisation in some places just feels so haphazard, with power cutting out, a complete lack of medical cover that I could see, and a security team that seemed to spend most of it’s time in the dance tent, and very little on the gate. I’m not sure how the organizers can square this circle, but I think they’re going to have to if the festival is to survive, in which case, their challenge will be to get the organization sorted, without stifling the fantastic spontaneous atmosphere they’ve managed to create.
So should you go? Well, if you’re a late night party animal that can not only cope with, but thrives on a site and campsite that never stops, then the answer is clearly yes, there’s no better festival for you in this country right now. However, my best advice is to be self reliant and prepared. Bring your own water, your own beer and your own food, just in case. Also bring plenty of warm clothes, this might be June but it was really, really cold all weekend, and absolutely Baltic at night.
The next Thimbleberry is scheduled for September, and I so, so, hope that there is one. If it is, I’ll be there.
Thimbleberry Music Festival 
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