BlackZeppelin

Geologically, the Jurassic period was quite recent

I hate the idea, but it will likely happen, just another step towards the virtual, cerebral, devitalized and abstracted. Hopefully The Eavii, being farmers, will retain a sense of actual connection to the land and reject the concept.

I can recommended this tome,not a light read but McGilchrist is a proper genius.

Up until now, I'd been looking forward to someone posting "6 months till the festival"...now I'll have to recalibrate

With those dates he is surely a good chance for The Farm. Hasn't released anything for a while but apparently has an album coming out in 2022. Which slot would he play if he did come? Friday Other subbing QOTSA too high?

Yep, let us know how best to support it Neil. You never realise how much you miss something until it's gone.

CCR any chance?

Well, not strictly for the Festival but the timing is related: Booked in for my hip replacement in December in order to be ready for walking the farm comfortably by June.

https://www.emirates.com/au/english/before-you-fly/multi-risk-travel-insurance/ Worth considering

I started looking yesterday too. I called Flight Centre, because, given the border closures and unpredictable Covid environment, I want a travel agent involved this time, to do the running around if something goes wrong. Anyway, she did have an interesting point, saying that travel insurance won't cover you for certain Covid related costs like quarantine and hospitalisation if you catch Covid. But if Emirates and Qatar Airways do cover it with their air tickets. Yet to find out the details, but for all those going from Aus and NZ it is worth looking into. Quoted me $1800 return on Emirates via Dubai, by the way.

Agree Park would be best fit. EOB was also due to play the Park I seem to recall. If three of them are there....and Phil and Colin are around....

Is he not playing now? I thought The Smile was supposed to be a likely starter.

I'm starting to feel confident now and rallying the troops. It seems a bit surreal after being hedged into 5km zones for so long in Melbourne to consider international travel and the wild expanses of the Farm. I haven't looked at flights yet, but we're hoping to leave in May and have a couple of months in the UK. Hopefully it won't cost an arm and a leg.

Good effort kingcrawler, great line-up overall. But, no mention of Thom Yorke or EOB ? Are they no longer seen as likely?

Foals

We did too, absolutely rammed in there. That was about 11:30 from memory after the stages had closed down. Saw the first few songs from the Foos and couldn't stomach the hubris and the banter. Wandered off the long way via West Holts up to the Crows nest.

Like anything, when you simply apply a category you obliterate particulars. When you actually speak to people who have what might be neatly labelled Anti -vaxer views, you find a pretty wide range of concerns, many of them have a reasonable basis, many of these people are perfectly intelligent, well educated, able to reason and discern good data from bad, good sources from bad. There is (as always) a small vocal group who are fundamentally anti-establishment and Covid just provides another arena of protest and another opportunity for "significance". It's mirrored by the same small percentage of people at the other end of the scale, who would do what any authority figure would say no matter how unreasonable. It's actually just pointless arguing with them. But that remains a small percentage of folk who are tarred with the same brush.

It's not a straightforward situation and either camp who expresses complete certainty about Pro or Anti Vax are mistaking ideology for reason. I've been vaccinated but I work in a community that is sceptical about vaccine safety. I hear the arguments all the time. Simply considering them as nutters or paranoid doesn't help. I think taking the heat out of the polarity usually helps, by admitting that no-one holds absolute certainty with regard to vaccine safety but then go through the Bayesian process of navigating via probability, this usually opens their minds to considering vaccination. High vaccine safety over the first 9 months of use, high protection from death and hospitalisation are well documented. But agree that we are dealing with mRNA tech and we don't know exactlywhat happens beyond 12 months let alone 3-10 years.(We just don't!) So there is some understandable grounds for concern but is outweighed by the known benefits. Unless they are card carrying QANON anti vaxxers, that usually eases up the reflex opposition.

I've got some believable stories Would they do?

I think they are every chance to play. Covid has changed everything...I think they want to play, they love the festival , ME loves them...it would be epic...who else would you prefer to Headline the belated 50th and be the soundtrack to the end of the world as we know it? EoB, Johnny and Thom will be there...Phil and Colin at a loose end...

It's difficult in that we are weirdly prisoners of our own success in keeping numbers so low. The Politicians have been generally praised for keeping deaths to under a thousand etc (The Western Australian premier has gone power mad and is almost a separatist - running his own little dictatorship in Perth.) So now they are wedded to virtually no infections and no deaths, but of course that is impossible. At some point the PM will have to open borders and in doing so, tell the populace to expect numbers to climb. When that happens the backash will be enormous. So we have this 80% vaccination figure that is supposed to trigger an opening up - I remain sceptical.

It prompted me to get our British passports renewed, just in case. While we wouldn't emigrate as we have huge family connections here, if we were in the UK for 6- 12 months, I'd be quite happy. I even put out some tentative feelers for work...

I cautiously agree, but my concern is the hesitancy. I worry we might get to about 60-65% and it will slow to a crawl. Unlike those living on the UK that have experienced the full onslaught of Covid (my mate in Liverpool knows 9 people who have died), most people here don't know anyone who has even had it. There are hesitators and outright Covid deniers in significant numbers. Hopefully sanity prevails, certainly the lockdowns are spurring it on.

Snap. I really don't like the process of those 23 hour flights, but I really hate not being able to do them. What are NZ saying as far as a plan to open up to travel? We have been given the vaguest idea that maybe sometime next year something might happen

Is there any conceivable chance that with Thom Yorke and Ed pencilled in, that Radiohead could come together for the , post-Covid, belated 50th anniversary and play? Call the lads in together, spend a couple of weeks rehearsing and let rip? Even if it is inconceivable, could at least one person humour me with the possibility?