At Stroud Fringe festival

I stayed up far too late last night and we both had a very lazy start to the day. My holiday rhythms seem hard to break as a more engaged working week approaches.

Mid-afternoon I went down to the centre of town to see how the last day of the Fringe festival was faring. The Bird's Nest stage was acoustic and had a good gathering in the Cornhill market place, where the Farmer's market is held on Saturdays. There were some bouncy castles and big inflatable slides set up near the Merrywalks, but the fumes from the generator vehicle were horrible. I'm rather glad that no kids seem interested.

The main stage was in Bank Gardens, backing onto Lansdown Hall where the festival organisers were based. The Town Council is one of the funders of the festival and hopefully by next year we will have nearly completed the new developments in the hall. I've enjoyed being on the Working Group who are over-seeing the project.

It was great to see a lot of younger people and families in the gardens, enjoying lying on the grass of the formal gardens in the sunshine. The beer tent was busy but there was no signs of drunkenness.

I have been tasking myself with only using my 35mm prime lens for the last while, so finding space and consequent shots amongst all the people was challenging. I went under the lovely large tree on the lawn, attracted by all the small kids climbing onto the overhanging branches. Soon a steward came up and tried to get them all down, but in a very gentle way. The legs on the left of this picture are of one of the last, with the three standing together looking a bit despondent.

You can just see the guitarist playing on the stage, and a woman having just sat down after some frantic dancing. Nearly all the bands who have played over the three days coke from the local area. I like this shot because of the two other kids dashing past me in another world of play.