BlueDot music/science festival Day One:

We arrived, in our hired motorhome (because there isn’t a tent on Earth large enough for all of MY creature comforts) and the young woman who directed us where to park also asked if we had the usual, glass bottles…illicit drugs. Ok, my hair is a funny colour so I can see how she could think I was a bit weirder than your average middle-aged person but really, was she asking because she thought we’d actually admit to it, or was she asking for herself? Due to the public nature of this blog I shall state for the record that we had neither (that’s actually a lie, I have salad dressing in a glass bottle at the back or a cupboard, hidden from prying eyes…don’t grass me up please).

This is our second BlueDot festival and my fourth visit to Jodrell Bank, so you’d think we’d be used to the sight of the Lovell radio telescope by now but I suspect that even the people who work here daily are sometimes wowed by it.

Yes, those are ominous clouds in the distance and they made their presence very much felt later on.

You haven’t really lived until you have walked back to your home so rainsoaked that even your underwear squelches.

We saw many joyous things Day One including Self Esteem who owned the stage and Professor Monica Grady talking about things, other than moon landings, that happened in 1969. Watching Professor Monica Grady watching herself get squiggily excited as the Rosetta probe landed on comet 67P was a real delight. As was finding out that such an esteemed professor has exactly the same problems we all do when trying to work a phone camera under stressful conditions.

Unfortunately there has been a disappointment this year. BlueDot have decided to become cashless and while that in itself is not a problem they are doing it by making everyone wear an RFID tracker in their wristband. This is an issue for me as I have very firm opinions on privacy and internet security. There is a way for me to load cash into the wristband, (we will probably run out of milk at some point this weekend…COFFEE!!) but it will still be theoretically possible for someone (the payment providing company that I didn’t get to choose for myself, for example) to link my purchases to my ticket number and so to my ticket payment details, all of which I find extremely annoying. There is also the (NOT) minor issue of no privacy or security notices being on view, which contravenes GDPR (maybe in spirit only, but in my mind for sure). All this means I shall probably not be buying a ticket for next year’s BlueDot, so I am determined to make the most of this year…better (less sleepy) reviews and much better photos to follow (hopefully).