We took a little getaway over Easter break, taking the train (about 4 hours) to Fareham for the Gosport and Fareham Easter Festival. The Festival is a 5-day folk music blowout, with four-hour concerts in the afternoon, concerts in the evening, post-concert concerts in local pubs, ongoing workshops and jam sessions, and basically wall-to-wall traditional music. We were fairly conservative and bought tickets to three concerts: one Friday afternoon, one Saturday afternoon, and one Saturday evening, for a total of 11 hours of music and 9 bands (two of the bands played afternoon and evening). To those of you who are already wondering: did Hannah manage not to explode, sitting still for 11 hours of music? We reply with a resounding Yes! She was a little trooper. Hannah loves music, and quickly learned to yell out Woohoo! after each song... although she also loves to laugh raucously when the rest of the audience laughs, which caused some embarrassment when someone onstage made a joke that, shall we say, was of an adult nature, and my little one was laughing it up like she thought it the funniest thing ever. Anyway, we were prepared parents and also brought snackies and coloring supplies for those moments when her attention waned, and fun was had by all. So some of the groups we saw, and recommend, were Last Night's Fun, Steve Tilston (great guitar player), Isambarde and Kerfuffle. Kerfuffle is an amazingly talented band, and have been touring for a few years. Now consider the liner notes, which mention that vocalist Hannah James attended a particular concert in 1992, when she was four years old. And she wrote a trio of songs for fellow band member Sam Sweeney's 16th birthday, last year. Makes a body feel old. But man, they are good. And cute as a button.

Fareham also hosted a "Day of Dance" on Saturday, so we had the opportunity to see Morris dancers, a traditional folk-dance thing. It was... interesting. I do so love a culture that insists on the men wearing hats piled high with fresh flowers... and then there's the bit with everyone skipping about in a circle, waving a scarf. Although most of the dances involved holding a stick whilst another dancer whacked your stick with theirs, and vice-versa. Check out the footage on the video page.

Sunday we moved camp to Portsmouth's Southsea district. We toured HMS Warrior and HMS Victory, Nelson's flagship. Both are very, very big and basically you walk on board and can only say "Wow." Monday we took a nice walk along the seashore, visited Southsea Castle and the Blue Reef Aquarium.

Of course, vacations aren't just about sightseeing and tours. We ate yummy dinners at Spanish, French, Indian and Chinese restaurants. Hannah had her first snails, and decided she liked them a lot. Cliff and Hannah also took in the "traditional English breakfast"--an artery-clogging plate full of eggs, bacon, sausages, hash browns, mushrooms and tomato, along with a serving of toast. Naturally, even after all that, Hannah was ready for a snack by mid-morning.

We also have video of Hannah and Bethan Long leading the Brynmill Primary School Easter Bonnet parade last Wednesday. Enjoy!