Fairport’s Cropredy Convention

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This summer I went with a friend to Fairport’s Cropredy Convention, a small festival in rural Oxfordshire set up by the band Fairport Convention.

This year it was 50 years since the band was formed (although over the years they’ve had so many people leave the band, join the band, re-join the band, that the full 50-year line-up includes around 30 musicians!).

It’s predominantly a folk-rock festival, and the majority of the performers are ex-band members who have gone solo or formed other bands, mixed in with a few performers they just really love. An eclectic mix but really pretty good!

Here are a few video highlights: Continue reading

Pete Tong and the Heritage Orchestra

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Betty and I went to an obscure little festival in Oxford back in May, purely for the sake of seeing Pete Tong perform his Ibiza club classics with a live orchestra on stage, and it was EPIC!

I absolutely loved it and thought it was amazing to get such an incredible live orchestral performance of club tunes!

Here are a few examples, though you can’t always see the performers that clearly, but it was really amazing to see all these tunes performed live by an orchestra!

Continue reading

Lions vs Zebra

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In this video, you can see a large herd of zebra, (the collective noun for zebra is a “dazzle” FYI), panicking and running away from some lions in a stampede-type way.

The lions are trotting along unconcerned at a leisurely pace behind them, and as we watched we realised they weren’t especially bothered about catching the zebra – they were heading for something else. But it was quite a sight to see nonetheless.

Animals ambling about

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Yet more videos from my trip to the Mara. I don’t care if you all get bored of these posts, as it was incredible, and I could watch these over and over again!

First, a mama elephant and her baby (who is less than 1 year old, apparently you can tell they are less than 1 if they can still pass underneath the mother’s belly).

Then, a large family of giraffes – the most I’ve ever seen in one place, I think there were at least 16 of them here, all hanging out together. Gorgeous!

They say that birds do it, bees do it….

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Here are some videos of lions shagging. Obvs.

I think it’s the same 2 lions, on different days. I’m told that when the mood takes him, the male lion will select his lioness of choice, and take her off somewhere into the bush. They will stay out there for about a week, basically just shagging like bunnies – doing nothing but resting and shagging for days. Our guide informed us they call it the “honeymoon period” and during that time they won’t even hunt or eat much – nothing but shagging and sleeping.

Dung Beetles

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Here’s a video of an actual dung beetle doing his thing. I’ve only ever seen it on nature programmes before, so had always assumed that the dung was the size of a meatball – in fact this ball of dung was about the size of my fist!

Also, you can see the female is holding on and rolling around – the male pushes the dung, and the female gets a free ride by clinging to the ball of dung!

Pretty impressed with our guide being able to spot something this small and stopping the car so we could have a look.