For the last few years my family & their friends have packed up their gazebos, camping chairs and cool boxes and headed down to Barnet, North London every last weekend in June. Summer Soulstice is a outdoor music festival specialising in, yup you guessed it, soul music. It is held in memory of a local man Andy Weekes who spent much of his time on the cricket and sports ground (where the event is held) and had a huge passion for music. The locals put the festival on to raise money for a local charity and in the last 7 years have raised a very substantial amount of money.
I finally got the chance to come along this year so was very excited! My house is always filled with music rather than TV and it's all we listen to. No Radio One in my house! We all head to Tesco and spent stupid amounts on alcohol and snack food to keep us going.
We arrived about 11:30am to set up and were one of the first groups there. We saw these three poor lads take over an hour to put their flimsy gazebo up which gave us great enjoyment!
Our base camp was done with 15 minutes!
I invited my friend Andy down with me as I know he was brought up to love the kind of music my family do. And because he's bonkers.
The drinks swiftly began to be consumed. My drink(s) of choice where Strawberry & Lime ciders followed by vodka, elderflower cordial & lemonades. As the night went on I think I was drinking Bacardi - YUCK!
We decided to get the party started as the venue slowly filled up. My Mum and Aunty pretty much lived in the dance area all day and night.
The venue started to fill up and with the temperature reaching a nice 25 degrees the party really got started!
Andy was our camera man and we think it may have knackered him a bit. He needed a nap to get pumped for the nights festivities. After some food - a healthy mix of fish & chips (damn the Jamaican stand running out of curried goat) and candy floss we proceeded to drink much, much more and dance our feet off until 11pm! Highlight for me? Doing the electric slide with roughly 500 other people was something I won't forget in a hurry.
There was about 4,500 people there and it was just the most relaxed atmosphere which we all really enjoyed. There was a really good mix of ages and I think everyone just wanted to have a dance and enjoy the music; it wasn't about getting absolutely wasted (I'll save that for V Festival)! I will definitely go again as it was such a lovely way to spend the day with my family!
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