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Location – The festival was held in Canada Olympic Park (COP), with the main stage at the bottom of the ski hill.  This provided good views of the stage and over the city, as well as ensuring that there was never an issue with the person in front blocking your view.

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Pearl Jam – Far and away the biggest band playing the festival, Pearl Jam turned up on Saturday night looking slightly bewildered (it was their first gig since June last year) but they soon found their stride and the vast crowd, most of whom had only turned up to see them, were duly satisfied. 

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Local content – The Virgin festival takes place in five locations across Canada with a different set of bands in each location, but in Calgary, other than Pearl Jam and White Lies, each band was Canadian, which meant we got to see loads of bands usually overshadowed by their American cousins.

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The Arkells – An excellent Canadian band.  Yes, I know, but excellent and Canadian do fit in this sentence together.  After a few initial guitar problems, they proved that they are as good live as their fine debut album “Jackson Square” suggested that they would be. 

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K-os – Getting away with taunting the locals (“this is the richest province, try and sound like it.”) and causing scenes of unnecessary excitement by playing and then rapping over the intro to Stairway to Heaven, K-os seemed to be the only band not in awe of Pearl Jam or thanking the organisers for a chance to play.  I wasn’t that keen on them musically, but they get into good things based on their feisty attitude alone.    

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Billy Talent – Headliners for Sunday and undoubtedly far less popular than Pearl Jam.  They crunched their way through a decent set that mixed in old favourites with new material and made me think I could actually get to like them, until I realised the average age of people wearing Billy Talent t-shirts was about eleven.

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Metric – Worth watching purely to see demented singer Emily dancing around in the style of Juliette Lewis, from the days when The Licks were still playing live.  Some of the songs were good too, I prefer “Dead Disco” and “Monster Hospital” to the latest stuff, but most of the crowd seemed to like “Sick Muse” and “Gimme Sympathy” just as much.   

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Weather - Not too hot, not too cold, bright and breezy until Sunday night when the promised hail storm didn’t turn up, but the rain lashed down for the final part of Billy Talent’s set.

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Main Stage Security - The best I’ve seen at a big event.  Easily pulling people out when they were struggling close to the front and sending crowd surfers around the edge of the stage without admonishment or shitty attitude, I was impressed with what I saw. 

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Changes to the layout on the second day – On the first (and busiest day) the layout was messy and confusing (see bad things below), but the organisers obviously learnt from this and made some small but significant changes on the Sunday that really helped.

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School Bus – Taking public transport to the COP was made easy. A fleet of yellow school buses were used to ferry festival goers along the twenty minute drive from the end of the line train station to the entrance.  

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Tokyo Police Club – They came on, they played decent indie tunes for half an hour and they left.  It could have been Glastonbury 1995, but it wasn’t.

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Beer tickets & Alcohol choice – Not content with a ridiculous system of queuing to buy tickets to exchange for beer in one area, before queuing again to get into a beer area, I then had to face the indignity of having my ID checked by a spotty lad young enough to be my child, before I could exchange the tickets for a pissy can of Molson or two.

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Prices - $6 (£3.25) for a small can of Molson – no need to say any more.

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First day layout – Selling beer tickets outside of beer gardens led to confusion, crowding and frayed tempers. In the beer gardens, a complete lack of a system for queuing made things worse. Not being able to take beer out of the beer gardens meant that over 50% of the people watching Pearl Jam were squeezed into less than 25% of the available space.  Small changes were made on Sunday, beer tickets got sold in beer gardens only, which helped and it showed the organisers were able to respond to problems, but with only half of the number of people attending on the second day, the congestion would never have been as bad anyway.   

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No kids please – In general the (much) smaller of the two stages sponsored by local radio station CJAY 92, had a pleasant intimate feel about it and afforded those of us old enough to drink a reasonable experience.  But if you were under eighteen and your favourite band was playing on that stage you should demand your money back.  As it was located in a beer garden area, the only view of it you could get without ID was over the barriers and queues of adults heading in for a beer.  Not particularly clever for an all ages festival. 

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Put your shirt back on please – It was hot on Saturday which seemed enough of an excuse for several blokes to go bare-chested.  Some of them had spent enough time in the gym to get away with it, most hadn’t.  Even more sadly, a large number of women had decided that bikini tops were appropriate festival wear.  Sadly, you say.  Yes sadly, the bloke slurring at me in the “blind drunk” conversation above, may have seen babes, where as all I could see where a mixed bag of thick thighs, muffin tops and ill fitting shorts and bikini tops.

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Changed set times on Sunday – Information was in short supply at the festival.  Set times were flashed up on the video screens by the main stage, but Sunday’s got shortened and changed between posting them on the website and our arrival at the COP.  The idea seemed to be that you could go online on your Virgin phone to find out more and, of course, pay through the arse for the privilege. 

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Smug Virgin crap everywhere – Virgin ran and sponsored the festival; they also took every opportunity to ram their awful Virgin mobile product in your face. And yes it is awful – I have one of their phones.

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Constant Season – A truly awful band that didn’t deserve their headlining spot on the CJAY stage on Saturday.

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Lack of trust - Why is it more or less impossible to go to a bar and buy a beer in this country?  Why do you need to buy tickets in one area to get a beer at another spot? Are the servers too thick to take money? Perhaps most strangely, why does everyone with a beer have to stay inside a beer garden, in this case with a very crowded and crappy view of the main stage?  It seems the authorities here don’t trust people with alcohol in general and beer in particular, but if you treat your citizens like naughty kids, that might explain their behaviour. 

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Not a VIP – The (rather pointless) VIP area required a special wristband for entry, which several hundred people got.  They then took off their wristbands and passed them through the small wire fence that surrounded the area to their friends without VIP tickets, who got in, took off their wristband and, well you get the picture.  By the time Pearl Jam’s set was in full flow the VIP area was almost as busy as the rest of the festival grounds.

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Unmovable beer people – On Saturday I was convinced that some people hadn’t strayed outside the beer garden for the entire day.  On Sunday this was proved to us.  Early in the day we went for a quick drink and stood close to the fence by a loud woman and her friend.  Six hours later we walked past the fence to see the same pair standing in exactly the same position, but looking slightly groggier than before.  In true Canadian style they didn’t appear to have moved at all during the day.

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Michael Bernard Fitzgerald – An odd man from Calgary playing on the CJAY stage, clearly confused by the altered set timings on Sunday, he came on ten minutes late and was then surprised he had to get off again so quickly.  Musically he was somewhere between quirky and entertaining without really being either.

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Joshua’s Habit – Redneck rock ‘n’ roll lives in on the CJAY stage Calgary.  They finished their set with a song called Whiskey and Women, both of which would’ve improved them a great deal.  Strangely the local DJ that came on straight afterwards, suggested they should be on the main stage next year and there were enough drunken fools shouting their appreciation to suggest it might just happen.

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Get fit through pole dancing – As with many things, the “Pole dancing can keep you fit” craze has arrived a little later than in Canada than the rest of the western world.  Three confused young girls stood around a pole apparently to discuss the phenomenon, although they didn’t actually seem that keen to demonstrate, which made the stall fairly pointless.

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Stairway to pizza – The K-os guitarist, plays the intro to Stairway to Heaven and mass excitement arrives at the festival, so much so that a bearded lad muscles his burly, but rather short frame in front of us while desperately munching down a slice of pizza.  He is so excited that he has finished most of the slice, with the rest of the cheese dripping off his beard, before he realises that singer has started rapping over the Stairway lick and Led Zeppelin are not on stage. 

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Who’s in the band? – On the Sunday evening we left by a different exit, which involved us climbing to the top of the ski hill, in the rain. Close to the top, out of breath and struggling we were stopped in our tracks by a lass asking us if we knew the names of the guys in “Billy Talent.”  I managed to gasp, No sorry, while I was thinking “get out of the way, before I expire, you stupid bitch.”  

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Please stand up -  White Lies, a dull, London band, that sounded like a poor copy of the Editors, asked the crowd to stand up for their last tune, as they had flown half way around the world just to play the festival and the polite Canadians in attendance did it.  Hundreds of them, stretching half way up the ski hill.  We were standing at the time and deliberately sat down. 

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Virgin phone boxes – Need a quiet spot to use your crappy Virgin mobile phone, here’s a lovely old red British phone box for you to use, until someone pisses in it anyway.

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Dancing trees – Well it’s a way to make a living I suppose, see the photo album below.

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Rodeo – We had the pleasure of seeing the final day of the rodeo in excellent weather.  Stunning performances, especially in the bull riding, a sport for which insanity is mandatory.

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Chuck Wagon Races – The event that made the Calgary Stampede famous, it is chaotic, exciting and fun to watch, at least for the first few races.  After nine races in a row in just over two hours, we were realising why most people only go to one of the ten nights racing.  Now if you could gamble on each race it would be an entirely different matter.

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Mini-Chuck wagon races – A miniature version in the agricultural building in every sense. A smaller course, a smaller wagon and four miniature horses pulling the whole thing along.

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Agricultural centre set up – Nicely put together, with the opportunity to learn about several agricultural animals and plenty of chances to meet the critters face to face. Even a small bison was on show.  The section on modern farming and Canadian eating habits was entertaining for us, but then we don’t stuff in six eggs, half a pound of bacon and a stack of pancakes with maple syrup every morning.

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Indian Village – The local tribes have been involved in the Stampede since it started in 1912 and these days it is no different. The Indian village offered the chance to see impressive tipis and traditional cooking methods along with dancing and tug of war thrown in.  Ironically it was set up at the edge of the grounds where fewest people go, just like the reservations where the majority of the local Indians live.

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Free Pancake Breakfast – Every Stampede morning, between 8 and 10am, twenty or so heavily sponsored chuck wagons set up in the downtown area and served up a pancake crowned with a strip of bacon to anyone who wanted one, for free.  This gesture is one of the feel good elements of the Stampede, completely in contrast with the food rip off seen inside the Stampede grounds.  It also allows the city’s workers and homeless to socialise for a couple of hours each morning.  I ate my pancake, but I gave the bacon to Rebecca.      

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Western Oasis – A calm and peaceful area with lots of paintings, a fairly quiet stage and a wine tasting area.  It didn’t feel like the rest of the Stampede at all, but it was a nice antidote to the constant noise and bustle of the fair ground. 

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Weadickville – Sounds like a Scottish insult, but actually was a pleasant, if extremely contrived, replica of an old west town.

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Milk & Cookies – Most food inside the stampede grounds was grease based and highly expensive, the exception was a small stall in the agricultural area that sold small cartons of chocolate milk and a wagon wheel for $1. A tasty bargain I couldn’t refuse.

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Weather – It didn’t rain all of the time during the Stampede, but when it stopped you always felt it wouldn’t be long before the greatest outdoor show on earth became the wettest outdoor show on earth, again.

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Beer – Canadians can’t be trusted with alcohol, so instead of being able to buy a drink from anyone that sells food (the German principle), the only places to get booze were a couple of very small beer gardens, the indoor live music venues and the casino.  For each of these outlets queues were vast and the small tasteless beer you received for $7 didn’t feel worth the effort.

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Food on a stick – We saw loads of odd food on sticks in Asia, but never before have I seen Pizza on a stick.  For $9 a go I didn’t try it either.

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Lottery – Way too many stalls in the fair grounds were selling horribly priced lottery tickets for the benefit of some charity or another.  Not sure if the prizes were any good, it just felt like an extension of the poor tax, with each person we saw buying a set of 100 tickets looking increasingly desperate.

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Casino set up – A confused feel to the casino wasn’t helped by the lack of booze availability and the feeling that no one was winning anything.

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Idiots – Every big event attracts people with fewer brain cells than average.  The idiot screaming at an innocent bystander that he had stolen one of his flip flops (in the pouring rain) deserved a slap, but I didn’t have the energy at the time.

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Stampede Parade – The opening event involves hundreds of people parading through the centre of town on floats, on horseback and mostly looking like they are on a potent speed and acid mix, while they wave and smile at the assembled crowds of thousands, for nearly three hours. Truly odd.  

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It’s a BIG show – The grandstand show presented each night after the chuck wagon races, was BIG, with lots of fireworks, special singing and comedy performances and even some mad freestyle motocross riders involved. But mainly it was about songs telling us what a “BIG show” it was.

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Tub tarts – As mentioned in the conversation above, young, slim lasses with their fake breasts on as much show as possible, generally seen in stampede “after dark” parties in the town, serving expensive bottled beer from huge ice water barrels (the tubs).  Great for middle-aged cowboys with too much money to spend.  Not so good for their wives.

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Hat stomping competition – 30 seconds for six people to destroy their cowboy hats in the most effective and stylish way possible.  The prize for the winner?  A brand new cowboy hat.

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Tipi raising – In the Indian village we were treated to a race to raise a tipi between a set of boys and girls.   The boys won by a fair way, but that was probably because the girls spent the first five minutes ignoring the shouts of watching knowledgeable mothers and tried to put the thing together in the wrong order.

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Heavy horses with the Calgary Philharmonic.  – Show horses with carriages parading around a ring doesn’t sound that interesting.  But with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra providing a medley of cowboy film classical tunes in the background, it turned out to be an unexpected highlight.

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Ticket pricing for the grandstand – Pay $150 (or more) for a top view of the rodeo or chuck wagon races in the platinum seating section and then get slightly annoyed when those who paid $12 for standing tickets are closer to the action than you are.

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Vaulting – Gymnastics set to music on horseback.  The kind of thing you just don’t see anywhere, ever, really.

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Superdogs – Dogs run around an obstacle course, then compete to catch frisbees and then dance to tacky disco music.  Highly entertaining for anyone under the age of ten who likes dogs.

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Calgary Show Band – At the start of the “BIG show,” this fully uniformed marching band inexplicably launched into a brass inspired version of AC/DC’s “Back in Black.”  I nearly choked on my expensive tasteless beer.

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A Green and Pleasant land – I know it’s a cliché, but when you’ve been away in a monochrome landscape for a while, the UK really does look and feel like a green and pleasant place.

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Friends and Family – Six months away seemed to render old irritations irrelevant, and it was great to see our friends too.

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People – Not sure if it was due to the weather, but practically everyone we came across had a smile on their face.  What happened to the miserable buggers who populated the country before we left?

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There’s life here – In two hours walking around central London I saw more movement, more attractive women, more stylish men, more children smiling, more wheeler dealing, more confused tourists and more life than I had in six months in Calgary.

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Sports Coverage – I didn’t realise what I had been missing.  Real coverage of sport; no adverts every few minutes, commentators who knew what they were talking about (except David Pleat).  Sky Sports made TSN, Sportsnet and The Score look dull and pointless in comparison.    

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New Forest – A fabulous setting for Joyce’s 70^th birthday celebration, wonderfully green, full of deer and newly born foals of wild mares. Perhaps most importantly there were no restrictions on where to go or “stay on the trail” signs. 

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Champions League final – I spent most of the match with a blissful smile on my face.  The only thing better than Barcelona’s wonderful flowing football was that they were completely outplaying Man Utd.  It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of people.

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Taking the piss – We had been at the airport for about five minutes before we heard two lads taking the piss out of their friend.  I didn’t realise how much I’d missed it until then. The Canadian sense of humour tends to be an American sense of humour with a dose of self deprecation, no piss taking allowed, or understood for that matter.

b

Food poisoning – while I was enjoying myself in Nottingham, Rebecca was foolishly eating snails in a Hemel Hempstead restaurant.  The resultant food poisoning was as nasty as it was predictable.

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Over indulgence - Too much food, too much drink, too little sleep and a schedule that allowed for no rest at all, was great for the first week. Then exhaustion and the food poisoning got to us. 

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Traffic – Busy doesn’t cover it.  I suppose the kids being off for Whitsun week didn’t help, but we seemed to spend as much time stationary in traffic jams as we did moving.

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Travel prices – Travelling on a train anywhere near London seems to have got even more expensive and even less efficient.  Petrol prices of £1 (C$1.75) / litre had us gasping after paying 80c (46p) / litre in Calgary.

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Airline food problems – Normally we order low fat meals on planes, as it tends to get served first and is often a lot less greasy and nasty then the standard meal.  On our flight to the UK, BA forgot one of them, on the way back they served the most disgusting sandwich I’ve eaten in years.  It seemed to consist of fried pus and red pepper skin.   

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Missing out on a job interview – I’ve been looking for work for several months now, so when I got a message to say I had secured an interview with Trans-Canada pipelines I was very pleased.  Just a few days later I was extremely pissed off when I was told my agent had forgotten I was away and that the company wouldn’t wait for my return.

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Denise’s wedding – Rebecca’s friend Denise had conveniently planned to get married during the two weeks we were back. So we attended a good natured wedding and had fun, which is more than can be said for the groom’s side of the family.  While I have nothing but good wishes for Neil (the groom) his family left a bit to be desired (see conversation above) and his best person (sister) gave possibly the dullest speech I’ve ever heard at a wedding.  However this was all nicely balanced out by the folks at our table who ranged from polite, to insane via very interesting.  Keep up the good work with the street kids in Africa, Patrick and be careful where you park that car Graham, you never know when Ricky Gervais might turn up.

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Whaley Bridge – We met my sister in the Peak district, in the small, but strange town of Whaley Bridge.  It’s a pretty little place, complete with a canal and park, featuring dope smoking youth.  But the crowning achievement is a cafe that belongs somewhere in the midst of time, where my 18 month old nephew was nearly served a cheese and chilli sauce sandwich as the nice old man taking orders had got confused and where butter was the main ingredient in all of the dishes. 

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A typically English five minutes – A warm May Sunday afternoon, M25 slow traffic, Radio 1 on in the car, Dizzee Rascal’s “Bonkers” is followed by DJ Nihal chatting to a bunch of teenagers about what they are definitely going to do this summer.  16 year old Christian tells us he’s going to cross the English Channel in a canoe for charity.  Nihal asks what his parents think about the idea.  Christian admits that he hasn’t told them yet and thought he’d tell the nation on Radio 1 before he surprises them with the idea.  Chuckling away, we crawl under a bridge at ten miles an hour. Six foot high whitewashed capital letters on the bridge telling us to “GIVE PEAS A CHANCE,” fade in the sun. 

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Not as painful as it could have been – Leeds United’s exit from the League 1 playoffs happened in the semi-final before we landed. So while I was somewhat upset at the time, at least I didn’t have to sit amongst my friends while we got beaten in the final, again. 

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Let There Be Rock – In the Proud Gallery in Camden we spent a few minutes looking at some excellent early photos of AC/DC, a few of which were from before the Bon Scott era. Although some of the shots were excellent, I was put off buying any framed copies by prices that started in the region of £200 and got substantially higher.  That and putting pictures of blokes in school uniforms on the wall just doesn’t seem right.  

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Flick of the Switch – On our first day back, I found it strangely comforting to be able turn off an electrical device with the switch on the wall instead of having to yank the plug out.

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Relative Size – After six months of Canada, everything in England seemed to have shrunk, especially in relation to driving.  The roads had got smaller, in some places tiny. The cars had got smaller too, with virtually no pick-up trucks around. Perhaps most disturbingly, parking spaces had shrunk several feet, which took a few days to get used to.

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Ski Jump Wii champion – Whilst my efforts with the hula hoop and the balancing balls left a bit to be desired, I managed to discover a hidden talent for Wii ski jumping. Somehow I’m not convinced I’d be quite as good at the real thing.

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The Altstadt – The old town has been tastefully preserved in its medieval form and is a nice place to stroll around.

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Mozart – This is where the great composer was born and grew up. The town obviously holds their favourite son in great esteem.

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Scenery – Salzburg is in a sub alpine area, so you can see fantastic mountain scenery without having to leave the centre of the town.  Although if you make your way up to the local palace (Schloss) the view is even better.

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Residence Galerie – The gallery was showing a special exhibition on the nature of sin and its portrayal in paintings since the 1500’s.  It was thought provoking and well put together.

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Sacher Torte – The delicious chocolate covered cake is really from Vienna, but that doesn’t stop it being exceptionally tasty in Salzburg.

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Mirabell Gardens - Cunningly cut out and planted, the local council buildings gardens are surprisingly nice. As you will see from the picture in the album below.

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The Cathedral (Dom) -  Outside, a fairly pleasant if not great looking building. Inside a rather vulgar display of the affluence of the town.  I’m not a religious person, but that didn’t matter here. The Dom is set up as a tourist attraction, not a place of worship.  If you want one of those go to the Franziskaner church around the corner.

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Mozart – Favourite son he may be, but he’s also the favourite brand.  Mozart’s image adorns far too many things from restaurant frontages to chocolates and perfume.  We didn’t try Mozart flavoured liquor in a violin shaped bottle and if you did, or even worse, bought a bottle, you need a slapping.

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High on a hill, with a bloke pretending to herd goats - Possibly a worse rip off than Mozart liquor, the daily ‘Sound of Music’ tour offered a trip around the locations for the filming of the famous (and somewhat annoying) tale of the Von Trapp family.  Yes the Julie Andrews version, not the real story.

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Dodgy Busker – Yes, I can see you strumming a few dull chords while a marvellous melody comes out and if I look a little harder I can spot the speaker, half hidden by a blanket on your left leg, where the music is coming from, you nasty little fraud.

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No Kangaroos – A few years ago in Vienna we smiled when we saw a “No Kangaroos in Austria” t-shirt.  Sadly there were Australians in Salzburg, showing all the tact and understanding that we’ve come to expect from them when they leave their tiny little corner of the world.

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Red Bull – The bloke that invented it (Dietrich Mateschitz) is from Salzburg.  Sadly I didn’t know where he lived; otherwise I could’ve drunk a bottle of vodka with a couple of cans of his stinky, syrupy liquid.  Then I could’ve gone to his house and annoyed the hell out of him for hours before the caffeine high wore off, instead of just falling over and then asleep, which is what would’ve happened if I’d only drunk the vodka.

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Sat Nav Madness – Our satellite navigation system got very confused on the way in to Salzburg.  As well as sending us around in concentric circles for nearly half an hour, it also managed to produce a route on its ‘short’ setting that was a longer distance than the ‘fast’ setting, which I thought was impossible.

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Open Lift – The hotel we chose had an old style lift where you open an outside door and then climb into the lift. Usually there is an inner door or at least a cage style metal sliding door.  In this instance there was only the outer door, which gave you the strange sensation that you weren’t really held in.  We used the stairs quite a lot after the first night.

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Plastic Pod Bathroom – We also tried to spend as little time in the bathroom as possibly, as it looked and felt like it had been stripped straight out of a cheap cruise ship and then inserted into our room.

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What are you looking at? – Outside McDonalds some of the local Salzburg youth hung around making a bit of noise, in the manner of teenagers the world over.  The only difference was that they were all dressed in designer clothes and none of them looked like they’d ever need a job flipping burgers.  Salzburg really is a very affluent place.

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Horse shit shovelling man – Riding a bike with a cart on the front, Salzburg’s smelliest man stops regularly to get his shovel out and fill his cart with the copious droppings of Salzburg’s horses.  If you can stand the smell he’s a good man to follow through crowded areas.

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Tourist Tastes – Salzburg has restaurants that specialise in Austrian food, restaurants that specialise in Italian food and even the odd one or two that specialise in Indian food.  Sadly a couple of local proprietors have decided to specialise in all three.  So if you fancy a curried schnitzel pizza just head to one of the Austrian, Italian and Indian restaurants.

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Blaine? – In a Salzburg square a figure balances on a large golden ball.  Is it pretentious wanker David Blaine performing his latest dull stunt?  Probably not.  See the picture in the photo album below.

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Mozart’s Balls – With a picture of the ubiquitous Mozart on the wrapper, this chocolate with a puréed nut filling was the size of a large testicle.  So like many visitors, we left Salzburg with one of Mozart’s balls in our mouths.  They were quite tasty.