Steamcheese!

It’s funny what a difference a new year can make. I always joke that I’m solar-powered, but I really have felt my spirits lift since Christmas, and I’m sure the lengthening days have something to do with that. (Do you find brighter days cheer you up?) Mr Robot and I have also been making plans for fun things to do this year, which puts me in a good mood. Husky racing, a Meatloaf gig (the tickets were Mr R's Christmas present from me), and hopefully a trip to Burma to visit my granddad's home town... we've a lot to do!

Yesterday I bought a pair of tickets to Steamcheese, a steampunk day in Frome, Somerset. It’s being held at the Cheese & Grain (a venue which a Frome-resident friend of mine refers to as the Cheesy Groin!). There’s a market in the daytime. Bands on the bill in the evening include Sunday Driver, Professor Elemental and The Men That Will Not Be Blamed for Nothing. There’ll also be some local burlesque and a poetry performance, but I have to confess to being less enthused about those, unless the performers take a really novel approach to ‘stick a cog on it’.

There’s no Waltz on the Wye this year, so my friends who’ve organised it are looking forward to a day where someone else does all the planning and entertainment-wrangling, while Mr Robot and I are looking forward to getting squiffy and going home to sleep in our own beds. I’m already contemplating clothing: one outfit to do all day, take a change of clothes, or nip home when the market closes at 3 and come back for the evening? It’s about 15 miles from Trowbonia, so not far.

Being a guttersnipe, I suspect I’ll skip dressing nicely for the evening and spend the whole day in the same kit, with the mid afternoon interlude being spent in a pub. I quite fancy wearing 1920s beach pyjamas, but I’ve got several months to decide on an outfit, so who knows what new ideas I’ll have had by then?

Tickets to Steamcheese cost £15 (plus a booking fee) until the end of January, £20 thereafter, and you can buy them online.