For those about to rock(grass)

I'm heading back to Southampton today, after a couple of weeks in Essex/Norfolk, but last night we finished our holiday by seeing Hayseed Dixie at Sheringham Little Theatre (a complete surprise to us - we didn't know they were playing until we arrived in Sheringham).

I think it was my first experience of an all-seater gig and, unfortunately, we were near the back (there weren't many tickets left when we bought them). Consequently, we didn't have the best view or photos (heavily reliant on zoom).

I think they only played three AC/DC songs: Dirty Deeds; You Shook Me All Night Long; and Highway to Hell. (Links are to Youtube videos of live performances, but not from this show.) There was a smattering of other rocking songs from the likes of Guns n Roses, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and Motorhead.

We did manage to get closer after the show though - I bought a CD (also available on Amazon) and managed to get all four members to sign it.

This is the end of this leg of the tour, but they have more shows in the autumn, including one in Southampton. I don't know whether we'll bother seeing them again so soon, but it was good to catch them once.

Farage beats Bin(face)

As widely expected, Nigel Farage won the Clacton by-election, securing over twice as many votes as his nearest rival.

The contest was interesting though, not only for marking Count Binface's best performance, but also for featuring a modern record 34 candidates. (This BBC page says 35, in the caption below the picture at the top, as well as 34, but I believe it's 34 that's right.) 

While this is a lot for the UK, it is far from a world record. The 2023 Toronto mayoral by-election featured over 100 candidates (see here and here). It's a good job that voters weren't required to rank all of the candidates! But I digress...

Since the 'main' parties decided not to stand in Clacton, most of the 34 are independents or fringe parties. Some are serial candidates and/or arguably part of a tradition of joke candidates. Interestingly, they include three candidates from the Monster Raving Loony Party - which makes sense only because voters vote for a candidate, rather than a party. (This kind of thing doesn't happen in Australia, for reasons discussed here.)

Most of these were largely irrelevant. Besides Farage and Binface, none received the 5% of the vote needed to return their deposit. Indeed, none of the others received even 500 votes, with 3rd place on just 492 votes. I make it that 21 of them received fewer than 100 votes and three of them received fewer than ten votes (which is the number of signatures one needs in order to stand, as documented here).

Almost total eclipse (of the eclipse)...

Today was a busy day. We went to Felbrigg Hall in the morning and Cromer in the afternoon. We went out again in the evening, because there was a near-total (90% or so) solar eclipse, but we didn't see much of it - we were outside, but the sun dipped behind some buildings. We didn't have special viewing equipment anyway. We did see an impressive sunset over the beach though.

Felbrigg Hall

This morning, we visited Felbrigg Hall (near Holt). We didn't go in the hall itself, though we did go in the walled gardens.

The dove cote was empty, but there were some chickens roaming the grounds.

We also took a walk through the grounds to an old church. Only on the walk were we told about a recent death due to cattle-trampling, but (perhaps in consequence) we didn't see any cows...

Recommendation: Walnut Tree, Thwaite

Driving from Colchester to Sheringham today, we stopped for lunch at an all-vegetarian pub in Thwaite called the Walnut Tree. I've only been the once but, if you're in the area, I'd highly recommend it. The enchiladas were one of the best meals I've had in quite a while.

Full review over on TripAdvisor.

A visit to Clacton

The upcoming Clacton by-election contest, pitting Nigel Farage against Count Binface, has generated a lot of social media attention - including in both music and wargaming circles. With less than a week until polling day, I took advantage of a family holiday in Essex to visit on the ground.

To be honest, we didn't see a lot of the town, except from the car. We only had two hours in the car park and spent most of that walking along the beach looking for somewhere to eat (we ended up at Martello Lounge, reviewed here). Even just driving through though, I saw many posters supporting Farage.

Gary Neville on dictatorship

The World Cup delivers again, this time pundit Gary Neville describing the refusal to release VAR footage as like a dictatorship. I suspect dictators have done worse.

Infantino on democracy

I didn't expect a pre-World Cup press conference to contain reflections on the meaning of democracy, but that's what happened.

The whole press conference can be found in various places on Youtube, such as here, here, and here.

The crucial bit comes at 55:23 here or 55:37 here or 54:36 here.

I'm not sure which countries' medieval practices he refers to. I may have to look that up.