Well that was a great weekend!

After an horrendous, six hour drive down from Manchester on Friday night – idiots who can’t drive in a straight line on a road with one-way traffic crashing into each other – Amy and her housemate drove over to stay the night.

Saturday morning dawned bright and dry and found me cooking the sausages and eggs they’d kindly brought over before we headed off to Hackney Marshes, arriving at around 11.00am and queuing to get into BBC Radio 1’s Hackney Weekend 2012.  Somewhat bizarrely, we were asked to show our tickets five times before we actually got into the main area. Bizarre, because after the first gate and ticket check, there was no way for someone to have sneaked in.

Once inside, we wandered over to grab an ostrich burger and  cider before the acts came on to the various stages. And there were some cracking acts: in my case, I watched Deadmau5 (fabulous and loving the two electronic mouse helmets), Emeli Sandé (what a voice!), My Panda Shall Fly (great name, amusing self-deprecation), Paigey Cakey (not my thing but well done), Example (OK, I suppose), Ed Sheeran (absolutely great set, well done – one man, a guitar and a loop machine keeping us in thrall for an all too brief 45 minutes). Nicki Minaj (whose outfit let go after the strain of her miming), Lostprophets (fabulous set and the cover of “Earthquake” with secret guest Labrinth was really good), Jack White (rocked it) and finally Jay-Z who was supported by guests Rihanna, MIA and Kanye West to close the night off. And the best thing was the rain stayed off until late on the Saturday evening so we didn’t get particularly soggy either.

So a great time with a bit of pratting about thrown in for good measure:

So thank you so much BBC Radio 1 for such a great weekend and so well-organised to boot!