a music festival and a home delivery service…

Life has never been boring and this last weekend was spent enjoying some wonderfully talented bands playing live music at the Chalgrove Live Music Festival in Oxfordshire, where Aquapax was one of their core sponsors. 

The Festival is designed for people to enjoy live music in a family fun atmosphere while raising money for local worthy causes – this year’s charity was ‘crossroads – caring for carers’.

They had 20 bands booked in total and the face painters and fun-fair helped bring a real family feel to this intimate live music fest, which was real fun to be a part of. 

My son and I took a stand outside the beer tent  to offer ice cool Aquapax original (and energy drinks) to the bands as well as for the warm and weary members of the public – drinking beer for 12 hours in serious sunshine isn’t for the faint hearted, although we met plenty of people willing to try! 

All things considered, the event was well run and there were some genuinely nice people there. We had a really enjoyable weekend in the sunshine and it was great that the weather folk got it so wrong on this occasion!

zebra guy at the CLMF 2009

Bands worthy of a mention from this particular critic were:

The Motowners ; Strange Folk (amazing voice) ; Quo Incidence (if you like that kind of thing) ; All Right Now (must be my generation) ; Jiv’in Jules Jazz Ensemble (pity a lot of folk were still in bed) ; The Whoo (?) Ann Duggan (amazing voice) ; and of course The Kommitments (always end with a good boogie…

Coming home to a warm shower and a proper bed are always a bonus of a festival – or any weekend in a tent for that matter!

A bit of good news this week is that Aqua Amore – ‘the UK’s largest water delivery specialist’ has responded to our customer demand in taking on home distribution for Aquapax across London and the home counties, plus wider distribution nationwide. Now the challenge is to dust off the enquiries database to see if we can bring this new alliance to their attention and help generate some home delivery orders in due course.

Tomorrow’s another day in the big smoke and then Friday is looking like a journey to Peterborough beckons. What is it they say about winners never quitting and quitters never winning…

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living here and now…

I can’t help wonder why decision making is sometimes so difficult. Are we afraid of ‘no’ or do we genuinely not know? This has been a frustrating fortnight for ‘maybe’, ‘possibly’ and ‘might’ – the financial markets may be recovering quite well, but there’s a hard core of ‘no decision suits me better’ out there which has to change if the economy is to pick up properly.

Commitment is a wonderful thing because it gives the impetus to go forward. Foundations can be laid and plans developed while positive actions are taken towards the execution of whatever has been decided. Once decisions are made, there’s no need to wait for anything and that same decisive action is now needed to kick-start the business world back to life.

In our own small way, we’re going for it and we’ve agreed to sponsor this year’s Chalgrove Live Music Festival. The way I see it, there will be 20 bands playing to an audience of a few thousand over 3 days from Friday evening 7th to Sunday evening 9th August. It’s a far more intimate affair than Glasto and unlikely to be as muddy… It’s also a perfect opportunity for families to enjoy their own music festival and let’s face it, music is a wonderful thing if you can enjoy it with people you love.

Why did we choose this particular festival this year? Well we’re scaling back a little, paying homage to these prudent times, but it’s still getting us out there in the Oxfordshire community, which is one of those areas where Aquapax doesn’t yet have great representation. (come on Oxfordshire businesses – your residents need Aquapax.) So there’s the strategic rationale, whereas on a human level, the fact we agree with the CLM ethos as a fun for the family fund raising festival (lots of f’s) which donates its profits to noble local charities is right up our street.

The Chalgrove Live Music Festival website seems to be having some issues right now, but we hope to see you there in any case. Find me on the Saturday if you want to talk opportunities – after 2 nights in a tent I get a little sleepy… 😉

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