Just back from Sidmouth, and it was magic this year. All the worries about its future made this more so, if anything. "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone..."

Pretty obviously, there'll be stuff happening next year - a sort of Interregnum Festival. I wonder if it'll be counted as the 51st Festival? I think what happens next year will be very important in helping to keep whatever is proposed for 2006 on target, and maybe provide a chance for trying out fresh ideas, and marking the fact that the festival belongs to all of us.

It should be interesting anyway. No shortage of people coming along to make music and dance and sing, likely including some contingents from overseas - which is important, because that's been a thing that has marked out Sidmouth as different from the other festivals. And I'm sure there'll be plenty of places to welcome us too.

Coordinating things so that people don't get in each others way too much, and so that people know where to go to enjoy things, that's going to be a conmplicated process, and so is stuff like ensuring that there is stuff like a solid children's programme, which won't happen just by chance. And there's the new licencing laws hanging over us too...

I'd imagine the internet should play a central part in making it possible for those things to be sorted out. Acrually that link to http://www.sidmouthfestival.org.uk./ didn't work for me, but that's the kind of thing that'll get fixed soon enough. I suspect the Mudcat could be quite significant too...

Of course it's irritating the way this whole thing was played out as an exercise in brinkmanship. And I think the whole episode is something that indicates something pretty contemptible about the people in charge of things in Devon and in England generally, regardless of their political labels. But that's hardly news, and it's not worth focussing on at this time.