Diary of a festival organiser

Allow me to paraphrase a drunken conversation held on a warm evening this June...

"Dude.  Our garden is immense."
"Yeahhhhh man"
"We should do something in our garden man."
"We totally should!"
"We could have an epic party"
"With a BBQ"
"And you could play guitar"
"As could you"
"everyone could"
"Something like a festival?"
"No...EXACTLY like a festival"

And so it was, that the idea of Emberfest 2012 was brought to existence.

Our ambition grew with every day.  Ideas were excitedly added all the time. Day 2, a drinks shopping list was made.  Day 4, a poster made. By day 7, Emberfest had its own twitter, gmail and facebook account.  By day 10, it became self aware.
People were getting subtle clues, and word of mouth was spreading; What was it?  Who's playing?  How much will they charge for a pint?

It was getting ridiculous. In peoples minds, it was a licensed event, with proper bands, a fully stocked bar, and security.  In reality, 2 weeks before the big day dawned, it was still me and my housemate, a ukelele, a crate of stubbies, and pack of Richmond sausages.  I looked over to Matt, "Do think maybe we're not taking this as seriously as the people invited are?"

We realised it was becoming a monster, one we couldn't control, when a joke about a reformed Sclub7 being added to the line-up was taken seriously by half the punters signed up.  (By the way, in case you're wondering, we did look them up, they are still going but now under the name Sclub3, have a guess why)

We needed to calm the storm, and quick.  We stopped talking about it, started to referring it as "a party", and called a few people to let them know we could no longer provide camping facilities.

Along with the hype, numbers started to dwindle.  People who were "100% guaranteed will be there" a month previous were suddenly "oh sorry, forgot it's my niece's ballet recital".  Offended? Moi?

A night before, we were down to 10 confirmed guest.

"Come on Jim," I heard from the door "Let's go get some booze"
"You're right dude, fuck 'em!" I spat.  "We never needed 100s of people.   Even if it's just you and me with a can of Carling under an umbrella, at least we did it."
"If you book them, they will come."

In the end, there was reason to worry.  Guests arrived, beers were supped, burgers were charred, songs were played, and we had one hell of an epic Swingball tournament.

So Emberfest 2013?  Maybe....I heard Bewitched are not doing much these days