Saturday was Motown night with american Motown act The Magic Of Motown, They spent the evening entertaining the crowds, The good thing about this night was even if you weren't into Motown you knew the words to every song and could sing along, So that was a very enjoyable night.
Sunday was an all day event with a kids area where they could build and launch there own rockets, Little theatre shows and a play area, then there was a Chroma Van that bathed you in pure colour that changed the colour of your clothes and skin. There was 2 stages, the 2nd stage was more of a diversity stage with different styles of music acoustic jazz, Burundi drumming, Gospel and more.
The council did do a good job of setting up the festival and securing the top three main acts, The festival was a family day out for people to bring a picnic and deck chairs to sit in the sun and have a good time.
But and this is were it all went wrong, Gangs of Asian youths were prowling the arena shouting racist comments to people which in the end ended in violence breaking out not far from where we where sat, The police and security came in and stopped it, The asian youths split up into smaller groups and made phone calls, I stood up from this point and watched what they did they made up smaller groups that went around and started intimidating people trying to cause fights, again the police split them up, As the night went on more fights broke out at the entrance to the park, When it was time for us to go we were told to go through the park as the lane we wanted to go down was closed because youth were fighting, So we walked through the park and as we did a gang of about 30 asian youths where walking down towards the gate we where going for we hung back to let the rest of the crowd that was leaving to catch up to us, the gang then moved to one side and starred at us as we went past, When we eventually got to the road our car was parked on there was an ambulance parked up, We saw two young girls about 15 years old one with a ripped top she was crying and looked dazed and the other was screaming at the ambulance crew, We asked a man what had happened and he told us his mate had been stabbed by some asians and was in the ambulance, I then heard the screams of the stabbed man coming from the ambulance, At this point I said to Louise lets get out of here.
We also heard that after Saturday nights show a woman got raped.
It's a real shame that people can't just sit down and enjoy a family show without the dregs of society spoiling it for the rest of us.
There are other events going on in the park over the summer that we where going to attend but now have decided to stay away and we won't be going to next years festival in the park.
This is the longest post in my blog so far....and all for the wrong reason.