What a bank holiday...

We've been looking forward to this weekend for about 6 months. When Blink-182 announced they were headlining Leeds Festival, there was no way I was going to miss it, I'd yet to see them live despite them being my favourite band and since our eldest has been taking more of an interest in them, we decided to take him for his first live music experience at Bramham Park.

Rain was forecast for the afternoon all last week so we readied ourselves for a wet start but we somehow got lucky. Just one burst of light rain at the very end of the day was all we had to deal with, a nice break I'm sure for those who were dealing with the weather on Friday.

We found a spot at the barriers in the second section of the crowd and stayed there the entire day. We figured it's as close as we could get whilst keeping our boy safe, plus the pit between us and the section in front gave enough space that he could see the stage without needing to be lifted up, which our backs were thankful for.

We saw everyone who played the main stage that day, though I'd not heard of most of them (sign of getting old?). Dasha and Jorja Smith weren't my cup of tea, neither were Kneecap, though I thought they were pretty funny and appreciated their ability to get the crowd going so early in the day.

More in my wheelhouse were bands like Neck Deep, Spritbox and The K's so I've come away with some listening homework.

Lu's a fan of Two Door Cinema Club so it was good to be able to see them, though I'm only familiar with a few of their tracks.

Gerry Cinnamon was another I was unfamiliar with but seeing the sheer size of the crowd, it wasn't surprising he was playing the penultimate spot of the day.

Blink, to me, were just amazing. A good mix of old and new songs, they even dropped in a bit of Box Car Racer and +44 which shows the level of healing that has gone on between the 3 guys over the last few years. I've been waiting to see this band live since I was a kid, not much older than our boy is now so it's definitely a bucket list item I've been able to tick and I'll definitely try to see them again one day in the future.

I didn't plan of giving a brief run down of the day, I only meant to post the pictures but here we are. I may as well keep going...

Jungle, The Piece Hall

Not long after Blink announced their appearance, Jungle announced they'd be playing a night at The Piece Hall the day after (we saw Air here a few months ago too). Lu's a huge fan so we jumped on the tickets and, again, took our lad for another gig experience and what an experience it was!

We got into the venue fairly early so we had a choice of where to stand. We decided to stand a few rows from the front, centre stage so we had an incredible view. We got chatting to a family beforehand and they helped us out by having our lad on their shoulders for a few songs.

Having him on shoulders close to the front turned out to be a great moment for him (and us). The band finished their set and walked off stage. After a few minutes, they came back on for the encore and the singer Tom walked to the mic and said "We'd like to give a drumstick to that lad in the front".

Of course, they had no idea that he's learning drums so this was a very fitting gift and rounded off our weekend of gigs perfectly.