On Saturday night at the festival, we gathered in the Palace. The chairs had been taken away in anticipation of some final night dancing.

On Saturday night at the festival, we were entertained by a very entertaining band called Praguematique. Their violinist admitted that taking the chairs away had been a bit of a risk on their part, but she now felt that it had been the right decision.

Because on Saturday night at the festival- dance was exactly what we did. Because how could we not! It was our final night, the All Blacks were about to become the winningest winners (we had faith), and the band were just so foot-tappingly good!

Praguematique are a band from the Czech Republic. You can’t really put them in a box. Just when you think you have, they do something else to surprise you. For example, talking in a kiwi accent. (The accordion player is an expat). The blurb in the programme described their music as “latin, to reggae, gypsy swing to celtic, jazz and beyond”. They are definitely all of that. The “and beyond” included hip hop, rap, and recent pop songs. And a song called Vodka on the Beach. This included the words “wahine” and “waihi” (which made us all smile), and “vodka”, which was our audience contribution to the song. Actually, there was a fair amount of audience participation, including more singing and a snowball waltz. We asked them for an encore. They were stoked. They played “Get Lucky”. We were stoked. We asked for a second encore. But we only got lucky once. Which is probably fair enough as most of us were getting up in a few hours anyway.

Saturday night at the festival was fabulous.

It was one of my favourites.

With love and warm fuzzies from your festival blogger,

Leah x

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite,

Or waiting for wind to fly a kite,

Or waiting around for Friday night…

Everyone is just waiting.

No! That’s not for you!

Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying

And find the bright places where boom bands are playing.

-Dr Seuss