A few words and photos for RFT by our Steelhouse Draw Winner …. Massive Thanks to Iona for this short piece on her Steelhouse 2021 Adventure.
Steelhouse 2021 Charity Raffle
Words by Iona A. McAlpine
It never occurred to me to go to Steelhouse, its a LONG way away from my home town! However when Rockin’ For Tots had a charity raffle, on a whim I donated money to some raffle tickets not even thinking I would actually EVER win them, it was donation end of. Well guess what, I won the raffle!
Drawn at Bannerman’s in Edinburgh late on a Thursday evening two weeks prior to the event by Andy from the Charity and Mason Hill guitarist Marc Montgomery. I really didn’t believe Andy’s message until I saw the video of the draw!
What to do, phone a friend? Ask if they could drive to Wales in return for a free festival ticket? It worked somehow and off we went! I won’t lie it took us 14 painful hours to travel there, we got close and just couldn’t find it at all. We found a young welsh lad cycling up the street of a small place called Cwm, did he know the direction we need to go? He did indeed and made us turn the van and follow him on his bike! He stopped and pointed ahead, if you cant find it still I will wait here for 10 minutes, just in case! Only in Wales.
The long journey sadly meant we either organised our sleeping quarters for the night OR saw some music… we chose the prior. Just as well, the weather was horrendous that night! However I wrapped up shoving some earplugs in, I never heard a thing, it was the best nights sleep I had all year!!!!
Saturday saw the start of our musical weekend, there wasn’t a band on the bill I wanted to miss, rare on a festival bill. The stage had suffered damage overnight due to the weather but they got it sorted and we enjoyed out first taste of live music since the start of the pandemic and it was glorious… I listened to bands I LOVE, some had played our own Festival (Monsterfest) and grown in that time, some I had never caught before and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity of hearing new (to me) music, some I hadn’t followed for a long time but enjoyed the re-discovery. I met many virtual friends I had never met face to face, we hugged and cried and talked and soaked it all up. I sang badly, very badly but didn’t care I was there and the sun shone mostly, just adding extra sparkle to an emotional and exhilarating weekend…
Thank you Rockin’ for Tots and all the others that allowed me to attend, I think I may be back.
