It was a less corporate affair than its heavily hyped commercial cousin the WOW Fest, but was nonetheless fun in its own way. In fact, it was more my type of festival with a more homely, village type feel about the day.

Enough of that for now, because I plan to do a ‘proper’ post summing up my own experiences of the two afternoons. That shall be syndicated in the Wigan Heritage Services Volunteer Newsletter, which I am currently drafting designs for. Cool, eh? Well, not really, but it is quite fun.

Obligatory pants photography ahoy! Click to view full size.

Mayor Michael Winstanley and Mayoress Judith Atherton kick off proceedings

I ate this whole within the first hour

It wasn't all sunshine, but at least this was only a brief shower

Morris dancers

Genuine Victorian music machine

There are loads more pics over at Leigh Life, so check ‘em out if you feel so inclined. And don’t forget to check back here soon for that article I promised you. Until then, bon appetit.

Now I’ve said that I suppose I’d better show you some of them, eh?

That’s Hazara Singh, member of the Asian Music Talent group. Didn’t have time to stick around and enjoy their set as there was so much other stuff elsewhere in the park I wanted to check out.

A bit later in the afternoon, Heritage Survival graced the stage with their African reggae/jazz beats.

Originally from Zimbabwe, Heritage Survival are now based in Wigan. At the time of writing, they’re currently touring the UK, so check them out if you get the chance.

I did actually get a few more photos which you may see at some point in the future. They’re not that good, though. In the meantime, check out the high res versions of the pics in this post by visiting the Illarterate Flickr channel.

You know what? I forgot all about this thing, so it came as a pleasant surprise when I encountered it once again this afternoon. As with most of my stuff, there’s quite a few bugs in there, though these are by human error rather than design.

I thoroughly recommend Whiteboard Pong, though the Snake game is always worth a go… if you can stand the Roobarb and Custard Style wobbly lines!

Click here for endless hours of fun!

Or here to download the Office Pong game

Looks like a few others agree with me, though I have no idea why.

• Zoomdoggle
• YepYep
• And, of course, Illarterate the blog. Heheh.
  

Definitely works in Explorer, though I can’t get seem to get it to work in Firefox. Maybe that’s why I never publicised it at the time.

Ian Miller, guide for the day.

It being my day off, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a very special ‘Meet the Archaeologist’ event yesterday at the Museum of Wigan Life. Ian Miller, head of the recent digs in Wigan town centre, was on hand to discuss his findings and also to plug his new book, which it turns out is so new it hasn’t even been published yet. You know, because of the recession and all. Even I’ve had to stop throwing pennies into the wishing well in Mesnes Park (and don’t give me that ‘it’s just a pond’ nonsense).

The most interesting part, for me, was a brief walk round the excavation sites, now occupied by the Grand Arcade and renovation work for the Wigan Life Centre on Library Street. Forget for a moment that you’re in 2010 and stand at the top of the hill, just by the side of the Moon Under the Water public house. Imagine you’re looking towards Scholes and the old gasworks in the second century AD, and it’s easy to see why the Romans would have once erected fortifications in that very spot.

After a quick trek through the Grand Arcade, with Ian pointing out where one or two significant artefacts were uncovered, it was on to the reconstructed hypocaust located to the rear of the car park. This was the Roman bath house and, well… I’ll let Mr Miller himself take it from here.

If you would like to experience a future guided Roman Walk round Wigan town centre, MoWL are planning such events in the near future. No dates have been confirmed yet, but keep your eye on the website for any developments.

Ian Miller will be back in Wigan on Thursday for a more detailed talk on Roman Wigan, but the event is, unfortunately, fully booked. If you’d like to be placed on the waiting list for a repeat staging of the event, contact the Museum of Wigan Life and they’ll take your details.

Official-looking blokes pose for promotional photos

More photos with the ‘totally awesome’ Mayor of Wigan

Not-so-fun fact: “MOWL” is apparently some sort of German Internet slang, at least according to Urban Dictionary. Well, you learn something new every day.

The plaque pre-unveiling

Erm, just a mangle. Yep.

Once again I apologise for the pants photography. If anyone wants to fund a better phone then be my guest. Address for correspondence:

Harry Yack,
Gullibility Road,
Notascam,
Lancashire
123 XYZ

Orchestrated Muppetry: A whole new ball game... and just in time for the World Cup, too

The transition period is over… Retro Yakking’s back, in the form of Orchestrated Muppetry.

I decided I liked the name of the previous post so much I’d give it a whole blog to itself. I suppose it’s more of a fitting name to be honest with you, Retro Yakking wasn’t always entirely accurate – whilst it did have some stuff  dealing with older subjects, it wasn’t really the sole focus.

Orchestrated Muppetry is the natural evolution from RY, with all the usual stuff you’d expect from Harry Yack plus a new freedom of expression not possible at Today.com. Hey, you know how it is when you’re employed to do a job.

So is Retro Yakking dead? Not completely. You can still visit an archived version over at Blogdog, and by all means do. Don’t expect any more updates, though, because the times they are a-changing, and so is Harry Yack.

Thanks for feigning interest once more.

Cameron gives Brown the two finger salute

I walked into work the other morning only to find a load of blokes in suits who sat us down and explained how we would have to work for twice the number of hours for half the pay with a grand total of one week in holidays. Per decade.

They told us it’s the same everywhere else and nobody would even think about re-employing our sorry posteriors this side of Cheetham Hill. Which sucks just a bit.

The good news is that, for the next couple of months at least, we get free drinks in the canteen and can address customers with as many expletives as we like . Plus, we get to wear slippers and dressing gowns to make us look like Hugh Hefner without consequence or recrimination. Up to a point anyway.

Don’t you just love the Conservative-Liberal coalition?

A pointless little politics-related thought/mildly amusing quip there. Anyway, I’m here to tell you that for the time being I’m gonna publish all my Retro Yakking stuff here at Illarterate instead, mainly because I plan to wind that project down for good. Don’t worry, though, because I won’t just disappear from the face of the earth like last time. Or maybe I will, who knows?

I really should get that blogroll up and running again, plus there’s a whole bunch of housekeeping with regards to archiving old projects. I shall get round to that when I have the time and resources, but for now, console yourself in the fact I’m not rotting six feet under unlike certain street sweepers. Ciao for now.

Turns out Biased BBC used it to make a small satirical point about some politician or other at the beginning of last week. I shouldn’t really comment, as the closest I ever got to this genre was taking the mickey out of local MP Ian McCartney, and even that was tepid and rather childish.

Still, it reminded me about those pointless ‘Day in Your Life’ uploads I made. Incidentally, many have now been deleted because the fools over at YouTube cannot quite grasp the concept of a project video. Never mind.

Starring DarkGenome as the Sweeper.

I shall say no more.