It has been a heck of a weekend. Lyn and I are currently on the train coming back from Rochester, the Kentish countryside zooming past. Yesterday we attended Radio Caroline’s fiftieth birthday party at the Corn Exchange. I have never seen lyn as excited as she was on the way down yesterday morning: Caroline is something more than a radio station to its listeners: forgive the cliche, but it’s something akin to a self-selecting family made up of all kinds of unusual, awesome people. We met some of them yesterday.

The event itself was essentially a series of talks and debates from the main players in Caroline’s history. It got quite technical at times, especially when it came to things like the ‘marine offences act’. But what became clear is Caroline’s importance in social history: one could argue that the democratization of the media we are currently seeing with things like blogs and YouTube began with pirate radio. In fact I managed to put that very point to one or two of the DJs, including Bob Lawrence, lyn’s favourite. Above all Caroline’s independence was emphasised, as well as its devotion to radio as an art.

After the debates we had a break for dinner, then there were two live music bands. The second of these was a Beatles tribute, and quite a poor one, so we didn’t stay too late. It had been a fantastic day, but a long one. We stayed the night in a local hotel, which although comfortable served poor breakfast, and headed home.