Meet me in the Indian Summer May 6, 2008

Glastonbury is there to save the nation’s soul. Just as football does on a weekly basis. But come summer, come June, the winter game is spent. Bring on the World’s biggest music festival – actually A Festival for the Performing Arts. Glastonbury brings people to the country. To the countryside. To the ever-so-greenfields, to get in touch with one’s self, once more, presuming you ever were. More than any other English Festival, Glastonbury can turn you around, open your eyes, change your life. It can still do this, after all these years. It did this for the few in the early days. It did it for the masses in the maturing days. It does it for the super-masses now, in the modern age. Millions want to come. In the end 130,000 are allowed, invited, lucky. They have bought all their tickets between them in the first hour of release (slight stumblings in 2008). What they are treated to are 2,000 acts & bands. What choice. Not that I approve of too much choice – a modern malaise. Let’s call them ‘offerings’. Just think how many acts this is : 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11…201,202, 203… when you are still counting you have reached 2,000 by Sunday night – approx 666 a day for three days.

Whatever must be the agenda in this man Eavis’s mind? He has laid on this party. On his farm. When most farmers are right-wing – protecting their patch from any intruder who might upset the cows, Eavis has taken his cows on holiday and opened up their pasture to nigh on 200,000 humans, security personnel, campsite crew, helpers, storeholders, performers, guests, people dressed as cows and mythical beasts. Whereas everyone once upon a time was stoned, drunk, out of their heads, there is a more responsible breed now. Eavis has helped create this. He has made people value their tickets, the value of their tickets and their contribution to eco-campaigns : saving the planet and saving man from his worst negligence’s. The festivals 2005 & 2007 (a rest in 2006) are wonders of organisation : on a par with anything and might be compared with the most amazing of structures,: bridges, dams, towers, monuments. But ultimately it is on a human scale and records big human victory. Who-is-the-headliner is the carrot (cake) but ISN‘T the main issue. The price is not the main issue.

There are possibly as many as 600 Festivals in what is now an extended summertime – even if ‘summer’ doesn’t always turn up. ‘The Festival’ might be anything where you are either out in the country or the park and/or staying overnight. ‘The concert’ is a bit different. The concert is a bit more go and grab it and then come back. The Festival asks you – and you are at times reluctant – to play a part. Over the recent years The Festival-Going has emerged as an activity almost to rival Football-Going and, similarly, few in whatever walk of life can ignore it, pretend its doesn’t exist. Its very much part of our culture and here being The British Isles we do it like no other. The weather is significant. There are so many festivals not far from one another – being a relatively small country. Although few curiously down the East side. From Northumbria through Durham and the East Riding and down through Lincolnshire and Norfolk : hardly any festival activity. Then you hit on Latitude in Suffolk in July. A boutique festival. Whatever that means. It could mean that things are thoughtfully laid out and even the sheep are decorated for dream-sleep. It’s great. Truly great. There should be a festival, boutique or not, near you. It’s a rootsy thing. That is the issue.

There will always be smaller festivals beginning where they think the bigger ones left off or lost the plot and in my own patch in Cumbria we are blessed with the champion of family-friendly festivals Solfest. Here you can let your kids roam free without worry or fear or near-obsession about their kidknap or mutilation. That, more than the superb music is its achievement. This is not Daily Mail territory. And nearby at Cockrock (the town of Cockermouth) in a scruffy field on a fellside reached through an industrial estate is a reminder that with no headliner bands and no great infrastructure, small festivals can be beautiful and funny.

Laughing, really laughing and smiling from somewhere down below, is the key here.

This is the British Isles as it should be. A gorgeous place, a gorgeous body with a gorgeous sense of I know where I’m going and I’m happy here and now.