Latitude

We first went to Latitude festival in 2011 and had the time of our lives; music, comedy, fun and laughter it had everything.  So we went again the following year and it was just as good again so it became an essential part of our summer.  I think what we loved was it felt like we were stepping out of society for a few days to spend time in a community of like minded souls unconstrained by convention.  When we reluctantly re-entered the real world on the Monday morning we’d reject its values, preferring those of the world we’d just left.  We would start looking forward to the next festival immediately, ‘only fifty one weeks…’  I have spent some of the best days and nights of my life at Latitude festival and hoped I would do so forever.  But this weekend the festival was held just half an hour away, we didn’t go and have no regrets.

So what changed, was it us or was it them?  Maybe a bit of both.  We’re certainly a decade older now, days of exercise and nights of madness take more of a toll but we know how to pace ourselves, in every sense.  The festival gets more expensive every year which you’d expect, I can just about deal with paying £500 for the weekend for two of us but there needs to be a line up that backs this up and this year it just doesn’t.  I know there will be plenty of people for whom Lewis Capaldi and Snow Patrol are a musical orgasm but for us they have the opposite effect. But there have been other years where the line up hasn’t been anything to get excited about but we’ve gone anyway and had a great time but at £500 its now a bit of a risk. I get that a modern festival needs to make a profit, I understand I’ll be paying over the odds for anything and everything I choose to buy.  I might not like it but I accept it’s what has to happen for a festival to take place, I buy into it and play my part, but I have a right to expect value for money.

I think that’s the point, value for money, for the last few festivals we just haven’t been getting it from Festival Republic.  Forget the musicians and comedians they choose to book because everyone likes their own thing, what constitutes VFM for me might leave the new average Latitude goer thinking ‘WTF?’ which is how it should be.  I’m talking about all the other little things that make up festival life, many of these being the basic things that we need to exist through four days and nights in festival land.  I can tolerate paying too much money for food but I should expect it to be edible and it hasn’t always been, also I don’t deserve to feel ripped off which I have been numerous times over the years.  As for beer, Jesus Christ that is just daylight robbery, last I heard it was six quid for a warm pint of watered down lager, its outrageous but people pay and consume it, because that’s what you do ain’t it?  No wonder people take drugs…  But as we’ve established, I can live with this.  What FR has denied us in recent years are the simple things; adequate working toilets, at times running water and above all else, space. 

The beginning of the end was the appearance of “Luxury Loos”.  With this FR was showing it was possible to have something decent on which to shit but we’d have to pay extra for the privilege.  Just fuck off!  I find the very idea offensive, on every level, it’s like taxing a turd.  If you’re the kind of person who will pay bog tax without thought then we aren’t ever going to be friends.  Now luxury loos have become a fixture, there is no incentive for FR to maintain the stalls the rest of us have to use, if they are failing then more punters will pay up for the posh bogs.  Now it goes way beyond that, there’s Pink Moon camping and even Latitude luxury where you can pay more cash and enjoy a different festival experience to the rest of us.  As I get older I could potentially be tempted by these options but on the other hand it all goes against the festival ethos, it creates division, it isn’t what a festival should be about.

I suppose this brings me to my main gripe, what has most changed about Latitude is the audience, nowadays the people aren’t necessarily music fans.  Latitude was always dubbed the middle class festival and FR have definitely been keen to exploit this.  The location is perfect, close to the Suffolk coast where posh London likes to spend its weekends, it has become the festival of choice of public school kids and their parents.  They are not here for the music, they are here to see and be seen because that’s what the cool people do.  This group of people have slipped through the gates and slowly taken over and become the majority, just like their own nightmares of immigration.  These people don’t want to sleep in a tent, if they are not paying extra for luxury then they arrive in a campervan.

Over the years the space taken up by posh camping and campervans has grown and multiplied and swamped the spaces where the ordinary campers once dwelt.  Family camping has also stretched and taken ground and judging by the space that’s left, far more than is actually needed.  The areas left for ‘general camping’ have reduced to a fraction of what they were a decade ago, hence those of us wishing to use it are battling for space.  So we end up corralled together; no space, dodgy toilets and inconsistent drinking water while on the other side of the metal fencing we can see people with too much of everything.  To add to the insult we now have to camp way back adding miles to the legs over the weekend.  To get to and from the arenas we have to walk through a corridor of steel behind which are the camper vans and posh tents.  Latitude has become gentrified, they don’t want us anymore.

There lies the truth, we’d been gradually marginalised bit by bit over the years but the last two festivals we’ve been made almost unwelcome.  It’s like “Okay come if you must but camp out of the way and behave yourselves, don’t annoy the beautiful people”.  The small stage hosting Indie bands has gone as has much of the festival’s diversity, the old tag line “More than just a music festival” has also disappeared, now it really is just another music festival catering for people who just listen to radio 2 and even then it’s just in the car.  These are people that don’t know how to party and it’s their kind that runs the world.  In the beginning when you entered Latitude festival you were taking a break from the real world but now its encroachment is obvious and it’s waiting to grab your cash.  The festival as we knew it is gone never to return but I still hope we return to Henham park, all it would take is the right band or musician and we’d definitely be tempted. 

Have I missed Latitude this year?  If we had tickets this year Little Simz would have been my one and only “must see” artist, followed by Groove Armada in the Big tent and that’s potentially a very good Saturday night which in hindsight I would like to have experienced. But that alone does not give me value for money.  In the beginning the Latitude experience was a magical weekend from beginning to end but the last couple of years it had become a few magic moments amongst a lot of physical toil.  But I am sitting here now thinking back to past festivals and remembering wonderful, beautiful, emotional experiences and I hope I’ll experience the like again.

De Pfeffel

A liar, always, the only consistency throughout his life.  His careers in journalism and politics were both greatly advanced by his lies but also, in the end curtailed by them.  He lied to his employers, he lied to all of his wives and mistresses, he lied to parliament, he lied to the monarch and he lied to the British people every time he opened his mouth.

Not just a liar but a hypocrite, caught red handed breaking the very rules he’d set.  Rules that were good enough for visiting a sick relative or even a royal funeral but could be bent out of shape for a Downing street party.  The Prime minister that broke his own laws.

In both of his careers he has been a purveyor of fear and hate; Homophobia, xenophobia, bigotry of all types including published racism, stark and nasty.  Take away the accent and the elaborate language (often used out of context), he could be addressing a Klan rally in Alabama.    All of this bullshit and bluster was driven by his ambition for revenge after being bullied at Eton. De Pfeffel has done more damage to this country than any other politician.

How the hell did he get there?  Who was responsible for allowing this man to stand for parliament?  How can people believe in democracy when people like De Pfeffel and Trump are on the ballot, when MP’s routinely lie in parliament yet they can’t be called out for doing so, when our last three Prime Ministers have been elected by such a tiny proportion of the population?

How can there still be a few, mostly elderly, ordinary people who claim to still support the man?  Do they think lies and hypocrisy are okay?  Or are they just a flock of bleating morons?

But he says he’s stepping down now, although he’s not actually resigned yet and as he has repeatedly proven, he’s not a man to be trusted.  But for once let’s say he does what he says he will, history should judge him harshly along with the bastards and morons who put him there.  He should leave office in disgrace, through the back door

Alexander De Pfeffel Boris Johnson.  Liar, hypocrite, misogynist, bigot, egomaniac, charlatan, total cunt.

Odd Boy Out by Gyles Brandreth

I can’t help liking Gyles Brandreth.  Apart from being a former Tory MP he comes from a class and background that I can’t empathise with.  He’s a spoilt child of privilege and has led an effortless life that would not be possible for someone coming from more ordinary stock.  But he tells a great story and comes across as a decent sort of bloke, very witty, entertaining and most importantly, honest.  In old age he has developed self awareness and a great ability to make himself the butt of the joke.  He has realised how lucky he has been.  The book is a memoir of the first twenty five years of his life but because of his amusing habit of going off on tangents the reader gets a good look at the other, later parts of his life too.

What the book unwittingly reveals is if you came from the right class, went to a top school and Oxbridge, spoke with the right and accent and most importantly had enough self confidence, then for someone of GB’s generation at least, the world literally was your oyster.  Doors open, connections are made, more than being given a leg up these people are handed a step ladder.  And everyone knows everyone else; politicians, actors, TV celebrities.  They all went to the same schools, lived in the same little world and shared life’s spoils.  And nowadays it’s their offspring that are doing the same thing.  The stars quoted on the cover endorsing the book are all personal friends of GB and the publications are former employers.

But I can’t help liking Gyles Brandreth and overall this was a good read although perhaps not as funny as I’d hoped.

Test cricket but not as we know it

During the month of June we saw the England cricket team somehow go from being the worst team in Test cricket to playing like the undisputed best.  How?  The obvious answers are the change in management, new coach and captain, ultra positive mind set and success strengthening confidence.  But Moeen Ali speaking on TMS mentioned something that should have been just as obvious, they’ve picked the right teams.  In recent series abroad we’ve handicapped ourselves by not getting the best available XI onto the field.  Go back to Brisbane last winter, just how fucked up was the thinking that led to that team being put out?  The Kiwis have made the same mistakes this summer, by not picking the right bowlers they’ve not been able to stop England smashing them all around the ground(s).

This unlikely series result against New Zealand came in the most unexpected matter, surely we couldn’t keep playing this way and expect to beat India?  For two sessions it looked like we might but then India took over and dominated, despite another Bairstow freak show.  By the end of day three India were in full control, there could only be one winner.  We knew it would happen really didn’t we, the Kiwis were out of sorts, the ultra aggression couldn’t work against India, we knew it…

But then we bowled them out and smashed 378/3 to win at a canter.  What the fuck did I just watch?  It’s a weird feeling seeing England make chasing down an impossible target look like a piece of piss and not even being slightly surprised by it. 

Hang on, we’ve just beaten, no thrashed last years’ world champions and runners up, this after a year of playing the worst Test cricket I can remember.  All of the fourteen players who took to the field contributed at some point in some way.  The batsmen are getting all the headlines but the bowlers and fielders took all eighty wickets available over the four matches. For once I have no speculation about team selection.

As captain in the field Ben Stokes has made a good start and seems to have the instinctive spark that escaped Joe Root entirely.  But with the bat he has given himself license to bat like a Sunday afternoon slogger.  For fuck sake Ben you’re better than that!  England will win more matches if he plays himself in first. 

So what next?  I don’t mean the white ball stuff which will be interesting in its own way.  How long can England keep playing Test cricket in this way before the wheels come off?  It’s got to happen at some point, hasn’t it?