August 2008 Archives

My friend Chris lives in New York. He sent me a message on facebook yesterday; it said "full of gloom yet?" I needed no further explanation. I knew exactly what he meant. As fans of West Bromwich Albion this is the state in which we live three quarters of each year, every year, wherever we're living.

I didn't miss the football season. At all. I was happy to enjoy the European Championships and appreciate the style and craft of the combatants without thinking about any misplaced patriotism. I had no emotional investment; I could experience it on a purely passive level - a voyeur, if you like.

If I try to think back to a time when I really enjoyed going to the match on a regular basis it would probably scare me. It may be that this time was actually 30 years ago. Certainly this would be true if I were thinking of success and attractive performances in the top league; it was also the time that I started actively going to 'the match'.

For a few years I was watching a great team, skilful players who played with a great spirit and didn't need to kiss their badges to prove their loyalty. I was amongst people who I considered to be like me, born of the Black Country and proud to stand and sing for their team. Last week I read that the average football fan is middle-class, male and in his forties. I once considered this to be special, now I've become average.

Once upon a time the outdoor rock festival was attended by one type of music fan. Usually male, unusually scruffy (one set of clothes for the entire weekend), long-haired and generally into rock.

Things have changed. Thankfully. Festivals are now a major social gathering, as much about the experience as the music - possibly much more about the experience in all honesty. But, what kind of experience is it?

Thanks to being a V Festival regular and present at Hylands Park last weekend for the third year running, I'm able to give you a guided tour - of sorts. At a festival normal human behaviour is abandoned in favour of the communal survival instinct.

Patrons/fans/billies (rhyming slang): It's a mixed-crowd these days. The fashions are incredibly varied, although the welly plus denim mini-skirt is still a perennial, particularly amongst the men. There were so many pairs of wellingtons out that the oil industry should consider sponsoring British festivals. You may consider this an odd link but wellies are made from PVC, a by-product of petroleum. Until I began to write this I thought they were all made of rubber, how wrong I was!

Anyway back to the festival-fashion show. Hats are still very popular; they tend to fall into certain sectors. Quite why so many people want to wander around with wide-brimmed straw creations on their heads is beyond me - it's like a thousand Crocodile Dundees have invaded the country. Thankfully the 'trilby' as popularised by Pete Doherty seems to have faded from view but the gay cowboy (multi-coloured & sequined) is still around. As for the crusty-mountaineers, woolly and generally striped with ear-flaps and pom-poms, the less said the better.

I had so many potential things to write about this week (Olympics, age-discrimination, Jade Goody, the start of the football season) that I became paralysed thinking about them all, and consequently wrote nothing. Part of the reason for this was that I spent my weekend in a park in Chelmsford.

Chelmsford is a place I've visited for around 3 to 4 days every year, in August. I wouldn't go there for any other reason but the V Festival. I have no idea what the town's like as I never spend any time in it, instead I spend 72ish hours in a park or a hotel bar and a very short time in bed, asleep.

I first went to a festival when I was very young in the early 80's - 1980 to be precise with the very first Monsters Of Rock event, headlined by Rainbow. I graduated to camping events a little later. Thanks to the interweb, I can now clarify this as the 1982 Reading Festival. My abiding memories are of sleeping badly in a small tent and buying home-made cider in 2 litre jerry cans - musically it was all about heavy rock. I can now see that Iron Maiden played it but I don't remember their set. I have clearer memories of Budgie, Diamond Head and the fact that they had two stages - next to each other. I vividly recall Dave Edmunds stopping his set mid-song as the two sets of audience were hurling bottles and toilet roll at each other and obviously not listening to him. He stopped to ask who was winning.

I effectively gave up camping and weekend events after going to Glastonbury in 1985 . Wikipedia refers to a very wet event with mud and slurry (liquefied cow dung in fact) in front of the pyramid stage - I have some other recollections. Arriving on the Friday my mate Tony chucked a burger wrapper at me, having not anticipated this act I took no defensive action and it hit me in the eye knocking out one of my contact lenses. As I'd brought no glasses and have very bad eyesight, I spent the rest of the weekend in a bit of a blur.

Consequently I lost my mates on the Saturday night, my only memory of which was hearing The Style Council start their set. I was in the stinking toilets at the top of the hill at this time. I was badly equipped for the rain with no wellies (I have size 14 feet) and not much in the way of waterproofs; I seem to recall we slept in Tony's car.

It was also a real eye-opener (pun intended, sorry) in terms of the quantity of drug use - substances of all kinds were on very open sale. Along the main walkway to the Pyramid stage you could buy anything and I watched as a guy bought a hit from a man burning a lump of cannabis resin - he was holding it in tongs whilst the 'buyer' inhaled through a bottle with the bottom cut out. Since they've more than cleaned up the festival since then I'm aware of how unbelievable this story will sound.

From this point on and for a long time after, I limited my festival-going to one-day events like the Monsters Of Rock festival at Donington Park . This would later become the first festival that I worked on, having started working in live music by then. By the time it ended its first long run in 1996 I had become the show's press officer managing all international press at the event. Those memories may be saved for another day, and I will return very shortly with my thoughts on this year's V - the ones I'd originally intended to write when I sat down today!

I'm back. This is probably as much of a relief to you as it is to me - not at all.

Given that you can now work from anywhere it's possible that I don't need to be back at all. I try convincing my many employers of this detail. It rarely works.

I was able to prove the flexibility of the technological age whilst viewing the wonders of the ancient one as I was on a cruise ship around the Greek islands.

Sending e-mails from the middle of the ocean is a bizarre revelation, but the novelty wears thin when the signal drops out due to unseen geographical phenomena.

Telling someone you've been on a cruise seems to age you instantly.

You seem to wither before their eyes like a Hammer Horror vampire in a shaft of sunlight.
Even people older than me don't get it. Cruising seems unable to shake its perception as being the preserve of wealthier OAPs.

It doesn't help that I was with the people who 'do cruises for people who don't do cruises'.

A flawed concept as, by the time you book, you have instantly become a person who does do cruises because you've paid to go on one.

It's a bizarre slogan anyway, one which reinforces a negative perception.

Instantly you have the mental image of having to elbow octogenarians to the ground in order to get to the pool, in fact I only had to do this twice.

They should concentrate on the positives. Most of the facilities on a ship are much better than ones you could get in a foreign hotel, unless you're very rich, of course.

You can also wake up each day in a new destination.

This is a major selling point to someone like me with the attention span of the average ADHD child. I also can't sit in the sun too long or I start to fry, talking of which ......

The food, the unlimited access to food.

The scale of food production on a ship is simply staggering, almost industrial. I've worked on festivals where they feed hundreds of crew in shifts, but that's nothing in comparison to this.

The quantity, variety and excellence of the cuisine was breath-taking. Or it would have been had anyone bothered to take a breath between shovelling enormous portions into their already overworked gullets.

They suggest you can gain 2lbs in weight every day on a cruise. For some people I'd think this was possible in each of the three-hour sittings for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

If eating ever becomes an Olympic sport I think I've found the venue - and some of the competitors.

The facilities are so good that despite the fact that the cruise called on some of the most historic and beautiful places in the World, some people didn't seem to leave the ship at all.

This is judging by the fact that they'd marked their territory in the usual holiday fashion by leaving towels on all the sun-beds. If we think this is stereotypical of another nationality, we need to think again.

I was, however, pleased to have escaped that blight of most modern holidays - not once did I hear someone boast about how cheaply or how last second they'd obtained their holiday online or on teletext.

That was some relief. Perhaps then it's the cruise for people who don't spend their lives on teletext, or the cruise for people who don't do diets. I'll eat to that.

I'm on holiday. I don't hesitate to share this with you because, even if you know where I live, I have an alarm and a house-sitter.

I also have a pack of ferocious Rottweilers who'll no doubt be starving by now as the 83 year-old house-sitter will have forgotten to feed them.

Some of this last sentence is untrue, although I do have a highly-trained attack guinea pig.

I'm not sure what holidays conjure up for you - probably a mixture of sun, sand, rest, culture, relaxation and laughter. For me it's usually sunburn, sunstroke and an opportunity to embarrass myself in a foreign country.

Once, in Turkey, I combined two of these misfortunes by managing to obtain a pure white handprint on an otherwise sunburned belly.

To this day I have no idea how I did this, and I unfortunately have very big hands.