Promise Me There Won’t Be Mud
Mr SB and I have done something a bit rash. No, I’m not talking about that brief interlude when we switched from Ariel to Persil, or to the time we accidentally bought tangerines instead of satsumas, or even to all that money we wasted on EuroMillions last Friday.
It’s worse than any of that. Because, you see, what we have done is this:
We have bought tickets for A Festival.
I don’t know whether it was the Big Birthday last year that did it – probably not, because that would make it an Impending Midlife Crisis, which this definitely isn’t, obviously – or what, but I decided a while ago that I really, really want to go to a festival properly before I actually do turn into my mother. At the moment, I can just about still cling to the belief that I, too, can be one of those girls who manage to look glamorous in the mud even though they haven’t had a wash for three days and they’re wearing wellies; but if I leave it much longer, then I will officially be middle-aged and that, I fear, will be that. I will have to invest in tartan slippers and Damart, and you can’t get away with wearing those at a festival unless you’re Kate Moss.
So I persuaded Mr SB that we should go to Latitude (on the grounds that it didn’t seem quite so intimidating or as far away as Glastonbury, and that half of Twitter went last year and seemed to enjoy it). From what I had read, it seemed like it would be a suitably gentle introduction. There would even be ballet, for heaven’s sake.
And then, last night, they announced the line-up, and I suddenly felt quite old. I have heard of hardly any of the bands (do the young people still call them ‘bands’, or have I already made a dreadful error that instantly picks me out as an Unbeliever?), and, with a couple of exceptions, the ones I have heard of are throwbacks to my youth*. So I had to spend the evening typing improbable phrases like ‘Esben And The Witch’ into Amazon, and trying to judge how many of the bands I might be able to listen to without saying, “What’s that appalling racket?” and complaining that I couldn’t hear the words properly.
And actually, most of them were a pleasant surprise, and I think that, with a few judicious album purchases, I could be rescued from the brink of terminal Radio 4 listenership, and could come to feel that I have as much right to be at Latitude as all those young people at the front who know all the words. Of course, the reality is that I am emphatically not going to be one of those glamorous girls you see on the telly; I am going to be the fat, greasy-headed, middle-aged woman standing at the back moaning that she can’t see, and that the wellies are pinching her calves and making her feet hurt. But at least I might enjoy the music, and even if I don’t, there’s always the ballet.
*I spent a good five minutes bellowing ‘Enola Gay’ across the living room in an attempt to explain OMD to Mr SB, who is just too young to remember them. I’m pleased to say that my rendition, whilst not extraordinary, was sufficiently torturous to make him confess that he had, in fact, heard of them, after all.
Something Blonde 
I have heard of 12 of the bands/acts/whatever they’re called. Do I win a prize?!
Only if the 12 don’t include Steve Coogan and the English National Ballet.
They don’t! I feel like I iz well down wiv da kidz, or whatever dreadful thing they say these days. By the way, heard OF doesn’t mean I would have an idea in hell of anything they’ve done. I just work with a load of yoof.