Festival season

So we find ourselves once again fast approaching the Isle of Wight Festival, the event that has in the past acted (for me at least) as the start point for the summer festivals. Yes I know that there are plenty of festivals before this one, in fact we seem to be at breaking point with the number of festivals going on in this country (not to mention abroad) and it seems that barely a weekend passes without being presented with two or three festivals all waiting to make us part with our money and I intend to attend several of them. But it's still the IW that is the marker.

Except for me this year it isn't.

For the first time since the rebirth of the festival in 2002 I won't be attending. It wasn't a decision I made lightly either. 

There are several reasons for this, the first being a simple financial consideration, I am venturing to Glastonbury in a fortnight and only have a limited number of beer tokens in a month. Another is that a lot of my friends aren't going either and so would be less of a group as previous years. But the fact is that both of those reasons are pretty flimsy - I have been offered a free ticket through work and have been going to festivals long enough now to know how to avoid the expensive food and beer and do it on a shoestring, similarly I also know that festivals are as much about making new friends as well as spending time with existing ones.

No the real reason that I'm not going is simply this:

I just don't care for it anymore.

It's become too crowded, to commercial and quite frankly the bands on just don't appeal to me this year - Bananarama headlining the big top? M&S sandwiches for sale? 60,000 people trying to get round a site build for half that. You can keep it I'm afraid - it's just not what I want from a festival anymore - give me Bestival any day, it amazes me how two completely polar opposites festivals have sprung up on the Island. By contrast Bestival has it so very, very right and has the magic. Giddings would do well to take a long look at his partner if he's going to take the festival forward.

Newton Faulkner and Facebook in a public place

I went to see Newton Faulkner last night, and can I say that if you get a chance go and see him, he is a hugely talented songwriter who has a great rapport with the audience and carries his celebrity very lightly indeed. Not above taking the mickey out of himself and his songs (the speeded up version of UFO a personal favourite), it made for a great evening in the company of a man who is adept at making you feel like a friend rather than a punter.

Well I say a great evening, one thing spoiled it for me...


Facebook.


Not the website itself you understand, I'm a fan of that application and while away many hours playing games, taking random surveys to discover what kind of Muppet/Star Wars character/TV Show/Alcoholic beverage I am, as well as reading about the day-to-day happenings of people I haven't spoken to since I left school 20 years ago. Just to make it clear that I'm fine with that and the way it revels in extreme pointlessness.

No, my problem lies in the way people use it, or, to be more precise, the way one woman used it whilst sat right in front of me.
Having paid the best part of £20 to go and see the musical stylings of Mr Faulkner, she proceeded to spend the entire evening glued to her iPhone tapping away furiously as she responded to her virtual friends, presumably with posts that informed them how great he was, taking photos and posting them up in real-time. Not only did it strike me as highly rude that she obviously valued her status update over the performance, but it distracted me, and from what I could tell, those around me, as her phone shone out in the darkness drawing the eye from the far more interesting happenings on stage to her own personal dribblings on the internet.

So what did I do about this woman? Well I did what any self respecting Englishman would do - I said nothing and stared hard into the back of her head while I imagined the security guards hauling her out for disrespecting the performance. Then moaned about it in a blog!

I shall end today with a plea to any potential readers out there - please, please please, if you go out to show, sit back and enjoy it, but save the reviews until after the event and I'm out of the theatre.

Thankyou