This article comes in audio format. To listen, just click on the play icon below.

A series of musings from Rob Jones at All Plants North.

Been there. Done that. Made the T shirt.

Today I’m wearing a T shirt I screenprinted at the music festival we went to not so long ago. It serves as a reminder of how little music we listed to. We did however play a lot of swingball and make alot of paper aeroplanes. Whoever invented the family festival is a sadist. Of course there was music to listen to but we preferred to spend three hours a day queuing for fast food and going back to the tent for things we had forgotten. The camping upgrade we paid extra for was just the other half of a field divided by a high metal fence. Evidently, the field was recently occupied by cows although there was a small team armed with shovels and wheelbarrows happy to remove the top half of the pats on our plot. ‘Welcome to Deershed’ they said in a cheerful festivally kind of way. Only a trace of sarcasm. Thanks.

Our tent was ok apart from a ripped zip on the front door which would have been fine before the rain came. Ah, camping. Don’t you just love it.

Interesting people watching though. All those folk wearing their festival clothes they probably keep in their festival clothes drawer at home. Just below the motorbike gang clothes drawer.

My festival history does not make good reading. Unlike my brother who was scaling fences, when fences could be scaled, at Glastonbury I was at Greenbelt. Ever heard of it? Neither had I. The only highlight was a Canadian singer song-writer called Bruce Cockburn. Thought he was so good I even bought his album afterwards but was so disappointed in its over production that I wrote him a complaint letter, the only I’ve ever written. Bruce subsequently faded into obscurity no doubt because of my scathing teenage feedback.

I’ve since seen a lot of live music (non festival) so the filling in the sandwich is tasty enough even if the bread is stale.

Maybe it’s just back luck but the last thing we went to was an ELO tribute band at some country house. Of course the aircon in the car was on the blink so we were nearly boiled alive getting there only to pitch camp as a Close Encounters type cloud formation then drowned us to the sound of Mr Blue Sky. You can’t make this stuff up.

So I accept it, I’m not a festival-head, don’t think I ever was really. You could tell me exactly how many miles you were from the pyramid stage and I will feel nothing. Nada. Give me a remote control to fast forward through all the rubbish anytime. I don’t want to queue for a half-filled warm beer and I don’t see the art in the artisan pizza’s they think are worth £12. I’ll get a good nights’ sleep without the dance tent making me feel like I’m being resurrected with a defibrillator or being awoken by a drunken instagrammer tripping over my guyropes. 

The money saved, the hearing loss averted and no more mud in the car. It’s just win-win.

Been there. Done that. Made the T shirt.

Rob Jones

All Plants North
The Farm Shop
Cracoe
North Yorkshire
BD23 6LB

www.allplantsnorth.co.uk

Open March to December, Tuesday to Sunday