Home comforts at music festival

Also, seeing as how some of us aren’t quite as young as we used to be, it was greatly appreciated that it was staged just a five-minute walk from our house. So after a packed-out Saturday night spent drinking and watching Feeder, Judge Jules and The Zutons, we all floated home to a nice quiet house with running water and comfortable beds.

Yours truly has paid his dues at noisy, muddy festival campsites, where your teenage neighbours in the surrounding tents think it’s okay to shriek their heads off and play Rammstein from their stupidly powerful speaker until the sun comes up. All of this while you try to get some shut-eye using your bag for a pillow and your jacket as a blanket. Been there, done that, literally bought the T-shirt.

Those days are over. As is the sheer terror of opening the door to a Turdis portaloo on the final morning of a three-day festival, attended by 73,000 people who’ve spent the weekend eating, drinking, smoking and imbibing all manner of God knows what before being rocked back on your heels by the stench of death from within.

We bought our tickets for Saturday night the day they came out on January 31 because (puts on serious voice) it’s important to support events like this because we want them to happen again and again. It’s great for Lancaster. We ummed and ahhed about a weekend pass but I’m afraid “having it large” on consecutive nights at our age is totally out of the question.

Two of our party were parents to three young children and were looking forward to 24 kid-free hours and a lie-in, while another was a teacher who had just spent a few days on a residential with a load of Year 3s.

Let’s get real here, the candle cannot be burned at both ends anymore.

Then on Tuesday we heard the awful news about the death of Jake Black of Alabama 3, composer of The Sopranos’ theme tune, who played at Highest Point on Friday.

Truly terrible news.