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When I'd taken the gig at this weekend's Curious Arts Festival I had envisioned taking the family, making a week of it, sleeping in a tent and drinking in the sunshine in a field. But after our experience at the Spa last month (the only positive thing about that is that I have got three Metro columns out of it) and our general knackeredness, plus the fact that Phoebe has been a little bit pukey, meant that I was going to go alone. I was going to judge if I stayed overnight by how tired I felt and how noisy the festival seemed. Maybe a night in a tent would sort me out, but then don't forget how badly I coped with the young revellers at Latitude a few years back.
It was another longish drive to do a 30 minute set in a tent and given I was being partly paid in tickets to the festival it seemed a shame not to make the most of it (or the promise of dinner served for the performers in the stately home (the festival was in the grounds). But maybe I'd do my jokes and jump straight in the car and come home. On the plus side I'd be done by 7pm and could be in London before it was dark.
I have been to some high security festivals but this wasn't one of them. No one needed to see my ticket until the last minute and I could easily have parked up and stepped over the tiny fence to the Festival space. And even the official entry system was quite lax. As I arrived some people were complaining to a posh and slightly vague girl behind the ticket table, that they had come specifically to see one author whose event they'd missed as it had been moved to 2.15 form 4.15. As it was now 4.30 I wasn't sure what the aggrieved family were hoping to achieve. This young woman seemed fairly incapable of understanding what had happened, so to expect her to turn back time seemed a big ask. She asked them if they wanted a refund, which was really the only possible solution, but they wanted to take to someone in authority to see if they might somehow.. I don't know what.. meet the author and get him to do his talk again? I would have imagined that he had left by now, hence the time coming forwards.
Finally I was at the front of the queue and said I was a performer and my ticket was scanned and I was given a plastic bracelet. But no other information. So I wandered around for a bit, hoping to bump into someone I knew. I couldn't even get into the stately home bit as I'd been given the wrong wristband, but luckily Simon Evans was just passing and came with me to sort out the correct one. The people in the tent just gave me one without any real authority.
It was quite a quiet festival, though JimBob from Carter USM told me that it had been difficult to sleep, because although there was a cool looking glamping area, it was still a festival and people still stayed up all night shouting. That and the beginnings of some drizzle convinced me that I'd head home tonight. I bumped into David Baddiel and Lucy Porter and ate a sausage in a bun. My second gig in a tent in two days went OK. There were kids in so I'd tried to keep it as clean as possible, but ended with the “Give Me Head, Til I'm Dead†routine (which I am really enjoying) and I think that was a bit much for the poshest audience I've ever been to (you could tell because they didn't seem to understand when I questioned where the parlour might be- they all just knew because they all had one).
I had been a tad too rude and it felt correct that I should just leave, even though it seemed slightly weird to have driven all this way to a beautiful garden in a stately home, only to immediately leave again.
But now I get Sunday more or less off (I have to write a Metro column and this blog) with my family and no gig in the evening. So it felt like the right decision. Maybe next year we can all come along for a weekend of fun and rubbing shoulders with people for whom breakfast in a stately home is a normal thing. Or maybe not after my closing routine.
