Glastolgia

This weekend should be brilliant.  The sun is out and the England/Germany match will either be a fascinating meltdown or a victory so thrilling we'll all wake up with terrible headaches and bulldogs tattooed on our faces.  But while my body is clumping about in flip flops around getting a sun burned neck, my soul is pining.  I shouldn't be here - I should be (to paraphrase Jarvis) somewhere, somewhere in a field in Somerset (alright!).

I am a latecomer to the festival phenomenon.  In my teens, when I devoured the NME weekly, considered Camden to be a mythical Zion and really knew my Delagdos from my Ultrasound, I really should have made the effort but didn't have friends with a similarly forensic interest in white boy guitar music.  As I got older my musical tastes calcified and I assumed I was too out of touch with yoof trends to be admitted to any credible gathering.  Plus the mid-2000's run of televised festivals blighted by monsoon conditions didn't give me any confidence that I wouldn't drown in my sleep or get forcefed ecstasy by warlocks covered head to toe in mud.

But two years ago I was bullied by less cowardly chums into buying a ticket for Glastonbury and had literally one of the best weekends of my life.  So I went back last year as well.  A lot of what makes it great is very simple pleasures - lashings of cider, unexpectedly brilliant food and music everywhere will all improve any event.  I've also never been there mid-downpour, which I assume sorts the men from the boys and would have me weeping and calling an air ambulance within minutes.  But the real key is the sheer pleasure of spending a long weekend in the company of 169,999 other people in a few large fields who are all incredibly cheerful, friendly and considerate.  Even when emerging from a medieval toilet or a performance by the Verve.

There are exceptions, of course.  Last year we were camped next to a mobile home full of Scousers who listened to mid-1990's trance until 7am and, when they heard a passive aggressive moan from one of our tents, shouted "FUCK OFF!" at us through a megaphone.  And my patience with the free chat ethos of the camp was sorely tested whenever it was my turn to hold the enormous Oxford United flag we used to identify our position for stragglers.  Invariably someone with three teeth and a caved in forehead would immediately appear in front of me and yell "Orlroight there boy, wort do yew reckon to next season then?".  "Actually, good sir, I support the men of Nottingham Forest" I would reply, before clasping a scented handkerchief to my nose and depositing the saucy cur into a sewage puddle with a sharp blow of the flagpole to his chest.  But these moments of bad vibes were rare enough, and who needs aggro when you could be watching a Mad Max style procession of fire-breathing motorcyles, or sitting in a leather armchair in the Guardian tent, or having your shakra realigned by a crystal-waving vegan from Brightlingsea?

But I'm not doing any of those things this weekend.  The tickets sold out in seconds before I or any of my friends even noticed they were up for grabs, and that was that.  Some of us are off to Latitude this year for a more genteel festival experience, but watching every available minute of the TV coverage this weekend has made me ferociously nostaglic.  Even Corinne Bailey thingy.  Even the useless BBC presenters.  I want in for 2011, and I'll bring a massive Forest flag this time.

OI! QUEERS!

It's been horribly quiet around here lately.  Busy weekends and week nights and the tectonic plates shifting under my feet at work have all contributed but there's no real excuse.

However, I've been spurred into action by the obituary of dead dandy Sebastian Horsley, who it turns out owned the door I spotted a few months ago.  Had I pushed it open I would have found a room filled with human skulls, a display case of antique syringes and a man old enough to know better dressed like the mad hatter and doing something terrible to someone terrible.  A lucky escape - I am a very suggestible person, and could easily have ended up being sucked into his flâneur lifestyle.  Which would have killed me within weeks but in the meantime livened this blog up no end ("Dull day. Polished tie pins, ate some opium, bummed by six Brazilians wearing horse masks, home in time for dinner (one exquisite peach) and James Corden's World Cup Live. Sebastian didn't wash up AGAIN").

I read poor doomed Seb's obit on the plane home from Northern Ireland, where I spent a long weekend with 11 chaps watching football, eating cheese and drinking Harp. The relentless sun and good humour even lured me into playing cricket, breaking out some killer bowling moves for  the first time since school.  The bails remained oblivious to my efforts.

We planned to celebrate our sporting efforts with a Saturday night out in Limavady.  We expected the locals would be charmed by our cute little metropolitan ways.  Then during an afternoon stroll three of our number were welcomed to the town by a car honking its horn and the orc-like driver screaming "OI! QUEERS!" out of the window.  We took this as a sign that we were simply too beautiful for our own good and remained in our compound.

And today back to work with nothing but a sore bowling shoulder and sunburned legs left of the weekend.

Meeting Jon Bon Jovi

I've written here before about my childhood affection for Bon Jovi.  Their ponderous poodle rock stirred the New Jersey steel worker in my middle class Midlands soul.  So imagine my excitement on Friday evening when I came across a Jovi-mentary charting their progress through a recent mega tour.  Already well-refreshed, I was thrilled at the thought of howling along to a few Keep The Faith era classics.  The slammed door and angry footsteps stomping up the stairs suggested that my girlfriend didn't share my enthusiasm, but no matter.  I had a can of lager to keep the evening alive - bring it on!  "Mother mother, tell your children....(FAITH!)"

It wasn't quite the blast I was expecting.  Shot in arty black and white, it was more a testament to Jon Bon Jovi's self image as a Very Important Business Dude than a hearty compilation of the classics.  The majority was images of huge empty arenas, stagey pre-show motivational shouting and the post-show scramble for hot towels and a nice comfy seat in a limo.  But it was all made worthwhile by JBJ's posturing as a deeply serious man, rather than (for example) a very silly man who wrote If I Was Your Mother, the creepiest love song ever.

"I've been the CEO of a multinational corporation for twenny years" he snarls down the phone in the lounge of his private jet, perhaps underestimating the contribution of the band's management and record company in the BJ 1980's heyday when his daily schedule was:

12.00:  Wake up
13.00 - 16.00:  Do hair
16.00 - 19.00:  Photo shoot with Playboy models and a hosepipe
20.00 - late:  Sing silly songs to packed arena, eat swan burgers with Playboy models

Even better is the part where he corners Tico Torres, the band's resolutely blue collar drummer, to moan that the US baseball authorities are prevaricating over letting him buy a team.  Like one businessman talking to another, he gives Tico his most earnest face.  "Thing is, man, it's not that they're bein' hostile or stoopid, they're just being naive, know what I mean?".  "Yeah, bawss, naive is what it is" replies Tico, eyes darting from side to side as he considers whether a fart gag or opening a bottle of beer with his teeth will lighten the mood.

All this reminded me of the time a few years ago when I met the band, sort of. I was at my previous company's global marketing director's meeting, spending a few days in a windowless hotel meeting room feigning enthusiasm for the finer points of online marketing stategy whilst filling an A4 pad with ever more complex doodles.  In the way of all lower-middle management droogs we hit the town in the evening, thirsty but ever-wary of saying something career-destroying, and eventually bowled into the entrance of a Knightsbridge hotel for some post-closing time drinks.

Due to some massive security failure that CEO Bon Jovi probably fired someone for, we stormed the entrance at exactly the moment that he and the band stepped out of their limo, meaning that for a few seconds we marched through the atrium as a little gang.  One of my US colleagues grabbed Jon's hand, claimed shared New Jersey heritage and got a stoney faced "How you doin'?" before the well trained hotel staff swung into action.

The boys from the band were ushered into a perfumed inner sanctum of champagne flutes and sticky sausages.  One look at our half-mast TM Lewin ties consigned us to a separate bar comprising two glass tables and no chairs in the corridor that led to the gents.  I don't remember much about the rest of the evening, except that I came home in a fug of £6-a-bottle beer fumes and while arranging my clothes for the next day treated my girlfriend to a noisy rendition of Living On A Prayer with new lyrics ("Ironing In My Pants").

I can't say I noticed any obviously envious glances from the band that night.  But, having seen the documentary, the thought occurs - JBJ was actually thinking "Wow - business guys.  These dudes have worn suits and talked about ROI and hit rate for the whole day and all I've done is eat caviar on the Concorde.  Where did it all go wrong?".