Three decades at music festivals

I’m not a person to rush into new things, but I’m easily led into them by more intrepid souls.

It was the beginning of the Nineties, and I was already in my late twenties, when my friend Nikki introduced me to music festivals. I was a shy young editor: a single, bookish, southern English fish-out-of-water in northern, family-oriented, no-nonsense Wigan.

Her programme of education for me was eclectic, including the Llangollen Jazz Festival and the London Fleadh in Finsbury Park.

We drove down to London in her battered old car, parked in one of the terrace-lined side streets and joined the stream of pedestrians heading in the direction of the music.

The Fleadh was a beery, cheery, Irish-dominated revelation. A tide of happy people washed from one musical experience to another, surging to the beat of the music, breaking on the shores of the front-of-stage barriers, eddying around the beer tent. It was a day of being carefree, gregarious, entranced by music and humanity. One glorious, euphoric day!

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