plus latitude retrospective
Sat on the train en route to London for day’s consulting activity (work – oo the shame of it!! 🙂 ). Now fully ish refreshed and recovered from Latitude.
Worth taking a look back at Latitude. I’d never been to a major festival before and wasn’t disappointed. I can’t say that many of the bands really caught my attention. I’d never heard of most of them. There were not really any top acts there (in my opinion) although I did catch the end of the Foy Vance song which had Ed Sheeran as a guest singer so that was a bit of a result (fwiw). Notwithstanding this the bands added up to a good all round experience and we did have a great time.
We were with a good crowd of people. All our own kids turned up together with Joe’s girlfriend Charlotte and Ajax’s friends Banner & Rosie, Mike and Bev and Mark and Cathy were great company. Ashley and Sue also turned up with daughter on Friday evening to join the party.
There was a fair old variety of food on offer. I wouldn’t rave about the quality on the whole but if you are catering for thirty thousand people I guess this isn’t going to happen. Ajax went down with food poisoning on one of the days.
The campervan area was poorly served with facilities. We were at one end of the field and all the toilets were at the other end. Not much value for the additional ticket money there. We did get to coral our vans and awnings so that we had a central communal area which was good. We took our bbq firepit along and were able to cook everybody’s breakfasts and reuse it as a campfire in the evenings.
There was only one, communal, shower block, around a mile from us near the entrance to the arena. Ajax and I used it on the Sunday en route to see the bands. Fortunately I had a microfibre towel which I was able to clip to my belt afterwards and didn’t take up too much space. When I say communal showers they really were communal – open to everyone. For us old rugby players this didn’t represent a problem but today’s youth are used to separate showers. Spoilt rotten the lot of them. The dribble of a shower did feel totally luxurious. But would probably been contemptible under other circumstances.
The last comment is in respect of the drinks available. Totally rubbish for the high cost. The only lager was Tuborg at £4.80 a “pint”. It rarely filled up to the pint mark. The Somersby cider was too sweet and they could have done a lot better with the bitter considering that the Adnams brewery was only five miles away.
Bags were searched by tattooed Gestapo types on the way in to make sure you didn’t carry contraband alcohol. Most people smuggled some in although I didn’t bother. Some smuggled gin did come in handy on Sunday evening when it came to anaesthetising a toothache.
So that was Latitude. We would go again and we did get some useful learnings about the campervan that we will take forwards to the next trip.
Back to today the forecast for London is bright sunshine and 33 degrees. I am prepared, wearing shorts, a Tommy Bahama silk shirt and a pair of sandals. No hat though…