Point of view
Festivals are great fun, as our columnist knows. But there are a few things about them that have put her off, starting with the lack of home comforts
Festival is a lovely word, isn’t it? It screams fun and happiness and, by its very nature, it sounds like a blast. And surely summer is the perfect time to enjoy one? Sunshine, Prosecco and a picnic. Sounds like heaven. Indeed, I’m often scrolling through social media with more than a little bit of envy, looking at photos of my friends having the time of their lives at Glastonbury or Latitude or some deeply fashionable-looking weekend in a field.
But then I remember, I’m not really a festival type of gal. I know that the reasons to go to a festival are many. Lots of people you want to see, all in the one place, all at the one time. If you add the atmosphere, the food and the music, it’s surely the perfect way to spend a few days. Except for me, it’s utterly terrifying. I have a very clear memory of spending the weekend in a field when on a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award excursion as a teenager and all I really learned from the experience was that it’s impossible to outrun a swarm of biting midges.
Let’s take the basics of why a festival isn’t my ideal outing. Number one, the toilets. I’m rather paranoid about loos (both the number and cleanliness of them) and the horror stories I’ve seen about what the facilities are like fills me with utter dread. And I don’t know about you, but when I know there’s a queue of people waiting outside a facility, I get quite flustered. I was once attending an event and the thought of people staring at the door waiting for me to come out led to me dropping my jumper into the loo (I just left it – sometimes you have to cut your losses). Crowds are always an issue, too. Being so short, I can find it difficult to locate the people I’m with. I have nightmares about the embarrassment of a loudspeaker announcement going out to declare: ‘A lost child called Susan, aged 47, is waiting at the information desk.’
But without question, the thing that fills me most with dread is the camping. There’s a very special smell associated with the inside of a condensation-lined tent after several people have slept in it. A musky, damp odour that you can pra
