'Glamping'

I last went to a music festival eight years ago, where we cooked instant mashed potato and bird's eye peas on a little primus stove somewhere out the back of Golden Bay, NZ; bathed in the river, and slept on those incredibly useless pseudo-foam bed rolls. It was right up there with the greatest four days of my life.

Last weekend I festivaled again - on a small-ish island off the south of England, with 64,999 others. The Isle of Wight festival was rather famous back in the day. 1968-1970 to be precise. In 1970 The Doors and The Who headlined on Saturday, with Jimi Hendrix having a go on Sunday, along with Joan Baez.

Well, things have changed since 1970, and also since 2000. A lot of the above are dead. I don't eat instant mashed potato anymore, and am very reluctant to sleep on another one of those stupid bedrolls.

So last weekend, while others camped, we 'glamped'.

An ingenious company will go in and set up a tent for you, in your own area very near the main arena; give you inflatable airbeds, and nice new sleeping bags. You rarely have to queue for the (hot) showers; whereas your average camper will be waiting for sometimes over an hour and a half for a cold rinse. Oh how lovely it was when this morning at 5.30am, I packed my very civilised weekend bag and just walked away from the tent. No peg counting, or fly folding needed.

There is one downside to all this being grown up though. Where eight years ago I recovered from the festival by lying on a beach in the Abel Tasman for five days; this morning, four hours after hovercrafting my way off the island, I found myself back behind a desk replying to four days' worth of e mails.