It's eight o clock on a warm Sunday evening. I am sitting at my laptop suffering from a hangover and sleep deprevation, with Meet On The Ledge ringing in my ears and my new festival hat on my head. My festival hat is named Alan.
Cropredy was, in a word, amazing. But since I have the space to write many words rather than just one, I think I shall do just that.
Cropredy the festival takes place in Cropredy the village, a small picturesque community with a canal running through it. The festival is organised by Fairport Convention, and it boasts of being the friendliest festival going. It takes place on the first Thursday in August and runs for three days. This year it was headlined by Supergrass on the thursday night, The Levellers on the friday and Fairport Convention themselves on the final night.
Some other bands played too, but frankly I couldn't tell you what any of them sounded like because those were the only three acts I heard. Supergrass were great, The Levellers were slightly less great - although I'm prepared to admit that might be because I'm unfamiliar with their stuff - and Fairport were epic. And that's almost all I'm going to say about the music.
I went down with a gang of friends, many of whom had been to Cropredy many times before. This was my first time, so I was suprised at the number of people we ended up with in our gang - in the end there must have been twenty five of us crowded under a marquee, chatting and laughing and drinking port. There was no real thought of heading down to the festival field and watching the bands because sitting in a field enjoying good alcohol and good company was more than entertaining enough.
Eventually we headed to the main festival site to trade tickets for wristbands, and then we headed for the most important location at a gig like this - the local pub. The Red Lion Inn was heaving, and since it was bright and warm most drinkers were sitting in the ancient graveyard across the road. We joined them and sat on the grass with old yews arching overhead. My first thought was that it seemed a trifle disrespectful to the long-dead, but whether it was the sun or the cider my mind soon changed. If you told me that a hundred years after I die my graveyard would become a place of goodwill and laughter I wouldn't mind a bit.
The people you meet at Cropredy are incredibly friendly. There were many people who I randomly said hello to or who said hello to me. Under normal circumstances I would never say hello to a random stranger in the street, and if one greeted me I would be expecting a subsequent mugging, but here those kinds of thoughts never even occured to me. The sense of community is overwhelming.
On the second day the guys ditched the gals and went for a Boy's Day Out. We went to the other pub, The Brasenose Arms, where bands were playing as part of the Festival Fringe. Since it was sunny again we went across the road with our drinks and sat beneath the famous Cropredy village sign. And then we spent the next six or so hours doing what blokes do best: drinking beer and talking bullshit.
When the Boy's Day Out was first mentioned to me I was slightly sceptical. Surely if I wanted to sit on the grass and drink all day I could do that in my home town and save eighty quid on festival tickets? But here's the truth - I couldn't. None of us could. Some of it was the weather and some of it was the company, but a large amount was the location. It needed the relaxed atmosphere and the friendly crowd. And also, in my home town I wouldn't have seen the Piano Man.
I'm told that the Piano Man was at last year's festival. He is a relatively short, wiry man with a quick smile who rides around the streets of the village in a tuxedo and top hat on his mobile piano. The piano is apparently a device of his own creation, a marriage of the aforementioned musical instrument and the workings of a bicycle. He pedals for propulsion and steers via an ingenious mechanism which works by him sliding his piano stool forwards and backwards to change direction. It's a work of brilliance, of dark brown teak and shiny brass, recalling in equal parts Jules Verne and Willy Wonka. If you call him over he'll stop and give you a song.
On Saturday it rained, and the whole place turned into a quagmire of sticky brown mud. Amazingly, the toilets were still surprisingly clean. At most festivals you're lucky if the toilets still work after three days, and at some of the really hardcore festivals you're lucky if the toilets haven't been collected into a huge pile and set alight like some kind of huge sacrificial pyre dedicated to the faeces god, but at Cropredy the toilets were kept stocked up with paper and in relatively good order. This sort of thing becomes increasingly important as I get older, and Cropredy is now the high watermark of bathroom cleanliness.
The festival ended with Fairport Convention's performance. They were joined on stage at various points by performers from many of the bands that had played the previous days, as well as the mighty Robert Plant. They played a great number of songs that I didn't know and that I came away from absolutely loving. They closed, as they always do, with the epic and beautiful Meet On The Ledge, a song about loss and the redemptive power of friendship. It still seems like the most appropriately timed song in the world.
I'm tired. Since I started writing this post I've abandoned it once to go down to the pub for a post-Cropredy pint. In the true spirit of the festival, that single pint turned into many pints, and a few minutes spent with friends has turned into hours.
I'm tired, I ache, and even though I've showered I'm still fairly sure there are things living in my hair. None of that matters a jot to me right now. This has been the best festival I've ever been to, and without doubt one of the best things I've ever done in my life. I can't wait to do it again next year.
See you there.