Barefoot Bohemian's Blog

I’ve just spent the UK Bank Holiday weekend at Reading Music Festival. Admittedly it’s not on my bucket list – Glastonbury is – but a camping trip is on there so I guess four nights in a tent counts and gives me something else to tick off.

There were lots of great bands – some well known, others less so – but there are other places to get a music review of the event so I’m going to stick to my observations, and the advisability of you diving into the murky, mystery world of festival going.

Firstly if you’re over 25 you are definitely in the upper age echelon.  I spent the first 12 hours trying to spot an over 30 year old, who was at least old enough to only be my child rather than my grandchild.

The point was proved loudly and clearly on the opening day when one band’s lead singer asked who had got their GCSE exam results the previous day (exams for 16 years olds in England and Wales).  The roar of approval was deafening.  He didn’t even bother asking if anyone had got their A Level (exams for 18 year olds) results the previous week – he’d already identified his audience.

After putting up my tent I did what instinct and years of practice has trained me to do when I’m feeling old – I retired to the nearest pub.  At least there I could rely on someone else making sure that my fellow drinkers were over 18.

So I sat outside and watched an endless procession of teenagers streaming past like a thousand school trips all descending on the same zoo at the same time, and even worse, they were all excited!  There are billions of nerves in the human body but some people manage to find every single one of them, seemingly without trying.

After a couple of pints of calming fluid I re-entered the fray and adopted the attitude of a seasoned festival pro, slightly detached from the hustle and bustle, in almost guru state as I spent the evening outside a festival bar.

But things did take a turn for the better on the age front when I got away from the camp sites and into the music arena.  A few oldies – some even older than me – mingled with the face-painted youngsters. And I felt much more comfortable when I saw a guy in his 50s walk past wearing a tee-shirt which read: ‘Old Guys are Cool.  Shed Happens!’

So what did I learn from my taste of festival fever?  Well in no particular order here are 20 things I learned:

1. You don’t need wellies for every UK music festival because they are not all in a mud bath.

2. Teenager festival goers do not feel the cold.  Dressed in little more than a bra and hot pants there isn’t a goose-bump to be seen.  So why does it only take the sun to go behind a cloud for ten minutes for the central heating, gas fire and every other heat generating appliance to be turned on at home?  I suspect that one is to do with paying bills.

3. At any given time more people are NOT watching the main stage than are – apart from when the headline acts are performing.

4. No matter how big the ‘big name band’ is on the main stage – this year they were The Cure, Kasabian and The Foo Fighters – the smaller stages are still packed with music lovers who’d rather see much lesser known bands.

5. It’s amazing how many teenagers walk around with tee-shirts immortalising bands like The Ramones and Nirvana, when most of them couldn’t have shared more than a few years on this earth with Kurt Cobain.

6. So many teenagers – particularly girls – have tattoos, especially on their thighs which seems a new trend to me.

7. Holes caused by ear piercing will heal up but there’s no way on earth you’re ever going to recover from the effects of an ear stretcher.  What are these people going to do with those dangling pieces of ear lobe when they get bored of wearing stretchers – hang their glasses from there?

8. Teenagers do not have a problem waking up.  They can happily stay awake talking inconsequential nonsense until 4am and still be up at 8am continuing the conversation – without anyone noticing the four hour gap.

9. It’s amazing how many festival goers smoke roll-ups – many containing only tobacco!  Ordinary filter tipped cigarettes were a rare sight!

10. Teenagers can get to the fifth level of the latest video game quicker than they can erect a tent.  It’s like watching outtakes from The Crystal Maze for five year olds.  How many permutations are there for two pieces of nylon and a couple of rods?  Believe me a lot more than I’d previously have thought before I watched two teenage girls struggle through the ordeal of building their home for the next four nights.

11. Boiling water on a naked flame is something which only happens in science lessons thus ruling out a home-made brew.  Festival goers prefer to pay £2 for tea at a burger van.

12. Teenagers have different priorities than they used to when it comes to money.  As I  queued for the £1 shuttle bus from the train station to the festival venue and felt vaguely guilty at not lugging my rucksack and tent the 20 minute walk, I watched as groups of teenagers piled into the backs of taxis.

13. Girls no longer go braless.  This appears to be for two main reasons as far as I could make out.  Firstly the arm holes in their tee-shirts are so huge that a wardrobe malfunction is inevitable, and secondly, it’s where they keep their phones.

14. The charging of mobile phones is big business.  At £5 an hour for a charge, which doesn’t last a full day of tweeting, emailing, texting, phoning or face booking (I’m not sure of the correct verb for this) that’s a nice little earner.  Say 50 people an hour use the service for 12 hours (and those are conservative estimates) then you can see a three day festival will gross more than £9000.

15. It makes no difference how little room you leave between you and your nearest fellow audience members, someone will attempt to squeeze through when there has to be a better route.

16. Seeing how the area around a tent can become a refuse tip in only 24 hours makes me realise teenagers really are trying to keep their rooms tidy.  They are just using a different scale of tidiness and we have no concept of how bad it could become if they really let things slide for a day or two.

17. Even though washing mainly consists of a splash of cold water once a day, some girls still spend time meticulously applying make up and hair spray.

18. And watching so many of them wash their hair in cold water makes me wonder why there’s such a drama on the odd occasion when it’s luke warm at home.

19. Somehow after watching more than 36 hours of live music one song will emerge as what seems to be the unofficial festival song.  You hear people singing it as they walk around the campsite, humming it as they queue for chips with ‘real’ curry sauce and it’s in your head for days afterwards. This year it was ‘Lonely Boy’ by The Black Keys.

20. It’s hard to stifle a smug smile when you hear ‘The Bird is the Word’ (Look it up Grandad!) and appreciate your children initiating you into Family Guy so you feel part of the people in the know – at least for a short while.

So all in all I survived Reading.  Took it in my stride in my humble opinion – apart from my age wobble on night one.   Would I go again? Absolutely!  Would I recommend it? Absolutely, although if you need hair dryers, straighteners or toilets that don’t strip the hairs off the inside of your nose as you walk past them, then perhaps you might want to give the camping a miss and get an hotel, but you would certainly miss out on a large part of the experience.

Now I’m in Amsterdam to detox for a couple of days.  Somehow it just seemed the most appropriate location after four days in Reading.

The Barefoot Bohemian

As the closing ceremony effectively hands the Olympic baton to Rio De Janeiro, it’s probably appropriate to reflect on the last three weeks which have hijacked news, sport, radio, TV and pub conversations in the UK like nothing else in recent years. Especially as the games have also put a brake on my travel plans as I’ve spent every chance I got going to events.

I was lucky to get tickets in the original ballot and persistent enough to pick up others as they became available. Then there were the freebies like the marathons and triathlons, which just required you to turn up and cheer everyone – especially Team GB (which was really Team UK but lets not complicate things). I also appreciate living near London gave me an advantage over those further afield but I hope everyone managed to get to at least one event. If not, then the Paralympics is another chance to share in the atmosphere.  It’s well worth it.

Quite simply the event transformed London from a busy, fairly impersonal, unfriendly place into a cosmopolitan cauldron of happy, pleasant people who all suddenly learned to speak to each other and smile. How long it will last is anyone’s guess but it’s worth trying to keep hold of if we can as one of the much talked about elements of legacy.

The Olympic helpers were excellent, the soldiers drafted in at the last minute were an example of how security should be done. These are men and women who know what a real security threat is and don’t over react when they find a tube of lip balm in the corner of a backpack. They are used to wearing uniform and don’t feel the need to treat everyone else as closet terrorists.

Even the police took a welcome back seat in most of the Olympic venues – apart from at Wembley where a line of them insisted on halving the walkway and not one of them could explain why they were doing it (I know because I asked each one in turn and was met by a mixture of sarcastic comments, arrogance and disdain which bordered on a threat to arrest me for daring to challenge their authority). Sorry some things never change despite some of their colleagues – devoid of shoulder chips and possibly from a non-Metropolitan force – entertained the crowd in the Olympic park with their impressions of Bolt’s archer and Mo’s ‘MOBOT’.  The sooner the police believe they are accountable for their behaviour and attitude as well as their actions we could finally be on the way to an effective force properly integrated with modern society.

But let’s not dwell on the negative as there was so much that was great about the games.  Everyone will have their favourite highlight and it’s impossible to even list the options without omitting some classic moments but all I will say is that if you can watch GB judo gold medalist Gemma Gibbons look to the heavens and mouth the words: ‘I love you mum’, without a tear – or a flood of tears – coming to your eye, I suggest you take some time to reconsider your values and what really matters in life.  For those who don’t know, 25 year old Gemma’s mother Jeanette died from leukaemia in 2004.  Jeanette introduced Gemma to the sport at the age of six and influenced her early career.  Gemma was ranked 42nd in the world before the Olympics.

Gemma was just one example of what could be dubbed ‘The Crying Games’.  Athlete after athlete, parent after parent were captured on camera shedding the odd tear, or some sobbing uncontrollably at the emotion of the occasion, the release of years of dedication, hardship, pain, setbacks and focus on being the best they can be.  And even though many will not admit it, a world-wide audience cried with them. It may not be regarded as fashionable or cool because as we know ‘real men don’t cry’ because it’s a sign of weakness, but I think 2012 might just be the year when we all come to the terms with the fact that crying is a natural part of our behaviour. If more people admitted that crying is  just one of our emotional responses and a perfectly valid response to certain circumstances, it’s hard to see how the world would be worse-off.  We’re all fairly comfortable with public displays of anger – and we even cultivate them for effect at times – yet for many, crying remains something to be ashamed of, even when it involves tears of joy.  Let’s hope part of the legacy of these games is an end to the bottling up of our emotions which can lead to far greater problems like stress, insecurity and depression.

So the games may have grounded me for a couple of weeks but this site is not just about travel. It’s about doing the things you want to do, enjoying the life you want to enjoy and I’ve certainly enjoyed the 30th Olympic Games in London 2012.  The event has produced so many great stories and shining, positive examples that it should provide food for thought for all of us.

Decide what you want to do, work out the best way to do it and then focus on achieving it.  Simple!

Good Luck
The Barefoot Bohemian.

I’ve just returned from a couple of days at The Open golf championship (please note: not the British Open). What an amazing finish to what was looking like a fairly routine tournament.

For those who do not follow golf, Australian Adam Scott was leading by 3 shots with only a couple of holes to play. There did not seem enough holes for him to throw it away but it’s amazing what you can do if you try. Poor Adam simply imploded on the last four holes, dropping shot after shot. Meanwhile South African Ernie Els just steadily chipped away and had to sit in the clubhouse – well pace up and down I suspect – as Adam Scott should have just finished off a tournament that everyone thought he’d won.

Scott was left with a putt to make par on the 18th which would have forced a play off. He missed, gifting the Claret Jug to Els.

So why am I bothering you with this? Well I think Scott’s unfortunate and sad collapse has lessons for us all. He did not lose because he is not as good a golfer as Els. He lost because his mind let him down. He allowed his conscious mind to take over when he’d have been much better off leaving his subconscious mind in the driving seat. Afterall, it had got him to what looked like an unassailable lead in arguably the most prestigious golf tournament in the world.

The same ‘mental collapse’ can happen to any of us – fortunately ours is not in front of millions of spectators. It’s important to decide what you want and focus on it but trying too hard and forcing your concentration and thoughts too much, can be more damaging than doing what you think you need to do and then sitting back and letting things happen. I’m sure the more medically qualified among you would also argue that’s a better approach for your stress levels and heart rate too.

The Open was held at the Royal Lytham and St Annes course this year, which is a stones throw from Blackpool.

I’m not going to turn this into a piece on the respective merits of the north and south of England, but some things were very noticeable.

It’s a while since I’ve been offered help by anyone not paid to do so, and spoken to by so many complete strangers.

A man approached us in the street to offer his help as we were debating the quickest way to walk to the car park.

Teenage girls on checkouts passed the time of day with us rather than muttering a surly “have a nice day” or “enjoy” because it’s part of the script, even though it always emerges as if they hope every mouthful chokes you.

And for those who enjoy a pint of falling-over juice, the most refreshing touch of all.  I’ve lost count of the number of times I have had to ask to have a pint topped up because it’s settled after being poured. When that happened at the weekend the offending sub-capacity vessel was topped up without a word being spoken. All part of the service.

It’s incredible how a few common courtesies and displays of friendliness were so noticeable. They used to be things taken for granted but they’ve become noticeable as they’ve sadly become rarer.

They cost nothing but can have an amazing impact. Try it and see what response you get. I’d love to hear examples of how these little touches make your day a little – or even a lot – more pleasant.

Good luck
The Barefoot Bohemian