Are music festivals better with children?

‘Dad, later, shall we go and see the Vaccines?’ says Boy.

‘Yeah, er, sure,’ I say, trying not to sound as enthusiastic I feel. It’s not the Vaccines I’m interested in; all their songs sound the same, a louder variant on the three chords which open Blondie’s ‘Denis’ (Denee). Rather it’s the joy of realising that, at 12, Boy is still young enough — just — not to feel totally embarrassed at being seen to enjoy rock music in the company of his lame old dad.

We’ve come to the Latitude Festival at Henham Park in Suffolk, me, the Fawn, Boy, Girl and a whole posse of friends, and it’s a very exciting moment for all of us. Two years ago the kids found it a terrible drag. This time, though, they’ve finally hit the age when they’re totally up for it — eagerly scanning the line-up, relishing being allowed to run loose amid crowds of perhaps 35,000, digging the amazing hippy tat on the stalls and discovering that in festival world no one judges you for the way you look, that on the contrary the weirder you look the better.

Most popular

Samuel Gregg

The welcome fall of Klaus Schwab

For us parents it’s an experience too. Sure, it does rather rule out any of those exotic, irresponsible things we might have done at festivals when we were younger. But on the other — such is the way with kids, as you know — it’s like seeing the whole world anew, through their eyes this time.

I’ll give you an example of this which, if you’re not a parent, will make you sick. Boy wants to see the comic Omid Djalili. I want to see Omid Djalili too but can’t because I’m squatting in the mud outside the comedy tent, waiting for all the other waifs and strays in our group to turn up because nobody’s got any juice left on their mobiles so we’ve had to resort to more primitive meeting technology — just like we had to in the Stone Age, before modern telecommunications were invented.