I am actually back at work, but I have a few sabbatical-related posts still brewing. This one is about Festivals, and in particular festival food: fast food isn’t what it used to be!
Sports event catering has always been a big disappointment to me. Standing out from the crowd is Lord’s, the home of cricket, where Jamie has for many a year sold his healthy boxes next to gourmet burger stalls and spicy oriental plates, and at the red-and-gold-tie end of the ground you can find overpriced prawns, smoked salmon, seats, and champagne galore. If one could call 4 days at the MCC headquarters a festival, then this was the fourth of such treats this July.
[Some faces at Lord’s this summer]
If Lord’s heads the sports tables, then Glyndebourne tops the festival pops. If you’re not glampicnicing then one has the choice of three top restaurants in which to spend the long interval. We had the three course buffet roast, with wine, and very nice it was too.
[The stage for The Cunning Little Vixen.]
But my first festival was the gastronomic eye-opener. Three days at Love Supreme Jazz Festival in Lewes (camping option declined) was a slightly confusing, but very tasty weekend. It’s the music that was confusing: the jazz was in evidence but not supreme enough on the main stages for my liking. However the big bands and Glastonbury-esque alternative music was at times heart-warming and occasionally exhilarating, and it was interesting to experience Grace Jones and Bert Bacharach. However a lot of it was not jazz. But getting back to the food, I wasted far too much time choosing what to eat in the knowledge that I’d only be able to sample at most five of the stalls. Here is the full range!
My other festival experience this summer was the Silverstone Grand Prix (camping essential). ‘Festival?’ I hear you cry. Festival indeed, for the 100,000 in the tent and motorhome villages next door. The F1 race this year was marred by ill-timed rain, but I was fortunate to get close to Lewis and Jenson, and I’ll certainly return another year.
However, at the campsites the event spans six days, 6am-midnight on three of the days, and all I’d say to those attending with a General Admission ticket and planning to queue for entry at 5am on race day to secure your spot… don’t set up tent near the village on the ‘lively campsite’ as you won’t get much sleep. I did feel sorry for one chap, though, who seemed to be missing all weekend… everyone was most concerned to find ‘Alan’ especially after 11pm and a few rounds when search parties circled the tents shouting his name sporadically. I think it’s a British thing. Hopefully it will pass. I’m all for festivals now.
andybousfieldonsabbatical 