News from the North
The first in an occasional series from your Special Correspondent
A LONG TIME AGO in my youth I lived in Cambridge and since then I often return and stay in Swaffham Prior. During my last visit I heard about a proposed Folk/Rock Festival in Lode. In those years long ago I used to attend the Cambridge Folk Festival, which may well be audible in the Swaffhams when the wind is in the right direction. To my great surprise and delight Kathryn Tickell, then very young and without a band, was playing the Northumbrian pipes in the smallest tent. It was a breath of fresh air from the hills for an exile, like myself, trapped in the south. Now Kathryn is famous (of course youÕve all heard of her - haven't you?), has a band, does world tours, and probably plays in one of the bigger tents.
This year, Northumberland had its own Festival, the first; why? Because everywhere else in the country had a festival (I paraphrase, but not by much). It clearly had not occurred to the organisers that "everywhere else in the country" is by and large packed together a lot more closely than Northumberland. Thirty miles from where you are reading this is, let's say Huntingdon, with Cambridge in between, Thirty miles from where I am writing this is the top end of Kielder Water, with vast emptiness all around.
Nevertheless, the Festival went ahead: three stages, twenty bands, 25,000 expected; and of course the people who lived across a couple of fields from the site were appalled (and frightened). The result? As detailed in the Hexham Courant: there was a crowd of perhaps 3,000, £55 tickets changed hands at £5, the "free" shuttle-bus to/from civilisation cost £12, six bands failed to appear ... I could go on. Oh yes, 53 people were arrested for "various offences" - we police these events "robustly" in the North. (Pro rata, how many arrests would that be at Cambridge? 2,000?) The organiser says he will do it again; the owner of the estate on which it was held, who presumably got his money in advance, says it will happen again... But it seems to your correspondent that while Northumberland does some things (emptiness, hills, red squirrels) better than Cambridge, Cambridge does rock and folk festivals a whole lot better than Northumberland. I hope it stays that way.
As for the village of Lode, I wonder if is going to have the Northumbrian experience.