written and posted by members of Lancashire Dead Good Poets' Society

Thursday 17 July 2014

Come Rain or Shine

07:00:00 Posted by Lara Clayton , , , , , , 2 comments
Choose one of the options below:

a) If you are reading this post at 7am - Shaun and I are probably three hours into a six hour drive to Latitude Festival.

b) If you are reading this post at 11am - Shaun and I are probably queuing excitedly on a Southwold country road waiting to park our car in a field.

c) If you are reading this post at 2pm - Shaun  and I are probably getting bands of fabric clamped to our wrists (which will come to signify such a happy time that we'll refuse to cut them off).

d) If you are reading this post at 3pm - Shaun and I have probably put up the tent (hopefully without incident or argument)and are now milling around the campsite village and buying ridiculous hats from the Oxfam Tent.

e) If you are reading this after 5pm - Shaun and I will probably be exploring the arena, scouting out vegan food and filling our evening with inspiring, random and wonderful acts.




Hopefully the weather will be nice, but regardless of whether we are met by rain or shine, I'll be wearing my wellies (any excuse will suffice).

At Latitude 2012, our arrival coincided with a day of torrential rain, and by the time we awoke on Friday morning - our feet sitting in a puddle of rainwater - the decision to bring a smaller tent seemed less ingenious and more stupid. There was another 'wet foot' crisis in 2011, when I stepped into a puddle only to discover my wellies had a hole. With cold and wet feet, and Jo Shapcott due to start in under thirty minutes, Shaun left me in the Poetry Tent and went off in search of new socks. He returned twenty minutes later - finding non-wool socks had been more difficult than he had anticipated - and presented me with a pair of £7 yellow and black striped socks. We look back on these moments now, where things didn't go quite as planned, and we laugh...

There is always the hope that things will go perfectly - but when they don't, and you look back, it is usually the less than perfect memories that you remember and which make you smile. So, here is to a Latitude that doesn't go quite as perfectly as my mind has imagined.

2 comments:

Christo said...

I'm reading your Latitude guesses at 20.00 to be as military as I ever get.
Hope the journey went well and that you are enjoying yourselves already - here's to NO RAIN not even on Saturday.
And please give my regards to anyone you bump into who you know I like (eg. Jacob, Jo Bell etc.)
Have the truly wonderful time you are willing Latitude to be and hope we shall see each other on Tuesday 22nd at 6.30 in The Rose & Crown if you have recovered sufficiently.
I'm looking forward to the SparepArts Festival at Fleetwood on Tram Sunday as I've cancelled my London trip this coming weekend.
Have great fun and safe travelling, and Blackpool FC may be looking for yet another new manager by the time you get back according to tonight's Gazette.

Damp incendiary device said...

The stuff that goes wrong is always memorable. Nobody wants a perfect day - perfect means nothing happened. Give me a day of mishaps and laughs please.

I only went to Glastonbury once but it was 1997 and so very, very muddy. I'll never forget that experience - jumping up and down to The Levellers and everyone around me caked in dirt. Lovely.

Have an amazing time at Latitude. I hope to join you there one of these years :) xx