14 Things I Saw At Latitude 2014

Given that I have only been back from Suffolk a couple of days, and I'm still reluctant to let go of my festival spirit, I thought I'd use this week's post to recapture some of the things I saw (and loved).

1) The brightly painted Latitude sheep - always a classic Latitude moment - plus it offers a tenuous link to this week's blog theme.

2) A lightning storm as we danced to Damon Albarn on the Obelisk Stage - the sky navy - the rain warm - and our dancing criminal - but it was like no experience I'd ever had before.

3) Luke Wright reading Dad Reins - that last line is caught in my mind and almost has me in tears every time I hear it.

4) D.I.Y - Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott - beautiful sunny Friday afternoon - sing-a-long.

5) Jemima Foxtrot mesmerised me with her poetry - her excitement was refreshing and infectious.

6) A guy wearing a basset hound costume in thirty degree heat.

7) Mining The Meaning - "Introduced by Dr Katy Shaw, a leading authority on the mining strike, the event will consider the social, cultural and political legacy of the strike and ask what connections can be drawn to the here-and-now in a post-Thatcher, post-Labour, pro-protest world." - Jemima Foxtrot, Luke Wright, Attila the Stockbroker, Michael Rossen and Andy Bennett read a selection of poems written by miners and their wives at the time of the strikes.

8) On Thursday night we went to the theatre and saw Kate Tempest's Hopelessly Devoted - Thought-provoking and arresting - impossible not to be moved and inspired.

9) Goat - psychedelic, bizarre, unfathomable - Shaun dancing and whooping like something possessed.

10) Vegan food in a field - Peckish Peacock - Healthy Carrot - Churros - And vegan cake

11) Helen Mort - I'd heard Helen read at Latitude 2012, but this year she was even better -if you haven't read any of her poetry then it is a MUST.

12) Hula Hoop Girl - She performed a host of amazing tricks as The Black Keys played - we couldn't take our eyes off her - I think Shaun fell in love.

13) A moth flying to the ground carrying a wasp - squeezing into the grass - burrowing out of sight.

14) Scroobius Pip ending our festival with 'Thou Shalt Always Kill' - packed tent with people spilling outside.   

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THE BIBLE ACCORDING TO RUPERT MURDOCH

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was GOTCHA! And the Lord Rupert said let there be a Royal Family, and let enormous quantities of trivia and drivel be written about them, yeah even unto the point where a lobotomised amoeba couldn’t find it interesting any more, and let babies be born unto this Royal Family, and let the huge swathes of sycophantic, nauseating sludge written about them surpass even that written about their parents, even though these babies and their parents are about as interesting as a wet afternoon watching an endless slow motion loop tape of Phil Collins live at Selhurst Park.

And the Lord Rupert said let there be soap operas, and reality TV shows, and let each and every one be so mind-numbingly moronic as to make a wet afternoon watching an endless slow motion loop tape of Phil Collins live at Selhurst Park seem a truly uplifting experience, and let entire forests be destroyed and the very existence of our planet jeopardised in the endless vistas of retarded outpourings about these unspeakable transmissions.

And let there be enormous breasts, and endless bonking, and days and weeks and months and years of chauvinistic right wing propaganda, so that the people who like the bonking and the soap operas and the breasts and the royal stories get the politics as well.

And let any journalist who tries to stand up to the proprietor and editor in the name of truth, and integrity, and intelligence, and journalistic standards, be summarily dismissed, and cast into a bottomless pit of decomposing chimpanzee smegma, and let those journalists who suffer this fate rejoice at the great career move they have just made.

And the Lord Rupert looked at his work, and even he saw that it was a load of crap, but this was the enterprise culture and it sold millions so it was good. And on the same basis he decided to buy the whole world, and the earth itself wept, and little robins vomited, and cuddly furry animals threw themselves under trains, and the whole thing was filmed by Sky Channel for a horror nature programme, and the most awful thing was that this was just the beginning……

ATTILA THE STOCKBROKER



This guest post by Attila the Stockbroker came with the following introduction which is being placed at the end to avoid interrupting the joy of the work above:

I wrote this some years ago after one of Murdoch's subsidiaries took over publishing firm William Collins, which among other things has the rights to the New International version of the English Bible. Given Mr Murdoch's track record in journalism and publishing - he is like Midas in reverse, all that he touches turns to shit - I thought it was time for a New Revised Version.

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