The first night of camping turned into a nightmare. Our pitch, which had seemed so perfect when we found it had become surrounded. We were like cowboys being circled by Indians, but instead of Indians there were idiots. Once the drama students (who I think having seen them in the morning were actually grown up actors which makes their idiocy less forgiveable) had gone I drifted into a light sleep, but was woken within 30 minutes by some of them returning and another tent being erected (by more thoughtful people) right beside ours. More singing and shouting and show-offy behaviour as if all the world was indeed a stage and it was their duty to attempt to be putting on a show wherever they found themselves at whatever time.
I was only mildly annoyed at this stage, still reasoning that at 1.30am I had no right to expect to be asleep, but I was painfully aware of the fact that I would be woken by the light and heat of the sun by 7am and that I had a show to do and that this was just day one of the festival. I really need my sleep these days to be able to function properly and had hoped I might get six hours tonight to steel me for the days to come. Having been shouted awake I felt a bit unsettled and had the first of a series of mild panic attacks, brought on by the disturbed sleep pattern and the claustrophobic nature of staying in a tent. My head filled with dark and unpleasant thoughts which I struggled to expunge. I was not very happy. But the actors mainly settled down over the course of the next hour and I came close to falling asleep, but was again woken by conversations and this time, feeling more panicked had to go for a walk to escape my fabricy tomb. Many of the lovely toilets had already been clogged up, mainly by those people who insist on putting half a roll of toilet roll down them (why do people do this?) despite many warnings not to do so and at 2am the queues were long.
A short walk settled me, but I kept on having to get up at 30 minute intervals during the night to escape the tent and to calm down. Things were not ideal and I was getting into a state. Then the occupants of the massive cub scout tent arrived back from the field and were raucous and shouting and continuing their festivities. They were a group of young men, possibly about 20 years old and as this was their first night they were full of energy and wanted to carry on their party. But as their tent touched ours that meant we were in the party too. I tried to ignore them, again thinking of the times that I had been young and not wanting to be the square adult who got angry and tried to kill the mood.
I remembered being 16 and camping in Weymouth with my over excited friends and our first holiday without adults. We drank cider and looned around putting on voices and telling bad jokes. At about 3am Steve Cheeke was pretending to be the Son of Satan and our tent was shaken from outside and an angry French man hissed in a threatening manner, "You can keep your bloody, sheety mouths closed!" We collapsed into giggles of excitement and fear, though the threat worked as we did get a lot quieter, but that phrase in that accent became a running joke for the rest of the holiday and then my life. I still say it sometimes. Even to people who don't know the context. We didn't care if we were right or wrong. We were teenagers and we were all that mattered in the world. This poor French man who was no doubt on holiday with his children and had the misfortune to be camping in Weymouth must have bottled up his fury in a similar way and then snapped. It's an age old tussle between age and youth. No doubt he too tried to stop himself making a scene, probably remembering also the times when he was to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld the shushee rather than the shusher. But enough was enough. He was right. We still thought he was a dick. It would take a couple of decades before I would even consider things from his point of view. But this alas is the selfishness of youth. And why most of you are such idiots that you can't appreciate what your parents did for you until you have kids yourself (and sometimes not even then).
Annoyingly on the three or four calming walks I had it became apparent that most of the performers' camp site was in a state of mild calm. No one else was shouting. No one else was singing opera. People were snoozing or chatting quietly in their tents or making considerately quiet love (I had to get my ear right up against their tents to hear it at all - this is a joke). We had just lucked across all the idiots in the whole area. Or rather they had lucked across us.
At 4am I went for another walk and had had a total of about one and a half hours sleep. As I left the boys in the cub scout tent were still shouting at each other. I can't remember exactly what was going on as things were hazy, but I think they were calling each other "gay" or "gaylords" but I might have projected my own teenage life on to them there as that sounds like the kind of thing I would have done. I returned from the loo - there were no queues now as most people had settled down to see one of the lads standing outside of the tent and shouting in through the flaps, probably about the false sexuality of his friends. He was, to be fair to him, incredibly pissed and probably wasn't aware of where he was, let alone what time it was, but I had had enough and found myself telling him to shut the fuck up. He was too busy shouting to hear me so I had to say it again. "Who the fuck is saying that?" he said, before turning to try and focus on me. "It's me," I redundantly told him, "Have some consideration for people around you and shut up!" I had only half considered that fact that I, a lonesome 44 year old man, was standing up to a tent full of drunk and fit youths half my age, but I could only think of my girlfriend who was trying to sleep about two feet away from this braying idiot and by this stage I was so tired and unhappy that I would quite happily have died. It felt like my entire festival had been ruined already because I was going to be in no fit state to enjoy it. Especially given that tomorrow night we'd be in exactly the same situation.
The young man said "Fucking chill out man" which could only amke anyone angrier. "It's the middle of the night. Shut the fuck up!"I felt in the mood to go over and punch him in the face, even though doing so would be probably literally suicidal. Luckily I think his friends were slightly less drunk than him and called him back into the tent realising that perhaps shouting outside the tent was a step too far even for them. My heart was beating as I got back into the tent and I was already feeling like an ancient idiot for spoiling their shouting gaylord fun. I was the French dad on the Weymouth campsite. I had become old.
The shouter was now inside his tent protesting in a loud voice about what a prick I was so I shouted at him from his tent to stop fucking shouting. "You can't stop us talking in our own tent," he whined, and it was at this point I realised how young he probably was, like he lived with his parents and there were rules and places where they were valid and places that they weren't. "You're not fucking talking though are you? You're shouting. Shut up!"
There was a brief moments silence and the child responded, "I want you to know that we will be shutting up, but would like you to consider the irony that it is now you who is shouting."
"Ooooh yeah, isn't that ironic?" I rejoindered, "So ironic that you have driven me to shouting by your shouting. But I have been putting up with this for five hours and it's only now I am saying it. And it doesn't matter that I am shouting because you're already woken everyone up with your shouting."
And I knew as I was saying this that as bogus as his irony entreaty had been that that is exactly the kind of smartass, though dumbass comment I would have made at his age, thinking I was oh so clever. I was shouting at myself. What goes around comes around.
Also I hadn't been trying to sleep for five hours at this point, but a less embarrassing three and a half (it just felt like the night had lasted forever) and though the tent of fools did quieten down I did hear them laughing about the fact that I had apparently gone to bed at 11pm at a festival. I also thought I heard them threaten to burn my tent down and I lay awake for about an hour wondering if one of them would at least come and piss on my tent. But actually having vented a bit and having succeeded in making them realise their noise was too much there was a chance to sleep. I wonder if in 30 years time they will still be quoting some of the idiotic things I said. Laughing at the fool who had come to Latitude and gone to bed at 11pm. Will they continue to insist they were in the right or will they realise at least that they were dicks as well?
I still slept fitfully, going for two more walks, one at about 5am when I realised just how cold the world is at that time of the morning - I got back into the tent shivering. But probably managed to increase my amount of sleep to three hours in the night. And by eight the panics and claustrophobia had gone and though I felt a bit disconnected from the world I was not that grumpy or as exhausted as I'd imagined. Though I had pretty much decided that I wouldn't be sleeping in the tent tonight. I have two intensive weeks of previews to come and I can't risk getting ill now. I felt pissed off because I had really been looking forward to this break and it had already been largely sabotaged by some idiots and my age. At eight I did consider opening the tent of the young men and shouting that they were all gaylords. But as funny as this might have been, it would have woken up innocent people and probably not have had much affect on them. Others thought I should have burned their tent down, but even if I had seriously been capable of manslaughter/murder, they were so close to us that that would lead to our tent being burned down. Though the opera singing actors would have gone too, so that might have made the sacrifice worthwhile.
I heard the actors discussing the contretemps in the morning, in between their singing and shouting and hilarious funny voices - including unless I am very much mistaken a comedy Pakistani one. They could see both sides of the argument, as indeed could I, though I think agreed that shouting outside a tent at 4am was probably a step too far. I didn't see the lads I had shouted at, though expected to come back to my tent later to find that they had all shat inside it.
The day was not ruined though and as discombobulated as I was I still managed to have fun. I was on quite early in the comedy tent and had to follow the young Josh Widdecombe, who is a hot tip for Edinburgh from me - genuinely funny and original observational stuff. He's going to be huge, I think, so it was not great to be following that. Especially on 3 hours sleep. Would I seem as old and fusty as I had at 4am?
I thought I had a bit of a slow start, trying out a few gags to ease myself in, but then I decided to do highlights from my new show, something I would have been scared to do even a year ago. Stories in front of a festival crowd? Was I still in a suicidal mood? But people had listened to the story of a Jew escaping the Nazis, so maybe I'd be OK and amazingly the 2000 or so people sitting in front of me were engaged and focused and it worked. The night hadn't totally derailed my day.
We had a couple of afternoon beers and chatted with the other comics and went for some food. A couple of nerdy men wanted their photo taken with me and then unusually a couple of cool looking teenage girls asked me as well. My girlfriend was asked to take the shot by the girls and raised an eyebrow at this imposition but did so anyway, because she is cool. I told her that that wasn't the kind of thing that usually happened and sure enough later one of the nerdy men tweeted to say that he had told the girls that I was in the band "The National" so all is right with the Universe.
After watching KT Tunstell we made the decision to leave Latitude, at least for the night and head to a hotel. I had almost been tempted to brave another night, but the threat of rain in the morning was too much for me and we scarpered. Perhaps as I took our tent down I accidentally took out one of the pegs of the tent of the naughty boys. I hadn't thought it would do too much, but it did cause the canvas to shift quite dramatically and I hoped we'd be packed up and away before any of the boys returned. It would have been too cruel to take out all the pegs or stab some holes in the canvas for the coming rain (as tempted as I was) and the removal of one peg seemed like a fittingly pathetic retribution for their minor crime. They were pretty much solely responsible for me leaving the festival, so the victory was theirs. And I was sad that the weekend had not been all I had hoped for.
We were away but the car was still scraping against the mud and it became apparent that the bumpy journey up the track on the way in had caused some of the undercarriage to be dislodged and it was dragging beneath the front wheel. So last year I got a speeding fine leaving Latitude and this year an annoying repair to the car.
We decided to head to Ipswich to the very hotel we stayed in on my birthday last year - the scene of me being sick on my own diarrhoea. Were we tempting fate? What if the students in the tent next to ours had had the same idea and were in the room next to ours, partying away? It seemed unlikely. The big bed and the bath and our own functioning toilet were all welcoming sights even after such a short jaunt away from civilisation and helped make up for the disappointments we'd suffered. We were in bed and sleeping by 9.30pm. I hope the students read this and laugh at us. Because that is properly tragic. But oh how sweet the sleep was. I managed 11 hours without even waking up once. No panic attacks, no dark thoughts, no need to go for long walks in the cold. Just pure beautiful uninterrupted sleep.
This was the weekend that I officially could no longer claim to be young. I am one of the old. I am sad and happy about this in equal measure. Enjoy the rain at Latitude motherfuckers.
