Camping at a music festival is a rite of passage, but when the music’s over I want to go home, have a nice cup of tea and climb into my own bed. I don’t fancy the idea of existing exclusively on a diet of lager, chips and cremated cod fillets, older than Captain Bird’s Eye himself. Nor do I want to queue for the privilege of squatting over four day old excrement; I only queue if there’s the likelihood of heavily discounted Tom Dixon tea light holders at the end of it. But this year, when Fleetwood Mac announced they were closing the the Isle of Wight Festival, I decided it was time for my girlfriend and I to lose our festival virginity.
First up: equipment. My strategy was to pack light but luxuriously. I purchased a perky little two-woman pop-up tent. “Just unzip her and she’s up in under a minute,” said the store assistant. She was perfect: light, flexible and tight enough to bounce a penny o−. The tent, on the other hand, would prove to be a massive let-down. I was also seduced into buying two luxury, five-tog, self-inflating airbeds, a couple of pop-up pillows at four pounds apiece (because you can put a price on comfort – it’s £8), and a couple of matching blinding head-torches for late-night hands-free ablutions.