Kent’s Answer to Glastonbury

Courier Countryside Column for 12^th July 2013

 Under headline:  You could be seeing the next big thing oin that little stage

Kent’s Answer to Glastonbury

Now ‘Glasto’ is over it’s time for superannuated hippies like me and music lovers generally to turn our attention to the plethora of boutique music festivals that have sprung up round here in in recent years.

There are at least a dozen in the Kent and Sussex countryside this summer – from All Tomorrow’s Parties at the prosaic Pontins at Camber Sands, to the more enticing Playgroup, billed as a ‘clandestine bijou fest at a secret location in Sussex’.

Sadly, the granddaddy of them all, Hop Farm, is cancelled. For the past few years my music mad son and I have enjoyed the East Peckham ambience. And when the main stage got too mainstream (Bruce Forsythe for heaven’s sake!) we would tour the Tent and outer stages for excellent Indie music.

My interest in offbeat festivals came about because, extraordinarily,  I have ended up hosting one in a field behind my house. 

A Grateful Dead appreciation group was looking for a venue to hold gatherings and a Deadhead friend wondered if I’d oblige.

From humble beginnings “SOL” (Summer of Love) has grown into a full two-day mini-fest with two stages and real ale bar and a couple of hundred people camping and chilling.  A little gentle persuasion has widened the music selection which this year has a definite folk flavour.  

So far we’ve kept it a deliberately small, membership-only, event with no tickets available on the day and, despite people constantly referring to me as  ‘Eavis’ Barker, my extremely tolerant neighbours need have no worries about expansion.

While our average age is knocking sixty,  just along the valley a music producer son of a friend has ben running an incredibly successful Indy-fest with a clientele closer to twenty.  His magical event, deep ‘In the Woods’ of his dad’s property had, three years ago, an unknown student band, Alt-J, playing on his tiny second stage. The following year they were headlining and, after some astute management, their debut album went to thirteen in the UK charts and won the British Mercury Prize.

Sadly I’ll be away for that festival this year.  But I rather doubt if Alt-J will be playing.  They’ve been too busy performing mainstream venues like Lattitude and Reading and …. yes, Glastonbury.

Perhaps one of the more obscure bands playing in my field this summer is destined for equal success. It would certainly give a vicarious glow.

Creationist Rabbiting

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Courier Column, June 28th under headline

Rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit rabbit....

Please don’t mistake me for a Creationist.  I am not.  But I think I have uncovered a flaw in the theory of evolution.  And it should be obvious to any country dweller or visitor, and certainly to any dog owner.

The only surprise is that Mr Darwin, himself a resident of relatively rural Kent, didn’t factor it in to his calculations.

Another curiosity is that Myrtle studiously ignores the creatures in question when sniffing around on a walk.  Pheasants she startles and follows in hopeless pursuit.  Squirrels she chases until they disappear up a tree.  Foxes she eyeballs and runs after in a desultory sort of way as if she knows they are too canny to catch.

But she appears entirely myopic to the multitude of rabbits we encounter every day. It doesn’t seem right. I mean aren’t dogs are supposed to chase rabbits?  My friend’s Jack Russell will vanish after the merest scent of a bunny.  Indeed he once got himself wedged in a warren entrance, looking for all the world like Winnie-the-Pooh in EH Shephard’s illustration of a similar predicament.

The point is, though, that Myrtle cannot possibly miss the rabbits that scatter before her because of their extraordinarily conspicuous tails.  Disturb a down of rabbits basking in the sun and it’s not their brownish bodies you notice, it’s their white scuts (alright, I didn’t know that was the correct word for a bobtail until I looked it up either) scuttling away.

But why?  What possible advantage can there be to having a rear end that shouts “come and get me”?  You’d have thought  - well, I’d have thought - that over a few millennia the rabbits without beacon-bums would have been better survivors and the species would slowly have lost this unhelpful characteristic through evolution.

But not a bit of it.  Every year new generations of white-tailed kittens appear (yes, that is the correct term for their young) to flaunt themselves before men-with-guns and other predators like foxes, cats, mink, stoats, polecats, badgers, weasels, buzzards, hawks and owls - though not my dog.

Sadly for my thesis, in-depth research on oryctolagus cuniculus - the European wild rabbit - elicited that the disappearing white tail that so attracts attention is the very same thing which actually alerts other rabbits to that danger.  It’s funny, this evolution thing.

Chill out at this year's SOL festival!