Don't need a weatherman...

When you visit a new festival for the first time it's hard to have some kind of pre-conceived idea as to what it's going to be like. The small amount of research that I had done for Cornbury revealed to me that it would probably be some kind of cross between a farmers market, and a music festival. The reality was something else, something much stranger, and I can honestly that I have never been to a festival quite like this, and I don't expect to be going to another one soon. For those of you familiar with the Isles of Scilly, a good summary would be to imagine if Tresco Estate organised a music festival and you wouldn't be far off what Cornbury Music Festival is like.

I had only ever heard vaguely of Cornbury Festival until this summer, and this was to be the first festival that we would be working as stewards for Oxfam. I seem to remember back when we were deciding which festivals to do we ended up choosing this one because there wasn't much else going on during this particular weekend, and so it was because of this that we found ourselves at Cornbury Park, near Charlbury Oxfordshire. Cornbury Park originally hosted a country fayre way back in 1796, growing so rapidly in popularity that by 1830 it had to be temporarily suspended, a bit like a Glastonbury of the 19th century. It re-opened between 1845 and 1856, attracting crowds of around 50,000 and eventually these large numbers caused the festival to shut down despite no recorded accidents or crimes reported. In its current incarnation the festival re-opened in 2003 on the same site marketed as a family friendly festival 'with a twist'. It turns out that 'twist' is white picket fences and Pimms.

The drive up to Cornbury took us through some very picturesque villages with a variety of names around the basis of "on-Thames" or "on-Water", and passed a particularly attractive looking pub that was located next to a canal with many narrow boats tied up alongside. However, despite these archetypal village images there were a few interesting sights to be seen; kebab shops and tatooists slowly working their way into middle England, along with highly fashionable tapas restaurants. Tattoos in particular now are no longer the preserve of the working class, and they have been well and truly accepted by all classes across the land, with sporting heroes being common exponents of getting inked. As for kebab shops, well wherever there's a pub, there's a need for a kebaby!

Getting to the park was simple enough, but finding the entrance proved a little more difficult, the sign posts directing traffic the long way around the park in order to get to the entrance. The reason behind this was to divert traffic from Charlbury, but it got us quite confused, and we even turned around at one point unsure if we were heading in the right direction. Eventually, however, we arrived on site into a surrounding of beautiful old trees in the late evening sunshine. When you work for Oxfam you get the advantage of staff camping, along with showers and a great catering van called Nuts Cafe. For each shift that you work you get a free meal ticket, and the quantity was ideal, I didn't want to go hungry! The staff campsite was pretty small, I think I heard that there were around 125 stewards for this festival, and there was wide age range of stewards camping. Although preconceptions might be that stewards is for the younger crowd only, there were plenty of older stewards at Cornbury, many of whom had been doing it for years. One woman we spoke to got into stewarding after her daughter convinced her to do it, though she said that if Glastonbury had been wet again this year she would have happily left the festival, lost her deposit and never worked for Oxfam again! We got to Cornbury on the Wednesday, the day before the gates opened, and all the stewards made themselves comfortable - one group had 'Swan Lake' playing quite loudly!

The first day of gates opening saw us assigned to working in the Campsite Welfare tent for the weekend, and we spent the first three hours sat in the sun while we waited for the tent to be erected. There's some funny guys working for Oxfam, one guy we called the 'Cool Man' who was about 20 and just wouldn't keep going on about "At Glastonbury it was done like this, and, at Glade we all did this" etc etc - Jog On! We also had the Mullet Man who was a supervising steward. We had seen him the previous day helping a young woman put up her tent trying to chat her up with his black, luxurious mullet swinging in the breeze. Fortunately neither of these guys was involved with our shifts, we were working 10am - 1800 on the Thursday, 1800 - 0200 on Saturday, and 0200 - 1000 on the Monday. I think they give everyone one shift for each part of the day, and our work in welfare would mostly be looking after lost property and lost children. We were based right next to the enclosed family camping site, and we spent most of the afternoon watching families make multiple trips to their 4x4s to get the kitchen sink out of the boot. How on earth they even manage to get all the equipment into their cars in the first place was beyond me, but I can honestly say that I've never seen such a large collection of massive tents in one place in my life. The forecast wasn't looking particularly good, and I was beginning to wonder how they would cope if got at all muddy.

The weather on the Friday started off pretty reasonable, but it was one of those days when the weather couldn't make up its mind, one minute it was too warm, so you'd take some clothes off, and then it would get cooler and start spitting with rain. However, one thing I was certain of and that was that it would definitely rain later on in the evening. The campsite and the arena are separate at Cornbury, so entrance to the site was delayed slightly on the Friday but eventually we were let in around 1130 as we queued along with giant child's buggies, chairs, tables and everything else your average family needs for an afternoon at a festival. The walk over to the arena was very serene, taking you down between two large lakes complete with ducks and locals fly fishing, and you pop up the other side of the hill into what can best be described as the front garden of Cornbury Park Estate. First impressions of the main site were just how small it is, probably no bigger than the Garrison on the Isles of Scilly, and you can find that you've covered all there is to see in around fifteen minutes. There's three stages on site, the main stage, the second stage - which on the Saturday is sponsored by Word magazine, and on the Sunday is the Oxford Folk Festival - and the final stage is called the Riverside stage whose dance area is littered with hay bales.



We watched the opening set of the main stage from a performer called Maria Illet who won a competition to appear on the main stage at Cornbury. At the time I wasn't aware of this, and I think I might have been a bit harsh in my judgement, thinking at the time that she had less stage presence than sea bass, but perhaps the occasion just got on top of her a bit. Her singing was pretty weak, and she had a real problem filling the stage with sound, all in all a below par performance that was most likely down to nerves. After a couple of songs we left to go to the Word Stage and watch a reggae band called The Beat, who were pretty decent. They got most of tweed dancing away in what sunshine there was, and they played a bit of an extended set due to the eagerness of the crowd. We chilled out listening to some reggae while I read the Guardian (ooo how middle class!) before heading back over to the main stage for a while where we caught part of set by Imelda May who had a bit of a Celtic twang to her sound, and was accompanied onstage by a guy playing a double bass, always good in my opinion. She a class above Maria Illet in terms of confidence and performance and just about held her own on the main stage. The area in front of the main stage is quite large, and I was confused as to why they had acts on who couldn't fill the space. That's not to say that a solo performer couldn't do it, but these bookings just didn't have the quality to stand up well on the main stage.

I think we were both a bit bored so we went for a another wander and had a look around the fairground which was where all the 'cool kids' were hanging out drinking Strongbow. Cornbury may not have the illicit drug use that many festivals have, but there was a large amount of under age drinking on, and pretty much every kid over 13 had a few cans stuffed away in their back pockets. After the fairground ADHD got to us we checked out the 'hippy' corner of the festival where there was a stall selling chai and also doing free drumming workshops. I had to laugh watching the workshops going on, there were the two teachers teaching a group of chicks in posh frocks all 'slumming' it with the hippies tapping gently away on their djembes carefully in case they broke a nail. Mind you if they had broken a nail they could have always visited the Powder Room. Yep, there was a Powder Room which was a giant trailer where festival goers could visit and get their nails done, have a hair cut, a wash, make up, the works. Unreal.

As this was going on we noticed a few morris dancers walk past, so we followed them over towards the Riverside Stage where we were greeted by two gaggles of dancers. One dressed in the traditional morris attire, the other looking like a home counties version of the American band Kiss. The dances were pretty good, there was even a bloke dancing with a giant cheese hat on, it was surreal to say the least!

Quite confused by the whole thing, we left to go back to the campsite and get some food. Now one of Amy's pet peeves for a while has been Kanye West style sunglasses, for those of you who don't know what I mean, here's picture:



I think the afternoon's bizarreness had got to Amy and she confronted one bloke as he walked past in what can be described as her posh voice:
"Excuse me, but can you see much with those glasses on young man?"
"Umm, not really,"replied the young man,
"Then what's the point?" argued Amy. To this he had no answer, and he shuffled off, possibly slightly embarrassed at being harassed by a girl with dreadlocks about fashion tips.

So it was eventually time to go to work at six, and we were lucky to have a pretty quiet evening. Because our welfare tent was pretty quiet, Amy and I had no supervisor so we spent most of the shift doing crosswords and colouring in books (Aged 3+). It did start raining during our shift, and we both felt pretty lucky that we were working inside unlike the rest of the stewards who might just be sitting in the rain for eight hours. Because of our position in terms of dryness and being in the middle of the campsite, we had plenty of other stewards popping in to say hi and have a cup of tea. One supervisor told us a funny story about Glastonbury the week before when during the early hours of the morning one of the stewards called over the radio that a pregnant cat had turned up near their post and was going into labour and he wanted to know what to do! I did overhear two young girls obviously having a problem with the weather in their drunkenness when one turned to the other and said "Can you work out which way the wind is blowing?". I never did find out if they solved their meteorological conundrum. The rest of the shift was reasonably uneventful until around 1am when a call came over the radio:
"This is the Oxbox(Oxfam HQ), could we get some first aid up here please. Um, I don't know how to put this, but one of our Supervisor has severe chafing in a personal area." Brilliant!

The rest of that shift went easily enough and my only regret of the Saturday was not getting the chance to see Paul Simon, who headlined on the main stage that night. However, after chatting to a few people who saw hi they said it was a bit of a sad performance, that he was clearly past his peak. Though I expect that most of the crowd enjoed him anyway it's always a bit depressing when you see someone who is a legend in decline. I remember seeing Brian Wilson at Glastonbury on his Smile tour, and I think the tour by that time had got to him a little, and although he was really good, I think his excellent band carried him a fair bit that day.

The final day of music, and the weather started ok, and Amy and I had the day off until the early hours when we had to complete our final shift, so we wanted to attempt to enjoy the second day of music. We got down to the arena to watch a guy called Tom Baxter and his band perform on the main stage. My instant impressions were that he seemed like a diet version of Dave Matthews. His band were actually really good with an excellent drummer and a good violinist, but Tom Baxter was totally upstaged by them. He seemed to love his voice a little too much, even for a front man, and I really felt that although the audience was impressed, if he re-worked his vocals the performance could have been much better. On the Sunday the 2nd stage became the the venue for the Oxford Folk Festival, and after starting a little late we went over to watch a latin/ska band called Jaume Toujours who were half decent. They had an accordian playing front mand who had an annoying habit of shouting "SKASKASKASKA!" every twenty seconds. I think he was trying to remind himself what ska music should actually sound like. After they finished an American singer called Tift Merrit came on who had a really good voice but the band's sound was really bassy so it sounded like the badn was too big for her. She came across as trying to sound a bit too much like Sheryl Crow, at least that's what her band were trying to sound like, but she didn't have the voice to match its sound.

And then came the rain.

and the rain.

more rain.

From five o'clock on Sunday it began to absolutely pour down with rain, heavy unrelenting rain. Just in time for 10cc's set which didn't really manage to raise the crowd much. At Glastonbury there's flags everywhere, but at Cornbury it was giant golf umbrellas. The umbrellas certainly kept the rain off those who had them, but for rest of us we had to put up with getting poked in the eye by the corners by them, and having any view of the stage blocked by someone holding one straight in your face. Still I just about managed to catch a few of 10cc's classic tunes, which sounded pretty good, but in the rain they didn't keep me very warm. We were going to hang around for KT Tunstall, but instead sheltered under the Ecover tent and payed there game inside on their computer where you had to hang washing on a line before seagulls crapped on it. I think I got to level 4. The Folk Stage was next to the Ecover tent and there was a really good Irish Folk/Salsa band called Salsa Cetica who were exceptionally good musicians, and probably the best band we saw all weekend. It was just a shame that the weather was so bad, but Amy braved the rain for a bit to go and do a few jigs before showing me some basic salsa moves.

By now we were both pretty wet, it was getting cold and with the 2am shift on our minds we decided to skip on Crowded House and get a few hours sleep before work. I can't say I was paticularly gutted that I was missing the last of the music, in fact I was quite glad to escape the vacuous atmosphere of the arena and get back to some sembalance of reality at the Oxfam camp. Work that night was pretty easy, and boring, and wet for those not inside. It rained non-stop through the night, and I glad that we were lucky enough to be inside, in fact at one point we had nine of the fifteen stewards on duty that night in the welfare tent drinking tea. There was plenty of more crossword attempts and Amy and Hena (who was working in the tent with us) dedicated themselves to colouring in as many pictures as possible in the eight hour shift.



The rain finally subsided around ten in the morning, just as our shift was finishing and we did a quick pack away before driving off site as quick as the polo would take us. I can without a doubt say this was one of the strangest festivals that I've ever experience, and although I went to it knowing a little of what it was like, I never expected it to be quite so upper class. There were missing girls called Tiara, a double decker Pimms bus, and a VIP area (not for artist or anything, just people who wanted to spend more on their ticket and feel important) with a white picket fence and bouncers. I would never go to this festival again, personally it's just not my idea of fun at all. It was exactly like taking the August visitors to Tresco and placing them at a music festival, with middle of the road music and giant umbrellas. Jolly rah rah!

This weekend takes us to 2000trees, a small festival of 2000 people, in the top ten small music festivals of 2007 and despite the current forecast not being great, I can't wait. Until then, stay classy.