SUMMER’s here, festival season’s here, and this weekend sees the one I have co-run for 29 years, Glastonwick, in the beautiful surroundings of Coombes Farm, West Sussex.

Our annual Beer, Music, Poetry & More Beer Festival: established in 1996 by co-founders beer guru Alex Hall, music/poetry co-ordinator yours truly and the late Roy Chuter, and based around a very simple idea, albeit one pioneering at the time.   

It was the mid-1990s. I had performed at countless music festivals where the beer was the undrinkable urine of Satan and we had all attended vast quantities of beer festivals where it was a matter of iron principle that “the entertainment” had to start every song by informing the audience that they “woke up this morning” in a fake US accent. 

We simply thought: let’s do something which has never been done before — a beer festival with good music and a music festival with good beer! So we assembled lots of beer from small independent breweries and lots of self-penned original music and poetry from the spiky end of the DIY scene, found a venue, and hoped. 

It worked: 29 years so far including two online Covid ones. This year: Otway, Merry Hell, TV Smith, Newtown Neurotics, Brian Bilston & Henry Normal and loads more. 60 beers including about eight unique festival specials. Beautiful scenery and the friendliest crowd you will ever meet. Still time to join us tomorrow — roll on our 30th next year. Read more at glastonwick.uk.

And last weekend saw my favourite other festival of the year, Bearded Theory in Derbyshire. It started off a bit weird for me, but soon turned utterly wonderful. 

The night before I arrived I had to go to A&E for a tetanus injection, having got a bit of rusty metal stick in my knee (don’t ask!). It was Saturday lunchtime and I was watching the brilliant young singer-songwriter Jess Silk.  

During her third song, the wonderful There’s a Bar at the End of the World, I suddenly felt very rough. 

Lovely stage staff let me sit behind the barrier at the front. Two bottles of water and I felt better again, but then the head of security arrived and INSISTED that I be escorted to the medical tent to get myself checked out.

I said “I’m fine” but totally understood they were doing their job, so led them on a lively 600-metre walk to the medics, hoping to get back for the end of Jess’s set.

“How can we help?”

“Felt a bit rough just now, sat down, had some water, felt better, but they insisted I saw you. Had a tetanus injection at 3am the night before last, very little sleep, drove six hours to get here, didn’t have much sleep last night either and, yes, I did have a few pints. And I had a long walk round the site this morning, and just realised I haven’t had anything to eat yet. And I’m 66 if that has any relevance. But I feel fine now apart from a really sore arm from the injection. And I’m on stage in 40 minutes…”

She looked at my knee, smiled and gave me the all clear. I dashed back but just missed the end of Jess’s set, so went back to Gail’s Tea Tent, where I was due to play in a few minutes. Brilliant, packed tent, an hour of mainly new poems, very well received. Thanks, everyone. 

I wandered round the festival, saw loads of great stuff including Jim Bob from Carter USM, Steve White and his radical stompin’ Protest Family, Dunstan Bruce from Chumbawamba’s brilliant Interrobang — and then the tiredness set in.

I crawled into my sleeping bag, slept till 3.30, was woken by rain on canvas, knew the forecast, knew I was coming home today anyway to prepare for Glastonwick this week, got up, drove home and gave Robina a nice surprise at 9.30 the following morning. 

I’ve got a whole stack of new albums to review. I’ll do them in my next column. Cheers, everyone.

For further info please visit www.facebook.com/attilathestockbroker and/or attilathestockbroker.bandcamp.com/merch.