I am only now emerging from an intensive recovery session post Latitude.  Still coughing up the dust, mildly sun burnt and finally realising that saying l’atitude (instead of attitude) is actually just not funny.  Here I am.

The first thing that needs to be pointed out about this festival is the location – I got a ride there, but as I understand it, we were in Suffolk – which is one of those places that  (in my world and so I expect yours too) only exist on TV: woodland, lake with lakeside grazing, grassy knolls  – it’s the utopia the Animal’s Of Farthing Wood dreamt about.

A winning event of the weekend was inadvertently stumbling into the arena (can’t remember why we did) early and finding ourselves faced with Tom Jones.  It felt like a coo because we knew he was doing the Thursday evening but had heard that only 400 people were allowed to watch. Oh me, how pointless.  He seemingly enjoyed it so much that he resurfaced for another showing, displaying the fruits of his latest records Praise and Blame where, at last, the man has ditched his …whatever he was trying to do before – no purple suits, no sex bomb, no bad beard dye jobs and no attempt at pop music. Instead its back to his beginnings with a gospel bluesy rock n roll album, which is great news.  OK, it’s a bit preachy – but for god’s sake, the guy was friends with Elvis!!!

For new bands we caught scotsmen Mitchell Museum doing a shit-hot set.  Frankie and the Heartstrings were the dipping hats of the newbie stage and the ethereal doo wop of Spectrals was a perfect afternoon gig.  Then there was  School of Seven Bells shone out their earnest alt pop, Jamie Lidell aka the white, British, middle class Stevie Wonder,pissed on everyone’s performing bonfire (again) and I am still trying to work out how Gabriela of Rodrigo y Gabriela does that thing with her hand (…on the guitar, stupid).

There were 7 year olds body popping – this brings out conflicting feelings of ‘wow’, ‘how cute’ and ‘how does that tiny body have infinitely more talent than me – I irrationally hate them’.  There was Swan Lake – as well as some giant white babies who danced in the dark (you need to see this, there’s no way to explain). Blake Morrison read his poetry, and I missed all the comedy because I couldn’t get near the tent for the crowds.  At night though, that tent had the most sublime pop music – I had forgotten how many tunes Whitney has.

My only regret is losing the power of thought and speech by about 9am Sunday morning.  I apologise for that.

Also the sheep are multi-coloured.  Attention to detail is important hey.