GREEN MAN FESTIVAL 2005, HAY ON WYE

FRIDAY

I like folk music for two reasons. One is that even if it's "hey nonny no" and Morris dancing there is always guaranteed to be a totally white hot instrumentalist in there. Like some guy who lives in a hollowed out tree and eats bugs with his feet but has built himself a cross between a set of bagpipes and an acoustic guitar with 19 strings and - even though he plays it naked - it's amazing to watch.

The second is that folk music is frequently staggeringly dark.

So in theory if you set this eccentricity and occasional sinister purpose in the Welsh hills, in the grounds to a slightly run down stately home that inspired the Hound Of the Baskervilles then I would have imagined we would be talking transcendental experience.

(I bought a load of scrumpy just in case).

We got there pretty late on the Friday after our driver Dave Change thoughtfully stopped off at some choice country boozers en route. The man in the car park put me in a bad mood by telling is to "park next to the red Mercedes" which was in fact a far superior 1973 Alfa Spyder. The festival is on the right side of small and the main stage is outdoors, but it's not Reading - the field itself is tiny.

It was walking through this field carrying the tent that I started to remember exactly what I hate about camping. So I occupied myself with a million things other than putting the tent up, until I turned round and Johnson had done it already. Things weren't helped by finding out our friends Will & Ruth had not only managed to get a hotel room, but had the largest room, in the middle of the front of the house with a balcony overlooking the lawn and the main stage. I started thinking about the last time I camped at a festival: the last night of Reading 1996. I didn't take a tent, and my mate Deano got drunk and wouldn't let us get in his tent. We slept outside and someone actually took a whizz on my friend Ross. To make matters worse, we thought our other friends were asleep in their tent all night, but it turned out they were in the car and they'd told Deano to unlock the tent and let us sleep there - but he thought it would be funny not to.

Anyway, I felt like that when I saw Will & Ruth's room.

Adem is apparently very popular. There is certainly a big crowd. But in a trend that maybe defined the weekend, he actually played a sort of MOR rock with acoustic instrumentation, but that was really not enough of any one thing to be interesting. Sonically pushing at least some of the right buttons, but structurally and emotionally like wallpaper. Or cardboard. Or rich tea biscuits.

The second stage was actually the bar in the hotel and it was too rammed to get in for Josephine Foster, so we decided to make an educated decision and hit the scrumpy hard. I ran into Piers from Econoline who was dressed in dungarees and straw hat and looked like he was off to a Klan meet.

We watched a bit of The Incredible String Band and, like the patch on the inner left thigh of my cords, it was so polished it was almost non existent. That's not to say it wasn't entertaining in places or beautifully played. But still, I began to feel like I'd made a mistake. I sent rude drunken text messages to my girlfriend and sang Iron Man in my head to try and tip the scales back, but I felt I was being twee-ed into the ground.

The disco and the emergence of Dancing Daniel from Leeds perked things up. Until security shut it down at half eleven. The guy from St Etienne was DJing and got told he had one song left.

"THRILLER!"
"BILLIE JEAN!"
"BEAT IT!"

I mean, at least play some Curtis Mayfield. But no, they finished with the folk then we were kicked out. I watched Will & Ruth ascend to their royal stable and Ian Scanlon and Jane disappear to their hippy B&B down the lane, and trudged back to my tent in a cider monk-on to listen to Johnson snore really loudly for seven hours, interspersed with people playing flute and acoustic guitar in the campsite and me calling Johnson a bastard.

Saturday >>