Rock of Aged

The counter(pane) culture at Woodstock

Mr Looking Our Best (LOB) and I are going to do something next Sunday that we haven’t done in 30 years.  (Wash your mouth out with salt, you there).  The young heirs to the LOB dynasty have challenged their betters to join them in that endurance test that’s a hallmark of every summer –the outdoor music festival.  The event is Forbidden Fruit, with top

One for the old Volks

 billing on the Sunday being Primal Scream, whom Mr LOB and I have enjoyed a fox-trot to around the kitchen of an evening. Chic, fronted by musician and producer extraordinaire Nile Rodgers, is also playing, and may well be the only person there on the day actually older than the LOBs.

Writing a post based on a music festival gives LOB licence to use images from the cool daddy of them all, Woodstock, August 1969, plus the Stones free concert in Hyde Park in July that same year.

Striped trousers were all the rage at Hyde Park

 Although neither of us were at those festivals (too young –honest), it has to be said that the last time we stood in a field at a rock event, the tickets cost 12 quid each.  Just to run that by you again – £12 each. That was to see The Rolling Stones at Slane Castle in 1982. 

Mr LOB once had hair like this

We are reliably informed that not a huge amount has changed since those days of soggy field, soggy sandwiches and soggy bottoms from sitting on the grass. Not to mention waiting round all day for the main event, interspersed with queuing to use the horrific facilities generously referred to as the ‘Ladies’. 

That's a peace sign, by the way

 Fitting attire to wear on the day presents your mid-life blogger with a comfort versus grown-up style versus weather dilemma. Wellies are standard uniform at any Irish outdoor festival, but LOB wants to look like she belongs there rather than having wandered in from strangling chickens in the barnyard. 

Taking footwear as starting point, the official sartorial line-up for LOB next weekend will be a layering affair as follows:

Ankle boots, never sandals (LOB can’t bear having her toes trod on); jeans; T-shirt worn under short kimono/loose shirt get-up;  navy jacket; long scarf; straw fedora; black sunglasses; large bag to throw everything into.  

Bring your own bucket 

 Optional extras are a brolly; newspaper (to sit on, swat flies, use as sunshade, make paper darts, or perhaps read in an idle moment); and sun-cream (we are ever hopeful).   

Fringe fest Hyde Park

Will probably bring the ancient pack-away rain mac to sit on too as LOB doesn’t have the equivalent of the ‘mackintosh squares’ favoured by Miss Charlotte Bartlett (always space for a literary reference  - this is not just any old blog, y'know). The final addition is the discreet hip flask with a shot of something medicinal -  to ward off the Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie 'Flu. of course.

 (All  Getty Images)