The hilariously named Open Arms Festival welcomed us into its caged bosom on Saturday. Memories of the fayres and festivals from my past sprung into my mind. Festival of Fools, Elephant Fayre, Glastonbury and the various Fleadh's from Tipperary to Finsbury. All of them in the cold rain and mud. Open Arms was a well executed campaign in event management and crowd control, the security industry did itself proud.

As punter with, admittedly, my own baggage I did find the caged drinking area a little draconian. Back in the day we had drink tents next to the mosh-pit. One early festival, my Ma reminded me of when she was visiting,had a hippy travelling troupe in a rather fabulous red double decker bus. They had a cow living on the bottom floor (need I once again mention the patron saint of my blog Hundertwasser and his tree tenants) probably an early version of carbon offset. But back to the drink tents/cages, what is going on here? Surely alcohol and drugs are the lubrication for festivities and have been since the first spingtime of the human race. Take it away and what do we get? Crowds of sober upright citizens part-aying like it's 1984. I do tend to let my cynicism run away with itself sometimes, bitter and twisted fool. A squall thundered over the field as I loaded a few cans of Coopers Fine Ale into my belly. My inner cynic was forgotton as I rushed the mosh-pit in the rain. It is all so simple really.

The bands twangled and warbled through to sunset until they arrived at the final act. The darkness and the mingling cellmates from the drinking cage woke the crowd up enough to shout, stomp and thunder along to the heavy bass of the Hilltop Hoods. My eyes glazed over perhaps I was tired or just missing the days of Syd Barret, Shane McGowan and a big brown-eyed guernsey cow on a bus.