Help Is On The Way

When I saw British Sea Power play the night before the EU referendum in 2016, their anthem of welcome and tolerance, Waving Flags, raised the roof and the hopes of those of us keen to embrace the continuing spirit of acceptance at the ballot box the next day. We all know how that worked out.

Three years on, at the Con Club in Lewes last night, it was a rare outing for the lead track from 2011's Valhalla Dancehall album that seemed to catch the political zeitgeist as Yan spat out the chorus "I just don't know/Who's In Control" with a mixture of genuine anger and confusion. Not that anyone can provide an answer in these troubled times but at least a British Sea Power gig in a small sweaty club afforded me the cathartic opportunity to drink beer, dance and bellow along in my own bewilderment.

With a crystal clear sound, the band served up their special mix of the raucous and the tender. Remember Me and No Lucifer were rowdy and the appearance of Ursine Ultra, the dancing bear, and Noble's stage climbing added a chaotic dimension to proceedings. The highlights of the set, for me, were two more recent songs: A Light Above Descending and Praise For Whatever were passionate and poignant, the latter being the outstanding track from 2017's Let The Dancers Inherit The Party album with an outro reminiscent of Bear from 2010's Zeus EP.

The rousing finale of The Great Skua, with an EU flag being waved in the mosh pit, was life-affirming, as always; but I had probably already taken most comfort from the optimistic refrain, "Help is on the way", in set opener, Machineries of Joy. Until that help arrives, at least we have British Sea Power.

Welcome In

With my anxiety over the EU referendum reaching fever pitch, what I really needed to do on the eve of polling day was get an early night. What I did instead was go to the best small venue in Britain (as voted by the NME), have a skin full of Sussex Seacider and listen to rousing anthemic music that celebrates the heritage and diversity of our island life.

The mighty British Sea Power rolled into the excellent Tunbridge Wells Forum last night as part of a series of dates to road test new material. Despite seeing the band many times in recent years, I did not see them at all last year - and how I have missed them. Opening with the title track from 2013’s Machineries of Joy album, they immediately had the sold out crowd on their side. With all six band members on the tiny stage, there was no room for bears or robots but there was still some space for their customary foliage.

Seven or eight new tracks were aired and, although Yan did not introduce them, we had been promised numbers with working titles typical of the band, such as Electrical Kittens, Telstar II, Tropical Banana and Kugelschreiber Hotdog; that eclecticism was also reflected in the more electronic elements of the songs. It was not all new material, though: in a two-hour set there was plenty of room for BSP favourites.

Remember Me, voted one of the top ten songs of the 21st century by 6 Music listeners, was greeted rapturously by the audience and, when Hamilton took over vocal duties from his brother, we got rousing versions of No Lucifer and Carrion. By this time things were starting to get hot and sweaty - there was moshing, stage front - as the band ramped up the tempo. Old live favourite, The Spirit of St. Louis, even led to accusations from keyboardist Phil Sumner that Noble was rocking out like Guns ‘N’ Roses.

The song I desperately wanted to hear was Waving Flags and, of course, British Sea Power did not disappoint. This inspiring hymn to tolerance – “welcome in/from across the Vistula/ you've come so very far” - with its open-minded attitude, had the audience bellowing along with arms aloft. At this momentous, and somewhat poisonous, point in our history it was life-affirming to hear European immigration validated rather than demonised.

Earlier in the evening, support was provided by ex-Hefner frontman Darren Hayman as part of his audio-visual project, Thankful Villages. Thankful, or blessed, villages are places where every soldier returned alive from World War I. There are 54 in England and Wales and he is visiting each one to make a piece of music and a short film. With just a guitar and some spoken audio for accompaniment, he played a short set of poignant and tender melodies celebrating rural life.

October Spawned a Monster

There is so much good music being put on at the De La Warr Pavilion at the moment, I feel as though I spend more time in Bexhill’s Modernist temple of culture than I do in my own home. There is nothing wrong in that only, having been there three times in twelve days already this month, my state of genteel poverty presents me with a dilemma over the forthcoming Belle and Sebastian gig.

Not actually a gig, my sojourn at the De La Warr started a fortnight ago at an interview and book event with Public Image Limited’s John Lydon, formerly Johnny Rotten of this Sex Pistols parish. Lydon was interviewed onstage by The Guardian’s Alex Petridis to promote his new ghosted autobiography, Anger is an Energy. When I say interviewed, Petridis only had to ask a few questions; getting John Lydon to talk has never been difficult. And he seems to know better these days that, when he is amongst friends, he doesn’t have to shock; having said that, he still gives good copy. He tells us that he believes in a society that looks after its weakest members; that Russell Brand is misguided and you must vote “for the least bad option”; that the best thing about Britain is its embracing of immigrants, like his Irish parents; and that punk had true gender equality. It would have been good to hear him play some music, but then I remembered that it was another interview with him, a long time ago, that caught my attention just as much as the Sex Pistols’ music. In a filmed piece with Janet Street-Porter for The London Weekend Show in November 1976, his expression of anger about the drudgery and low expectations society bestowed upon the young working class, resonated with my teenage self so much that – and I am not being hyperbolic here - it completely changed my outlook on life.

Three days later, and the De La Warr was hosting another Johnny. A few years after Lydon’s poetry had declared that there was “no future in England’s dreaming”, The Smiths gave us “the songs that saved your life” and, for many, their articulation of gauche awkwardness and personal desperation, was just as important and life-affirming as the Pistols. For all the pathos and bathos of Morrissey’s lyrics, what made The Smiths a great band was their cracking tunes. The architect of those, Johnny Marr, has spent most of the intervening years collaborating with others and being a general guitar for hire, but in the past 18 months he has released two solo albums. The title track from the most recent, Playland, is the impressive set-opener and then he does something unexpected: Panic is the second song in and, although I knew he would play Smiths songs, letting the audience know this early on settles things down – everybody goes on to enjoy themselves, most of all Marr, who is a virtuoso guitarist. When he takes off his jacket, very carefully folds it and places it on the drum riser, a friend remarks that it is a sure sign of a mature man. Upstarts from last year’s The Messenger album follows and then the set is made up mostly of songs from the new album, with a regular sprinkling of Smiths’ songs – Stop Me, Bigmouth Strikes Again (with lyrics archly changed from “Joan of Arc” to “Johnny Marr), There Is A Light That Never Goes Out – that are, inevitably, rapturously received. A version of Electronic’s Getting Away With It reminds me what an elegant song he penned with Barney Sumner and Neil Tennant, and the final encore, How Soon Is Now?, lets Marr show off that extraordinary guitar sound that used to frighten the life out of my oldest son when he was a baby.

If you can be fairly certain what you will get from Lydon and Marr, British Sea Power are a constant surprise. A long history of gigs in unlikely places, (only recently they played on a ferryboat to Brownsea Isand in Dorset), onstage bears and robots and diversions into instrumental film soundtracks all mark them out as one of the most innovative and idiosyncratic bands around. And last Friday night in Bexhill they presented Sea of Brass, a set of songs from their extensive 10-year repertoire rearranged for performance in collaboration with a full brass band. Touring the country with a variety of regional ensembles, London’s Redbridge Brass Band were present at the De La Warr. With the traditional BSP dressing of foliage, all 6 members of the band and the 28 members of the brass band, the stage was looking crammed; and if the visual senses had a lot to take in, the aural layers presented by the fullness of the sound were incredible. It was not unexpected to hear tender songs such as The Land Beyond, The Great Skua and Machineries of Joy working so well in this context but when the punk pounding of Atom features, and then a full ten-minute version of Lately, it is an absolute delight. I always enjoy British Sea Power when Phil Sumner’s trumpet and Abi Fry’s violin are high up in the mix and, with the guitars tempered for the occasion, they shine through and are beautifully complemented by the plaintive full brass. The whole thing is so bloody marvellous that it is hard to contain yourself: my brother-in-law, sitting next to me (the seats were in for this one), keeps throwing his arms up in the air in an almost involuntary spasm. They encore with Waving Flags, which is as amazing with brass as the version I saw them perform with the full London Bulgarian Choir at the Roundhouse in 2008.

At my age, it was a monster of a gig-going month and I was almost relieved my residency at the De La Warr had ended. But then talk of the Belle and Sebastian gig this Wednesday started, prompting me to ask myself the question: should I go and hear The Boy With The Arab Strap played live, or be a responsible parent and spend the money entertaining the kids during half-term?

Sceptred Isle, Watery Neptune

Despite last year’s Machineries of Joy being British Sea Power’s bestselling album since 2008’s Mercury-nominated Do You Like Rock Music?, they chose to build on this new success by playing only two tracks from their most recent product at their showcase London gig at Koko last night. Having opened up their tour set list to suggestions on social networking a few weeks ago, they presented a set from the rockier end of their repertoire, laced with some forgotten gems. It is this lack of music-biz cutting edge that inspires devotion to the Sussex-based band.

Opening with the ethereal instrumental Heavenly Waters, a tune only to be found on US versions of their debut album, the band quickly ‘krank’ it up with a lively quartet of tracks. Beginning with Fear of Drowning – the lyric “tonight I'll swim from my favourite island shore” reminding us of the band’s preoccupation with this sceptred isle and watery Neptune - and ending with the riotous Atom, the sequence prompts an outbreak of serious stage-front pogoing; not moshing - surely BSP are a punk band at heart…

Before lead singer Yan switches to his brother’s bass to allow Hamilton to deliver his more fragile vocals on a run of mellower songs, the band perform We Are Sound from the neglected Valhalla Dancehall. Their Britishness is set in a European context less celebrated than that of the welcome and tolerance of Waving Flags: the opening line, “oh come now, you can barely string two words together/and you think Europe's own worst spectres are coming back to haunt us all”, tilts at the insular narrowness of some who seek to define the current national view.

After a rare outing for the title track of 2010’s EP, Zeus, with its puzzling couplet, “Rick Stein, pleased to meet you, I did not mean to be so rude/ I just didn't know that you were so famous for your food”, the band’s peerless first single, Remember Me, ushers in a crowd-pleasing home straight of Waving Flags, Carrion and All In It, broken only by the epic swirl of instrumental, The Great Skua. This sequence of anthems turns the audience, in the former Edwardian variety theatre, into a sea of surging singalong. When they encore with the title track of 2004’s Japanese import, The Spirit of St. Louis EP, the buoyancy is momentarily lost; but when the “easy, easy” terrace chant of No Lucifer heralds the onstage appearance of mascots, the Bi-Polar Bear and Ursine Ultra, the triumphal mood is restored for a raucous finale.

Foliage and Fairy Lights

The Old Market in Hove was built in 1828 as a covered marketplace to provide fresh meat, fish and vegetables to the well-heeled folk of Brunswick Town, a Regency estate built a few years earlier between the villages of Brighton and Hove. The good people of Brunswick were strangely resistant to the market and it became a riding school in the middle of the 19th century. It was subsequently used as a warehouse until the 1980s, when it became the arts venue it is today.

The performance space is excellent: a wide 500-capacity room with a good view of the stage from wherever you stand. When we arrived there on Monday night, British Sea Power were already just over halfway through their five-song ‘mellow’ set that I had been warned they would play before the support act. Having already played the stalwarts The Land Beyond and Blackout, I got to hear two tracks from next week’s new album, Machineries of Joy. A Light Above Descending and Radio Goddard, with Yan on heartfelt whispered vocals, seemed to be – not surprisingly in the circumstances – from the mellower end of their trademark sound. With the stage bedecked with foliage and fairy lights, there was a hibernal atmosphere to match the never-ending winter outside.

Before British Sea Power returned to the stage for their main set, support act proper East India Youth played a short and intriguing set. The ‘youth’ in the name is not a collective noun. William Doyle, a sickeningly young solo multi-instrumentalist from Bournemouth, via East India Dock on the Isle of Dogs, is signed to The Quietus website’s label Quietus Phonographic Corporation. The three songs from his recent four track (one is a re-mix) Hostel EP are showcased here. The melodious Looking For Someone and Heaven, How Long?, a plaintive slice of shimmering beauty, sandwich the more experimental Coastal Reflexions, a litany of south coast train stations that has been described as the Pet Shop Boys meets John Betjeman. Using keyboard, bass, treatments and vocals, Doyle’s sound has been termed a sort of techno-prog; but there are waves of early New Order synths and a rich, clear voice coming through the krautrock rhythms that give his songs a pop sheen. His album Total Strife Forever is out soon.

Now in their tenth year, British Sea Power intended this gig as a warm up for April’s Machineries of Joy tour but anyone worrying that it would be a new album set would not have left disappointed. Despite playing eight out of the ten new songs, they play for two hours over the two sets and, with such a consistently high quality body of work to choose from, draw on all of the previous four albums, especially 2008’s Do You Like Rock Music? The new album’s radio-friendly title track kicks off a pacey main set that romps through barnstormers such as No Lucifer, Fear of Drowning, Waving Flags and Carrion. New song Monsters of Sunderland uses Phil Sumner’s trumpet playing to great effect and, on many of the older songs, he joins Noble and Yan on guitar to provide a behemothic sound. And if Abi Fry’s viola is a little lost in the guitar cacophony of these and new song K Hole, on other debuted tracks such as Spring Has Sprung and Loving Animals, it comes to the fore. With off-album favourites Bear and The Spirit of St.Louis greeted warmly by veterans of the live shows, it’s a crowd-pleasing set. There cannot be many better live bands around than British Sea Power when they are on this form.

When they return to encore with Remember Me and the racket of Favours in the Beetroot Fields from 2003’s debut album, and the apt “winter overture” of Larsen B from the Open Season album, there is no sign of Ursine Ultra, Mr Fox or Titan the robot. However, Hamilton is wearing a Bernie Clifton-style horse costume – of course he is - around which he struggles to play his bass. The word is that Machineries of Joy is the last album of British Sea Power’s deal with Rough Trade and, with drummer Wood relocating back up to Cumbria, could this signal the closing of one decade and the start of the next ten years?

Protest and Survive

At the end of the nineties, I went to a Nick Cave gig at the Royal Festival Hall that turned out not to be a gig at all but rather a sort of musical academic lecture on the nature of the love song. My mate, bemoaning loudly the pretension of it all, was shushed by the person in front but his reply – “come off it, he’s only a pop singer” – raised a laugh of wry recognition from others around. Bearing in mind this example of the intellectualising of pop music, I approached a talk in my local pub last night with some trepidation.

To their credit, the Bader International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle has launched a series of ‘Castle Talks in the Community’; the first was given by Nick Baxter-Moore, a lecturer in politics and popular culture, and posed the question ‘Where Have all the Protest Songs Gone?’ I need not have worried about pretension: in the packed function room of the Woolpack Inn, an audience of all ages was treated to an engaging meditation on the protest song from post-war American folk singers to contemporary popular music. Accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, Baxter-Moore illustrated his chronology with snatches of songs.

Starting with Pete Seeger’s anti-war ‘Where have all the Flowers Gone?’, there was a clear sense that singers such as Seeger, Bob Dylan and their socialist contemporary Phil Ochs were galvanised by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements, and the general mood of change in the 1960s. ‘Blowing in the Wind’ prompted some audience participation from dewy-eyed children of the revolution, as did Country Joe McDonald’s humorously ironic ‘Vietnam Song’. Baxter-Moore put forward the idea that protest songs that express a generic sentiment have greater longevity. Citing the example of Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ - a song that outlines a communist utopia – being played as Thatcher took the stage at a Tory party conference in the 1980s, he also held that these songs are open to wild misappropriation.

Tracing developments into the seventies and eighties with the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy, Baxter-Moore acknowledged the contribution of punk and hip hop to the music of protest. Beginning with a rendition of Billy Bragg’s ‘There is Power in a Union’ – a joyously surreal moment in an East Sussex village pub - things took a leftward step as he focused on the links between protest music and the labour/trade union movement. Bringing things up to date, last year’s public sector strike in Madison, Wisconsin produced ‘Union Town’ by The Nightwatchman, aka Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, a song of defiance that reminded me of the Strawbs’ 1973 hit ‘Part of the Union’.

Taking questions at the end, a member of the audience rhetorically asked if a protest song had ever changed anything. Making the point that protest songs are best at making people aware and think, more than effecting change itself, Baxter-Moore never actually answered the question. I would say that, arguably, 1984’s ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ by Jerry Dammers’ Special AKA is the most successful of modern times. Protest songs do need to be popular to be powerful and Dammers’ was upbeat, danceable and it was a huge hit. It raised consciousness of Mandela and the struggle against apartheid and, ultimately, its sentiment was realised.

In answer to his original question, Baxter-Moore concluded that protest songs have not gone anywhere, they are alive and well; and he pointed to Ben Drew – better known as Plan B – and his upcoming song of rage against a government of rich boys and their demonization of council estates, ‘Ill Manors’. If post-riots, inner-city London is the natural fertile ground for protest, there is also the music of protest closer to home. Sussex’s finest, British Sea Power, recently asked the question ‘Who’s in Control?’ while rousing the apathetic – “did you not know everything around you is being sold” – and wishing “that protesting was sexy on a Saturday night”. And big-voiced Derek Meins, aka The Agitator (above), and his rabble rousing songs fired up the strikers before the big public sector march through Brighton last summer. But the best proof of the legacy of politics and popular music exists further along the south coast: any serious critic’s album of last year was Dorset-based PJ Harvey’s ‘Let England Shake’, which uses imagery and experiences from the battlefields of the 20th century in its songs to question the priorities and moralities we hold dear in England today. We need protest songs; as Baxter-Moore said, they makes us think.

British Sea Power at East Wintergarden

British Sea Power how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: the first song of yours I heard references the opening line of L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel of fatal attraction across the class divide, The Go-Between – it was love at first sound; you sing of “interstellar clouds on the Sussex Downs” and write sleeve notes about Malcolm Lowry’s death in Ripe; and you play gigs in the strangest places – from the Whitecliffs Promenade Café in Saltdean to the highest pub in the Yorkshire Dales, the Tan Hill Inn. And yesterday’s venue, at the hellish heart of business, was no exception: East Wintergarden is a glass atrium some 80 feet high in the middle of Canary Wharf in London; more used to hosting corporate swilling, somehow BSP had managed to convince Mammon to let them in to its temple. With capacity for only a couple of hundred, seated cabaret style, this intimate early evening semi-acoustic set was a warm up for the band before hot-footing it across London to play at the Barfly in Camden later in the night.

It was standing room only when we arrived and Roy Wilkinson, BSP’s former manager and brother to Yan and Hamilton of the band, was giving a reading from his book Do It For Your Mum, his tale of rock dreams and family farce. This was quickly followed by further support from punk poet Jock Scott, whose ramblings took in backpacks, domesticity - “a poem from when I thought I was happily married” – and John Cooper Clarke. When we spotted the band getting up to prepare to go on stage, we nipped in and grabbed their table. I had never before been to a gig where I was sat at a table, let alone one with a tablecloth; and with a bottle of merlot in front of us I was half expecting some chicken to arrive in a basket.

This was a different experience from when I saw BSP at Leefest in the summer: no foliage and supporting cast of robots, bears and foxes; the band were sedentary, so no antics from Noble; and with Yan on acoustic guitar it was a stripped down, mellower sound which worked beautifully. With the “high-church amplified rock music” reined in, Phil Sumner’s cornet and Abi Fry’s viola and backing vocals shone through. Songs already tender – The Lonely, The Land Beyond, Bear – sounded magical. Bear, inexplicably tucked away on last year’s Zeus EP, was particularly gorgeous. Heartier BSP favourites such as Carrion, Larsen B and It Ended on an Oily Stage were transformed. Even in skeletal form, Waving Flags prompted an outbreak of dancing with one group atop their table, much to the concern of the staff who were more used to corpulent corporate types.

By 9.30 the band were gone and so were most of the audience – probably following the trail to the Barfly. Sadly, we had no tickets for the second gig but, as we seemed to have polished off three bottles of wine, it was probably wise. Feeling thoroughly sated, we stepped out in to the dark canyons of Canary Wharf to make our way out of Hades.

British Sea Power at Leefest

There’s not much that makes me want to travel any distance outside of Sussex these days: the odd march against the cuts; the occasional football match; some walking in the Mendip Hills. But Sussex’s finest, British Sea Power, are a band that I’m prepared to make sacrifices for - even to the extent of forcing my family to go to a two day festival on the border of Kent and Surrey. That meant camping. With small children. Three of them. I don’t know who was more apprehensive, me or my wife. We are not natural music festival goers; she had never been to a festival and my solitary experience was at Glastonbury in 1981 (yes, 1981) and I still have the crooked nose to prove it.
I’ve always preferred live music indoors in as small a place as possible but when the nascent New Order were slated to play second fiddle to Hawkwind (Glastonbury was still very hippy in 1981; not the fixture of the mainstream summer social calendar it is today), a few of us travelled down to Somerset in our post-punk raincoats to soak up the gloom. Despite some pleasant diversions - Roy Harper and Ginger Baker having a fist fight on stage; the Comsat Angels’ set – we were only really interested in New Order. And they were hugely entertaining: Bernard Sumner doing an impression of Norman Wisdom doing an impression of someone off their face throughout the set. The only problem was a hippy in front of me who kept jumping up and down and shouting for Hawkwind. I reasoned with him; he ignored me. I hit him on the head with a plastic scrumpy flagon; he headbutted me in the nose. So much for peace and love; good job I had as much sense and feeling as Barney that night.

Leefest is an annual festival held in August on a farm between Biggin Hill in Kent and Warlingham in Surrey. It’s organised by a bloke called Lee and any profits go to the charity Kids Company. It started in Lee’s back garden six years ago and has since grown to the 2,000 capacity event it was this year. Commercial festivals are huge and expensive so finding out that British Sea Power were headlining on the second night of a small and relatively inexpensive festival (£55 each for us and free for the kids) meant that our summer holiday plans were sealed.

When we arrived at the site it was clear that it was a real home grown festival: hand-painted signs, Lee’s friends and family acting as the staff, even the few security people were ridiculously cheerful. The kids were delighted to have orange bands fixed to their wrists that they couldn’t take off, not even to wash. We pitched our tent in the small family camping area, along with about six other families, and then cast our gaze across the main camping field only to realise that 95% of festival goers were closer in age to our children than us. Not to worry; as we found out over the next two days, everyone was very friendly and mostly considerate, and the organisers were keen to find out what families thought of, and wanted from, LeeFest. People on the staff stopped and spoke to us many times asking our views.

We sort of forgot that young people don’t go to bed if they don’t have to. As a result, we didn’t get too much sleep while we were there, although our children slept through all of the music, singing and shouts of “Alan!” (evidently funny if you knew the reference – we didn’t) coming from the main campsite all through the night.Our kids had a great time: watching bands, eating fast food and ice cream and staying up late. The highlight for the boys was being around the midnight camp fire, organised by Lee’s dad Colin, watching the flames and sitting next to real teenagers.

We saw lots of acts: new rave dominated on the Friday night with The Whip and Fenech Soler but some of the best bands were lesser-known: the lively electro-crooning of Miss Scarlett, the punky pop of Bordeauxx (bit of a red theme there) and the retro swing of Frankie and the Jacks all impressed. On the Saturday night, at the same time that British Sea Power were playing, the dance tent was headlined by DJ Fresh. The name meant nothing to me but he was evidently number one in the singles chart (they still do that?) in July, guaranteeing that the young people were all watching/ dancing to him. Seeing British Sea Power with only a couple of hundred people right in front of the stage was a real treat; not as intimate, I imagine, as the gigs back in May that I failed to get tickets for at the tiny Berwick Village Hall in East Sussex, though.

Despite having played in Budapest the day before, British Sea Power took to the Leefest stage – customarily bedecked with foliage - with all their usual energy, blasting through their call to protest ‘Who’s in Control?’ from the recent Valhalla Dancehall long player. Their set took in a variety of songs from the frantic hooks of ‘Remember Me’ to the stately instrumental magnificence of ‘The Great Skua’. When I last saw British Sea Power, I suddenly heard the song ‘Atom’ with fresh ears and realised the greatness of its two chord punk sensibility. At Leefest, it was ‘Georgie Ray’ from the latest album that revealed itself as a work of staggering genius. At once both fierce and tender, its plaintive refrain of “won’t you say something?” built to a stunning climax that volleyed through the warm August night like a prayer. By this point, much to my kids’ delight, the stage had long been filled with a cast of additional characters: Mr Fox, having appeared after the first number drinking, looking menacing and semaphoring with two wooden pigeons, was quickly joined by two robots - one called Titan. By the time of the ‘Rock In A’ finale, Ursine Ultra the 10ft bear was also part of the wildly dancing throng. Guitarist Noble, perhaps to escape the onstage melee, then perilously climbed the stage rigging as the strobe lighting turned my children into whirling dervishes.

The next day, the children were exhausted and lolled about on the grass as we tried to pack away our camping gear; we looked across to the main camping field at the young people just walking away from their one-person, pop-up, disposable tents. Oh, to be young, free and without responsibility…