MY CRITERIA for what makes a good festival has changed. Now that I am a parent, and am older, I care not for who’s playing the late night festival club.
Instead, I now judge a festival on the ambition of the family-focused activities, the length of the queue for face painting and whether or not I am guaranteed to have an exhausted wee woman on my hands by the time we get home.
I sense that post-pandemic festivals are now catering more towards facilitating family experiences – for all ages, as well as wellbeing. This ambition is very welcome.
As I write, Instagram stories tell me that the sessions at Drumshambo are great, Dromore, Co Tyrone is Fleadh’d out, and Belfast will be coming down with musicians this week for Tradfest.
We were soaked, but what fabulous music & craic at @UlsterFleadh in Dromore last night. 3 hours of tunes, songs and a coming together of brilliant people. Listen now to Live st the Ulster Fleadh on @BBCSounds @ulstercomhaltas pic.twitter.com/CqZCpsljfk
— Lynette Fay (@LynetteFay) July 22, 2023
There was a time when I wouldn’t have been happy unless I was at every single one of those festivals, and the same the next week, rinse and repeat. 'Have car, will travel' was the motto. My forties are doing a good job keeping my FOMO – fear of missing out – in check. These days, the only way I see a gig is if it’s within walking distance, if I’m working at it, or if my daughter wants to go.
I’m really liking the trend of family-friendly afternoon gigs which festivals are trying out. No babysitters needed, a good day out and chances are the musicians will have a more receptive, attentive audience.
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I was delighted to learn of the return on Sunday August 6 of Féile na hAbhann on the banks of the Lagan, which has it all – live music, sand pits, some water sports, bouncy castles and dinosaurs.
My wee girl is displaying a healthy interest in music – anything goes from Flook to Fleetwood Mac and Philomena Begley to Taylor Swift. Sorry Taylor, there’s only one queen in our house...
I got the Taylor Swift code and couldn’t get tickets. Sitting online for hours in a virtual queue is no craic; less craic when the only tickets on offer cost hundreds of pounds. Convincing my mother to get up at the crack of dawn to drive to Belfast and join the queue for ZOO TV tickets outside the Virgin Megastore is, however, a much better story to tell the grandchildren and anyone else who will listen.
Those who know her already know that my mother, Brenda, is a legend. Her status was confirmed forever by that dawn spin down the main M1 30 years ago in our wee Ford Fiesta.
Will I do something like that in the future for my daughter? I read a very funny post on Twitter recently which started a thread about the lengths parents go to to help their children along, to make sure they are OK and not left behind.
One woman had driven from Belfast to the Irish college in Rann na Feirste to deliver a tanning mitt to her daughter. Not a mitt was to be found in Dún na nGall.
There were a few comments on the story which were critical of this particular parenting decision. When I read the post, however, I could hear the SOS call in real time. One of the comments recalled how a mother drove to ‘The Gaeltacht’ from Armagh in 1992 with a pair of Levi’s for her daughter who felt left out because everyone else had a pair, and she didn’t. Lucky daughter...
My Granny would visit me every weekend, with three big bags of groceries from Wellworths. She was afraid that I might starve up there. I could have opened a tuck shop with the crisps, sweets and fruit I had stashed under the bed.
I have been there as a student, feeling the sense of emergency when the situation presented was nothing of the sort. Many's a phone card was purchased in the shop, hours spent queuing for the phone box to phone home and the one pair of Levi’s that I had were ruined by sitting on the melting tarmac on the road beside that phone box.
I have also heard the SOS calls made from the office by students when I was a teacher. There was never an emergency, just comedy gold from students and parents in equal measure.
The Gaeltacht experience is one deserving of the Derry Girls treatment. I must have a chat with Lisa McGee about that some of these days – there’s a woman who would appreciate the ‘tanning mitt’ emergency.
