Some thoughts about summer, festivals, concerts, and fast food.

 Sights of summer: sunflowers and cyclists.

Yesterday the cyclists of the Tour de France started climbing, cycling apparently effortlessly up steep inclines. Well, I suppose some of them must have struggled, but watching the leaders make their way uphill at speed without even standing up on the pedals makes me feel quite weak and feeble. And they’ve not quite got into the real mountains yet. 

Summer is also festivals. This year hasn’t been a lot of muddy festivals so far; sunstroke has been more likely that hyperthermia. I saw a headline about how festival-goers have helped to improve sales of Burberry products. At first I was surprised. Are the kind of people who go to festivals likely to be paying Burberry prices for wellies and raincoats and such like? On immediate reflection though, it struck me that it costs so much to go to festivals and big music events nowadays that of course the people who buy those tickets are very likely to be able to afford Burberry wellies! Whereas in the past music festivals were the preserve of the young and rebellious (and mostly short of cash) now a lot of festival-goers, if not the majority, seem to be older fans who have got over their rebellious phase and now have well-paid jobs and enough spare cash to afford a properly wardrobed trip down memory lane.

This article about essentials recommended to take to festivals just confirms that festivals have been upper-middle-class. A solar shower, a self-inflating mattress and a trolley or cart to pull your kids around in don’t sound like the kind of thing a cash-strapped hippy would have. 

Big-name concerts are also prohibitively expensive. Mind you, some of the big names have been around so long that many or even most of their fans can afford high prices. 

When I read about the problems that arose around the Oasis concert at Heaton Park, Manchester, with rather a lot of fans watching the concert for free from the surrounding area, I was reminded of going to a Leonard Cohen in Castrelos Park in Vigo. 

We paid €12 each for tickets to the enclosed seating area close to the stage, but crowds of people without tickets sat in the park watching the concert from a distance. They didn’t get such a good view as we did of the fabulous Webb sisters doing cartwheels on stage but they had the music and the summer evening atmosphere. Nobody objected to their being there as far I knew. 

In the case of the Oasis concert I hear that the reaction was to make the fences higher, ostensibly to protect the trees!? 

I don’t know if Vigo continues to sponsor reasonably prices summer concerts in Castrelos Park. I rather hope they do.

On the subject of nostalgia for old musical acts, and related to my recent remarks about the Bayeux Tapestry, here is something that made me smile:

Now, something about food. I naively thought that the idea of a burger was that you could hold it in your hand and eat it without needing a knife and fork or a huge plate to catch the stuff that fell out of it. But  Burger King’s Baby Body Burger, which weighs nearly 680g (1.5lb) and costs £13.05, gives the lie to that idea. 

It is made up of five charbroiled beef patties, four cheddar cheese slices, bacon, lettuce, tomato and pickles on a sesame seed bun topped with mayonnaise, mustard and an umami-infused, tomato paste-based Aurora sauce. How do you even start to get your mouth around that? Mind you, I wouldn’t try as I am not a burger eater. I’m just astounded that such a thing exists.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!