Monday morning, the head still whirling
from a weekend of utter joy (amongst other intoxicants): the inaugural Festival
Number 6 at Portmeirion. Out of the
corner of my eye, I kept seeing ghostly flashes of yellow stockings striding
by, as Clough Williams-Ellis pounded his trompe
l’oeil manor, thrilled to see it come to such exuberant life.
Take Sunday as a dipstick into my oily sump
of fun. It kicked off with a reading by
Jan Morris, who fluttered as she sat down “well, I never expected to be
performing at a rock festival at the age of eighty-six” before blasting a
capacity audience into the stratosphere with an elegant, witty memory-monologue
about Portmeirion itself, Clough, the jet set who made it their second home and
the joy of Welshness. On the same stage,
tucked in by the swimming pool above the shifting sands of the Dwyryd estuary,
surf rockers Y Niwl took it up a notch and glided us into the day.
A walk up into the village’s central
piazza, by now cowering under curtains of rain, and to the undercover stage at
the back of Castell Deudraeth. We were
after seeing Jerry Dammers do a DJ set, but arrived in time to catch a chamber
quintet playing Mozart, followed by the sublime soundscapes of Rae Morris, a
wild-haired elf from Blackpool, who, following a quick google, I now know to be
only nineteen. Cow. Mr Dammers bumbled on stage next, all hat and
no teeth, and cranked an aching, damp, middle-aged crowd to fever pitch with steamy
dub, ska, reggae under a unexpected patina of pure camp. A quick detour to catch comedian Marcus
Brigstocke rant about Jimmy Carr, George Osborne and the Daily Mail (yay! Guardianista
bullseye!), and it was time for home.
Had we been able to stay, there was plenty more, culminating in a set by
New Order, that, judging from the reaction on Twitter, was actually rather
good.
Ah, Twitter. Festival Number 6 was a multiple shuddering
Twittergasm. I spent large parts of
Saturday afternoon being thoroughly entertained by Grace Dent, Stuart Maconie,
Andrew Weatherall, Caitlin Moran and John Niven in various conversational
combinations on the main piazza, and the number of people live tweeting the
references being made to tweeting fused into a perfect circle of digital
onanism. “Twitter good, Facebook bad!”
we were told, and a thousand thumbs flew across virtual keyboards in silent
agreement. When, just before sunset on
Saturday, the sun finally broke through to illuminate the far side of the
estuary in a buttery glow and a perfect rainbow, you could barely see it for
the wall of iPhones capturing the scene.
For a moment, I was worried that Instagram might explode.
A truly brilliant weekend, and a huge hats
off to the organisers. To pull off a
first festival this good was a hell of an achievement. Portmeirion was born to host it, and even in
the horizontal north Wales rain, it shone like the jewel that it is. My one caveat, and it’s one that echoes a few
other festivals held in Wales, is that the Welsh content of the festival was
shoehorned slightly awkwardly into the proceedings – a token off-peak stage
here, a (delightful) male voice choir there.
The organisers hail from Manchester, and it showed throughout. No criticism of that, for Manchester and the
north-west of England have much to say, and it’s always good to hear. But the joy of this festival was that it felt
like all kinds of dialogue was going on – musical, political, cultural, social. For many English visitors, it was the first
time they’d come across any real Welsh culture, the stuff that barely ever
crosses Offa’s Dyke. This was a festival
full of the finest people from both sides of the border; things could get
really exciting with a little more exchange of views and swapping of culture,
to everyone’s mutual enjoyment and benefit.
As Gruff Rhys sang from the Welshie
stage on Friday night: “paratown am chwyldro, achos ni yw byd” (“get ready for a revolution, because we are the world”).
By god, I hope he’s right. So let’s
talk to each other and make it bloody happen.
(PS – my favourite Portmeirion anecdote:
when filming one of my HTV travelogues, I was lucky enough to interview the
late Micky Burn (1912-2010), poet, playwright, aesthete, Military Cross holder,
enthusiastic bisexual and last living Colditz survivor. Even at the age of 95, he was wonderful
company. Since the 1940s, he had lived
just below Portmeirion on the estuary and become part of the glittering set
that frequented it. He recounted a tale from
the early 1950s when a gold Bentley full of wealthy Londoners had got a little
lost trying to find Portmeirion. In
nearby Penrhyndeudraeth – a slate-quarrying village of chapels and coal smoke –
they’d spotted an old boy hobbling down the street. They slowed down in order to ask for
directions. “Excuse me my man”, said one
of them through an open window, “would you be so kind as to tell us the way to
The Village?” The old boy crouched down
and peered in through the car window. In
an accent as thick as Gwynedd rain, he carefully said, “The Village is far from
God”, and then shuffled off into the gloom.)
