Crawling under the hedge into the '80s

This Saturday my sister, Ali, and I were having a "quiet night in" when one of our great friends, Big Ali, called us to ask if we wanted to go to a '80s revival festival that was going on in the neighbouring town.

The festival, called Rewind, was a new and surprising initiative for the stuffy upper-middle class town of Henley-on-Thames. I am sure that in the wake of this festival there will be plenty of letters to the Henley Standard complaining about the noise and signing off as appalled of Church Street. I feckin' can't stand that sort of Henley person.

Now the line up of this festival wasn't one that appealed to me: The likes of Kim Wilde, Rick Astley, Bananarama and Belinda Carlisle, but I was pretty tanked up and the venture sounded like a laugh so we bundled into Big Ali's car.

There was never any mention of the cost and in her savvy way Big Ali had struck gold finding a hole in the hedge we could squeeze under. We crawled from the dim quiet of the car park into a world of tents, lights and excitable people in their fourties.

We were just in time to see Kim Wilde on the main stage. I was surprised at how big this festival was. The camps were full and the main stage was massive with huge screens flanking the sides. The crowd was pretty stagnant. There were some keen men with "Marry me Kim!" plaques. I tried to edge my way to the front of the audience but the bodies were unyielding. I had to keep apologising to lots of middle-aged women who thought I was being pushy.

Meanwhile Kim was doing her thing, addressing the crowd in her warmly enthusiastic voice. The menfolk were looking thrilled by her. She was striding around in a sort of all leather get up with a diamante looking garter round her upper thigh. She looked like she was having a great time and was giving a polished and buoyant performance. She sang some of her classics like Kids in America and a pretty cool cover of Depeche Mode's Enjoy the silence. The audience, escaping the confines of their average Saturday night in watching Casualty on BBC1, were appreciative and walked away at the end of the set murmuring in disbelief "Nearly fifty? How can she be? I hope I look like that at fifty!".

So '80s pop is not really my thing and I did get a bit billigerent with that crowd of stiffs but still it's good to see older people getting out and investing in their passion for music. Writing this blog entry has made me realise I should probably address the fairly strong ageism I foster. Oh dear; not very PC. Will try to improve.