Ahhh…Bless.

Remember your first training bra, or braces on your teeth? Perhaps stabilisers on your bike?

I mention these only because The Dark Place is thronged with festival-goers, dressed for serious mountaineering mixed with flashes of frivolity - wellington boots with primary coloured dots, tiny shorts, aviator sunglasses and silly hats. They're all wandering round trying to look like they're on a 'Nam R+R furlough.

It's all rather sweet. Where they've been isn't 'Nam. It's not even Glastonbury or another proper festival. They've been to the 'V' Festival (V standing for Virgin - referring to the organisers and probably to the punters). It's notorious for never featuring a band whose music hasn't been used to sell banking, small cars or nappies - the safest, most tedious, bland event you could imagine. Nothing spontaneous or interesting will ever happen there.

Unless, of course, you're 16 and mummy and daddy have allowed you to go to your first every festival, safe in the knowledge that nobody will suffer anything worse than a mild hangover. The shocking thing is, however, that these crowds of kids wearing their 'Private School Leavers' hooded tops weren't naive and impressionable teens, but university students and even older people. They'd got the style and gear for the real thing, and were clearly highly skilled at adopting the poses and attitudes of hardened hedonists, but still sought the corporate blanket of branding and nothing beyond the utterly depressing familiar.

Still, I'm sure they had fun and it'll all sound much more extreme when they recount their adventures to their mates.