In the Valley of Euphoria
POETRY: Late summer at Bestival, lost in the beat with a stupid grin, happily drowning as the sound hits like a white water wave
Pounding pounding pounding pounding
a pounding, astounding meat-mallet of sound.
Enormous,
the waves whip from speakers and down
through the glow-sticked,
the sea-swell,
the sweat-dripping chests,
a boxer lung-punching, dilate-and-compress.
The bass is mesmeric, it spirals our sense,
we’re wrapped, we’re entrapped,
in its dizzying denseness,
its muscular sheath,
it moves, pins and holds us
in place, underneath
the gears of this bold, cacophonous mill,
we’re meshed with its force,
with its spinning-wheel will –
seductively lullful,
a skin-pricking thrill,
its brakeless, its windswept,
a sleigh-ride downhill
where the
one
two
three
FOUR-to-the-floor
binds us like glue.
It’s hotly, it’s holily,
rhythmically true.
Held in trance,
game of dance,
wildly ordered,
we two.
And you hunt, pick me out in the magical brew.
And we touch, we draw closer, connected anew.
Stop!
I’ve never seen anyone’s eyes so blue.
This glorious life,
I’m in love with you.
There was a run of eleven years when my summer was bookended by two major music festivals: The Isle of Wight Festival in June, and then Bestival in September, every year. Both were just a twenty-minute drive from my house, so I didn’t even need to camp. It was wondrous.
The IW Festival – still going – traded on its historic 1970s status as the UK’s (world’s?) first giant festival, with legendary tales of an army of hippies (officially estimated at 250,000, with the more wigged-out loons claiming 600,000; for comparison, present-day Glastonbury is licensed for 210,000) hitting the rolling downs and beaches of West Wight in 1970. Maaaaaan… check out the photos. A three-quid weekend ticket got you Hendrix, The Doors, Miles Davis, Free, Joni Mitchell, The Who, The Moody Blues, Leonard Cohen, the organiser riding about the venue on horseback, and the local MP completely losing his shit… it was wild! Much like every punk who definitely saw the Sex Pistols at the Marquee, there are still guys in the pubs round here who claim to have been there in 1970. They’ll be clutching a real ale, dressed in a leather waistcoat and some sort of distressed fedora, and (in the words of somebody on Substack1) have the aura of being “not a wizard, but not not a wizard”.
Nowadays, the IW Festival’s a much tamer, more corporate affair – especially in recent years where its status is being killed by the scarcity of major acts who will play anything smaller than a stadium. In my bookend-years it was mighty with headliners including The Who, David Bowie, Faithless, REM, Jay-Z, The Prodigy, Foo Fighters, Muse, The Rolling Stones, The Police, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Blur, Fleetwood Mac, a hilariously ramshackle Sex Pistols… all playing on what was basically my son’s high-school field.
Bestival was by far the better of the two (or at least was more my speed). It had a much broader taste in dance and electronica, a knack of booking acts just before they hit the big-time, and eclectic headliners including Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Super Furry Animals, Björk, Gogol Bordello, Röyksopp, Hot Chip, Sigur Rós, LCD Soundsystem, Beastie Boys, Underworld, Kraftwerk, Gil Scott-Heron, and The Cure (who are returning to IW Festival this June). Bestival had the vibe, a feeling of the last great party before autumn when, in Jarvis Cocker’s words, the summer was “packing its bags and preparing to leave town”2. Come September, when memories bubble up of a hot crowd, people dressed as sea-creatures, dancing to an epic band like The Correspondents, I miss it like a lost friend.
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Photo: Underworld (somewhere in the light) at Bestival, 2008, shot by me
© 2026, Ian Winter. All rights reserved.
I say this not to be all up in your grill with the legals, but as a note to those who copy and paste whole chunks of work and pass it off as their own. Let’s discourage that. Quote any parts of this in commentary, notes, social media, criticism, whining/praising, bile, worship… spread it around, but no thieving.
I don’t recall who wrote this. Might not even have been on Substack, but it was a post or note somewhere about trying to label this particular kind of man. Would love to track it down to credit it, it was so funny and human. (Thinking Polly Vernon but that’s a guess.)
From Pulp’s “David’s Last Summer”, such an evocative track about the final lazy days and unknowable prospects of a late-teen’s summer.