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It took us five long hours to drive to the Latitude Festival in Suffolk.  The journey was interspersed with several pit-stops, emergency nappy changes and a seemingly random attack by a swarm of vicious midges.  I’m no expert on theology or eschatology, but I’m guessing that – as the bug-attack was localised within the boundaries of Cambridgeshire – it wasn’t, strictly speaking, of Biblical proportions. 
 
The weather was glorious.  If you wanted to compile a meteorological mixtape to capture the climate it would probably include tracks like Walking on Sunshine, Blister in the Sun and Feeling Hot (Hot Hot).  We didn’t listen to any of these songs en route, of course, as this meteorological mixtape only worked on a metaphorical level.
 
If you compiled another weather-based compilation later in the evening, however, the contents would have undergone a dramatic transformation.  This time around it would have featured tracks like Prince’s Purple Rain, Guns ‘n’ Roses’ November Rain and Tom Waits’ Let it Rain.
 
I wasn’t listening to any of these songs when the sky opened up over the Latitude Festival unleashing a violent and relentless downpour that wouldn’t have looked out of place in some monsoon-prone exotic location, or for that matter, Glastonbury.  I was pushing an empty wheelbarrow and trying – in vain, as it happened – to find my car in order to retrieve our remaining belongings.  I ended up looking like Tom Waits’ Raindog.
 
I returned to the tent with a heavy heart and a barrow full of rain.