Name

John Spencer Williams

Age

60. Not sure how the hell that happened!

Where do you live?

Shoreditch – where I am the oldest hipster in town

Book Tickets by clicking here.

What do you do?

I help people with too many ideas turn them into books and businesses instead of anxiety. I also write business books with deeply problematic titles.

Tell us what it’s like to be your age?

I’m the happiest I’ve ever been

What do you have now that you didn’t have at 25?

I like myself – which is a wonderful place to be. Shame it took 60 years to get here.

What about sex?

If you insist.

And relationships?

Choosing the right person makes a lot of difference.

How free do you feel?

Very. Though a spare million in the bank wouldn’t hurt.

What are you proud of?

My books, and the thousands of people I’ve helped over the last 20 years to start things.

What keeps you inspired?

Conversations with interesting people, reading real books, and getting AI to build me apps at midnight when I should really be asleep.

When are you happiest?

When I’ve created something cool and I’m feeling proud of it.

And where does your creativity go?

Writing books, creating online programmes, public speaking, and posting things on Facebook that get me into trouble

What’s your philosophy of living?

I want to have the richest life possible – rich in experience

And dying?

I’m against it.

Are you still dreaming?

Yes. Bigger than at 30, weirdly.

What was a recent outrageous action of yours?

Celebrated my 60th at Day of the Dead in Mexico City. Crossing that threshold surround by dancing skulls tickled me.

John Spencer Williams is founder of The Ideas Lab and author of 3 books, translated into 10 languages including WHSmith business book of the month, F**k Work Let’s Play: Do what you love & get paid for it. His new book Crazy Successful: Defy conformity, create the extraordinary is published on 15 September – crazysuccessfulbook.com

He is also giving a talk at Rebel Later Life: the Ideas Party on Oct 10^th at Cecil Sharp House in Camden, Advantages of Age’s first ever conference. John will be discussing How To Make Money From Something You Love. Tickets here

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https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rebel-later-life-the-ideas-party-tickets-1992202961687?aff=oddtdtcreator

1 Very excited about Kevin Allen’s new job as a coach driver and operator. We’ve been waiting for someone to cotton on to the idea that there are a group of renegade oldsters who need entertaining. And sounds like the summer one was a hoot. So this is his Xmas trip to Torquay. I want to go.

2. This was a book that someone recommended in AoA. And strangely enough, I’d just been thinking that I needed one. And I’d just been to a Zoom by where people were invited to ask her anything about End of Life Planning and her work book is out of print at the moment. Autumn seems like a good time for this kind of planning around Power of Attorney etc.

3. Have I told you that Eve Tibber is doing a talk at our Rebel Later Life conference on Oct 10th at Cecil Sharp House on What It's Like To Live in A Co-Housing Community. It will be fascinating for all of us that are curious about this kind of communal living where you have your own separate space. Eve was also part of designing their co-housing community building Cannock Mill Co-Housing in Essex. Can't wait to hear what she has to say. And how they deal with conflict and ideas for the future and make decisions. Get your tickets while they are available. More big news on the speaker front later this week. Tix here - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/.../rebel-later-life-the...

4. Sad but not surprised that Tender Loving Care might be Mike Leigh’s last film.

   From Film Directors - ‘He is 83, and he says this one is the last.

   Mike Leigh premiered ‘Tender Loving Care’ at the 53rd Telluride Film Festival on September 4. Kate O’Flynn plays Amy, a social worker. Marion Bailey plays her mother Birdie and Paul Jesson her father Geoff. The film runs 107 minutes.

   Leigh works without a finished screenplay, from discussion, improvisation and a long rehearsal with the cast. He wrapped in London in February and told IndieWire in July that illness makes this most likely his last. Bleecker Street opens it December 4.’

5. We’re fascinated by ancient traditions and rituals that go on across Britain. And this is one of them. The Burry Man in Scotland’s South Queensferry, a man from the community is chosen and covered in burdock burrs… there are theories.

   ‘Once a year a man in a Scottish town is covered head to foot in thousands of sticky burrs and walked through the streets for nine hours, and nobody can tell you why it started. 🌿
   
   This is the Burry Man of South Queensferry, on the Firth of Forth in the shadow of the bridges, and it happens every August on the day before the Ferry Fair. It has been recorded for well over two hundred years and is almost certainly a great deal older than that.
   
   The preparation begins early. A local man is chosen for the honour, and it is treated as an honour. He is dressed in a flannel suit, and then helpers press burdock burrs onto him by hand, thousands of them, until there is no cloth showing anywhere. Only a narrow gap is left for his eyes and mouth. A hat wound with roses goes on his head. He cannot bend his arms, so he holds two flower covered staves out sideways and two attendants walk with him supporting them.
   
   Then he walks. 🚶 Around seven miles through the town in high summer, unable to sit, unable to scratch, unable to properly turn his head, stopping at house after house where he is offered a nip of whisky through a straw. He is expected to accept. He collects money for charity and he wishes good luck on every doorway he stops at, and it is thought unlucky to refuse him.
   
   As for what it means, nobody knows. The theories are all reasonable and none is proven. A scapegoat figure carrying the town's bad luck away. A fertility rite. A fisherman's charm from the days when the herring came and went unpredictably. A protective spirit made of the plant that sticks to everything.
   
   What is not in doubt is the endurance of it. It survived the Reformation, industrialisation, two world wars and the arrival of three enormous bridges over the water beside it.
   
   A man wrapped in weeds, walking a town's luck round its own streets, in the twenty first century, because it has always been done. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿’Scottishbloodline

6. All hail 84 year old Rita Mackenzie who travels from Huddersfield to Blackpool every week in order to dance in the ballroom. ‘An 84-year-old woman who makes a weekly 160 mile (257 km) round trip to dance at the famous Blackpool Tower Ballroom said her heart “lights up” every time she steps inside.

   Rita Mackenzie started making the trip from Huddersfield in Yorkshire to the seaside resort in Lancashire almost 30 years ago following her divorce.

   “It was my second home and now it’s become my first home more or less,” she said.

   At first, Rita said she was nervous to drive on the motorway by herself but counts it as one of the best decisions she has made.

   “I thought I’d either sink or swim...and it was the best thing I did,” she said.

   “I’ve never looked back.”’ BBC Yorkshire.

I’m getting in touch because I’d love to invite you to something very important to me, and that’s about how we look forward to getting older.

Rebel Later Life: The Ideas Party is a one-day event about reimagining our third quarter as a time of creativity, purpose, reinvention and opportunity.

It’s happening on 10th October at Cecil Sharp House in Camden, and it’s going to be a fun, inspirational and energising day, with brilliant speakers including Lynne Franks, John Spencer Williams, Lucy Cavendish, Louise Chunn and many others.

You’ll get the chance to do a deep delve into all sorts of subjects, from redesigning your relationships after 50, to sorting out a pension, creating funky funerals, and discovering how to generate work you love and make money.

There’ll also be a drinks event afterwards, so it’ll be a lovely chance to connect, celebrate and continue the conversations.

Tickets start at £29.99.

I know I may not have been in touch for a while — or perhaps we speak all the time! Either way, I’d be so happy to see you there if it speaks to you.

You can find out more / book here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/rebel-later-life-the-ideas-party-tickets-1992202961687?aff=oddtdtcreator

If you can’t attend, I’d really appreciate it if you could help me spread the word on social media too.

Warm wishes Rose

Photo by Pete Lawrence

I’ve been wanting to go for years. There are cross-overs in terms of interests and people with Advantages of Age. Ten years ago, Nadia Chambers and Elizabeth Shanley – both members of AofA – went and then wrote a piece on Death and Dying that came from discussions at Camp Out. Pete Lawrence who founded this gathering, also founded the legendary Big Chill Festival. He’s also written several pieces for our Substack magazine.

And usually, it takes place at the same time as my niece’s festival LoveJam so inevitably I go to the latter.

Book Tickets by clicking here.

However this year, both Asanga – he delayed a small surgical op – and I could go on the four days in early August. Pete had booked the original venue – the Bridge Inn pub in Herefordshire – for Camp Out 2026 and we discovered they had yurts that you could rent. The previous year, I had borrowed a bell tent – I put out in my neighbourhood Kensal Green FB that we needed a tent because we had been let down at the last minute and someone that I didn’t know lent me their pristine tent – but it was a bugger to put up. And Asanga did it. And was affected physically – he has chronic pain from an old climbing injury – for the rest of the festival. A yurt sounded like heaven. And it was, after a few initial adjustments.

The wonderful yurt

Camp Out is called a co-created gathering because most of the participants – there were 120 this year – contribute a workshop, a curated walk in nature, morning movement meditation, a talk on immigration (or the ‘hot potato’) are part of the co-creating team. That gives a wonderfully connected atmosphere and warmth to this small community. I offered a poetry workshop Write a Field Poem as well as a performance of a few poems at the Open Mic.

This year – which looks as though it will be the last year in this iteration – Camp Out 2026 was located around the Bridge Inn pub in Michaelchurch Escley in Herefordshire where it started out. As I drove down the long narrow roads around there, I fell in love with the landscape. Despite the parched earth. It is minatureland. Farmland. And I eventually drove down to The Bridge Inn which has a little river beside it and weeping willows which were still green.

The yurt was up among the trees and had a chill out area, a dining table and an outside kitchen which had a fridge. All mod cons. Everyone asks – But what about the toilet? We had a compost toilet at the end of the track which was great. There were a few things to sort out – like the initial sheep smell (it went within hours and was due to the new insulation), the gas cooker/hob which leapt into flames from a leak, the lack of sawdust in the loo. But Mark, the landlord, to his credit, was eager and willing to sort it all out. And we utterly loved the yurt, I slept better than I had done for weeks.

And we did know a few people. There are interweavings – I am very keen on them – between Camp Out and Advantages of Age – Fiona Winter, Yael Hochenberg, Ruth Fox, Rosalind Sanchez, Michelle Pogmore, Debra Sofia Magdalene, Poppy Altmann – they were all there. Oh and James Lockley. There was an opening ceremony where everyone introduced themselves and said where they were from. That was fun because there was such a mixture of locals and far afields. There was a drumming ritual from Spirit of the Inca and a community mandala-making led by Pete’s spirited and generous partner, Lizi Sage.

Every night, there was a live music and a DJ set in the pub’s garden. That was such a wonderful extra. The first night, we danced to the 50s style rockn’roll Ousted band. There was dancing. There was laughter. On the Saturday night, there was an Open Mic for a couple of hours and we had everyone from a teenager playing guitar to a woman doing a very brave dialogue about her bulimia. And then a DJ set inside the inn by Serious Jones, a cab driver from Cardiff with a large personality and a brilliant box of vinyl which coasted between Ian Dury’s Sex, Drugs and Rockn’roll and Stevie Wonder’s Imagination. We went to bed at midnight but quite a few stayed up til 4am.

The highlight on the band front were Biskee Brisht who had come all the way from the Isle of Man to thrill us – I bought their new album – with their indie punkish laments and jigs. Biskee Brisht means Broken Biscuits and a lot of their songs are in Manx!

Biskee Brisht doing a lunchtime set

Camp Out started off as a more political festival – it is part of Campfire Convention which Pete started to trailblaze progressive societal ideas but gradually it’s become more well-being. On Friday morning at 8am, I joined Yael’s movement meditation in the Heart to Heart tent with about 20 others. It was wonderful to move, to unwind in spirals, to breathe.

I have been doing an MA in Poetry Writing for the past two years, I was clear about what I wanted from this gathering. I wanted to stop using my head and stop sitting down, I wanted to go wild on the dance floor. And that really was possible. The highlight – because I haven’t been to one for a long time – was the 5 Rhythms session in the garden. It was playful and the music was funky.

For Asanga and I, this is our favoured kind of community. We thrive as a couple when we are surrounded by open-hearted human beings who want to see the best in each other.

The lovely Lizi Sage and sweet Jodie Miller in my poetry workshop

And we dance together. Asanga has a major chronic injury but with the help of painkillers, it doesn’t stop him.

Poppy Altmann led a Family Constellations mini-session – there were over 30 people and there was not time for a whole constellation –where I was chosen to represent love twice.

What a privilege! I definitely want to do some more work with Poppy in the future.

Fiona Winter led a wonderful specially curated – with music for the space – walk through the land. That way, I saw more of this land than and I had and we got to focus on an oak leaf or a view backwards. The magical moment for me was seeing a deer appear in the field next to us. It was a reminder that if you really look, you will see the extraordinary.

Talking of which, there is the space for all sorts of creations. Simon Earney is a tree surgeon and a sound artist, he made a light installation called Octopus’ Garden in the field barn. And it was wow. There was also a gin loft nearby – the farm makes its own gin – we had a very small one and then lay amid the bubbles of light and birthing music next door. On the last morning, I popped by again, someone had put an oak branch in the middle of one of the light trees, it really did feel like it represented hope in these often bleak times.

Octopus’ Garden

And I would say that’s exactly the same spirit as Camp Out has. Oh and I really enjoyed giving my poetry workshop because the participants really went for it…

You can check out event on campfireconvention.network or on FB.

The Bridge Inn is at MichaelChurch Escley in Herefordshire.

1. This is a brilliant piece in the Irish Times - an interview with Laurie Anderson who is so sparkling and raw and interesting in her responses. If I had a modern day heroine - which I don't - it would be Laurie Anderson at 79. She says so much great stuff in this interview. One of them is about how she is practising being sad without being sad. Allowing herself to feel around what is going on in the world without staying there. She explains her attraction to Buddhism as an artist is that no-one is in charge...Also some great stories about herself and Lou Reed. She really never stops being curious - the key to everything. And a great line from JL Borges about censorship being a great prompt for metaphor...https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/2026/06/28/laurie-anderson-on-lou-reed-he-said-ill-get-on-a-plane-right-now-we-got-married-the-next-day/

   She is performing in Cardiff on Oct 7th.

   

   Book Tickets by clicking here.

2. We were thrilled to have our first ever conference - Rebel Later Life: the ideas party on Oct 10th at the beautiful Cecil Sharp House in Camden all day - featured in Lesley-Ann Jones’ column in the Daily Express. And that she got in there about the Funky Funerals and Stepping Into Cronehood. You can book here - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/.../rebel-later-life-the..

   

   3. This looks like a great night out. Dance and celebrate older creatives at the Bridewell Theatre on Sept 23rd.

4. We were united and horrified about this one. Although we’d prefer they named her initially rather than calling her an 89 year old grandmother! ‘An 89-year-old grandmother who spent 25 years building a beloved street garden is now facing council orders to tear it down.

   Katharine Hoskyns transformed a small patch outside her St John’s Wood home into an oasis of tomatoes, geraniums, and herbs over two decades ago.

   But Westminster City Council has now issued a formal notice demanding she remove the plants and a bench.

   The council claims the spot is attracting anti-social behaviour and that fallen pots could cause injury.

   The 89-year-old insists only one single neighbour has ever raised an objection to the display.

   She says the space is completely safe and that there is plenty of room for a wheelchair to pass on the pavement.

   “I love it because I can go and potter around with my pots and people come up and talk to me,” she said.

   Locals clearly adore the collection, with the nearby Abbey Road orchestra even affectionately nicknaming the quiet street “The Pots”.

   Her son Nicky has helped launch a campaign to save the garden, gathering 190 signatures in person from highly supportive residents.

   The family points out that a council camera installed near the garden to monitor for anti-social behaviour has uncovered absolutely none.

   Yet the council states it was reluctantly obliged to begin a formal process after a series of complaints.

   The initial deadline to remove the garden has now passed without any official enforcement action.

   Katharine expects the council will be in contact again soon.

   

   5. Brilliant poet/farmer, Wendell Berry has died at 92. Here’s one of his poems.

   A Poem on Hope

   It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,

   for hope must not depend on feeling good

   and there’s the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.

   You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality

   of the future, which surely will surprise us,

   and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction

   anymore than by wishing. But stop dithering.

   The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?

   Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

   Because we have not made our lives to fit

   our places, the forests are ruined, the fields, eroded,

   the streams polluted, the mountains, overturned. Hope

   then to belong to your place by your own knowledge

   of what it is that no other place is, and by

   your caring for it, as you care for no other place, this

   knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth.

   It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask

   for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land

   and your work. Be still and listen to the voices that belong

   to the stream banks and the trees and the open fields.

   Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.

   Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot.

   The world is no better than its places. Its places at last

   are no better than their people while their people

   continue in them. When the people make

   dark the light within them, the world darkens.

   - Wendell Berry, gone after a long life

   

   6. A phenomenal introduction to the artist Susan Te Kaurangi King who can’t hear or speak.

   ‘Susan Te Kahurangi King has a riotous œuvre of terrifying, hilarious, lewd, and ornery drawings. In counterpoint stands the artist herself, who does not read, write, or speak. The promotion of her art depends entirely on other people. She cannot give an interview or tell you what her drawings mean. The only way to get to know her, besides looking at her work, is to be next to her in a room. “And so I found myself in Auckland,” Laura Preston writes. Preston travelled to New Zealand to profile King, who, at 75, may be the country’s greatest living artist. Read the full story: https://www.newyorker.com/.../susan-te-kahurangi-kings...’

Michele in Puccini with spillage

Not too long ago I rang my friend Esther, the only person I know sorta my age and sorta my size, but smaller than I am. I reckon she’s a size 4, which I used to be. I wanted to give her all my small clothing.

I was having a wardrobe clear out not because I was getting all organised and Marie Kondo, but because I was getting fatter. Not fat, fat, but fat for me. But Esther and I have the same taste more or less and she was getting smaller, due to a series of illnesses, and I was getting bigger, due to, various newspapers told me, one of two short bursts of rapid molecular ageing. The first is in your mid 40s, and it didn’t happen then, and the second is in your early 60s, it says here, though the spillage of new flesh through my bra, my undies, and a marked increase in the circumference of my thighs occurred for me last year, when I was 64.

Most of my slinky, tiny, bodycon maxis, minis and everything in-between now looked different on me, a little pouch or pocket of something in the midriff area, spilling out (with me muttering, “What fresh hell is THIS”) and a need to lie down and suck in when I was putting on tight jeans. I had never had to do this in my life, the sucking in, the hooking the zip into a bent wire hanger to do them up, the overspill of flesh from my previously 22 inch waist. Yes, even after two kids. This was a novelty for me and I was not sure I liked it, even though by BMI and other measures, I was in no way, technically fat. I was just bigger, and not toned, and all that ageing stuff that happened to OTHER people, was now happening to me. And I didn’t like it, but to say so seemed petty, stupid, non-feminist and truth be told, a bit body dysmorphia-ish. It really wasn’t something I could bitch about. “I was really thin, and now I am not.” Who fucking cares?

Book Tickets by clicking here.

And for perspective, for I must be frank, it was small potatoes compared to some other really bad body problems - and a problem is different from an ‘issue’ - some of my friends were having. One has no legs beyond the knee, a double amputee, whose illness might lead to further amputation. One has lost the power of her lower body, for now, after falling down some stairs. Another had a spinal abscess and lost use of her legs. A friend in America has incurable pancreatic cancer. A friend in Thailand has had cancer twice, and they keep cutting bits of him out. And my very best friend, a guy, had a stroke a few years ago and it affected his mobility, mainly on one side, but he just got on with it and did physio and can do tons of things, but also can’t do what he used to be able to do, like cycle, or drive, or use his left hand. And all of these friends have coped with these things and made adjustments and embraced life in the new circumstances, because what other option is there? And so WHY bitch about putting on a stone, compared to all these worse things? I can’t tell you. I know it’s not right, but it bugs me.

My previous very thin-ness was not a byproduct of dieting, or an eating disorder, or anything that was clinically significant to my mind. And I have a busy mind that thinks about these things. I believe it was a result of a lifelong very bad appetite, sluggish digestion, mainly due to chronic anxiety and a then little known about phobia of vomiting, which I still have.

For guys, I suppose I was a very cheap date. For gals, those I didn’t know very well, I was immediately diagnosed with an eating disorder. In fact, a real shrink, a former friend of mine, said on social media in response to a photo post of me in a very slinky green dress, posted, “When are you going to deal with your eating disorder?” And it got me thinking;

“Oh shit, have I got that AS WELL as all my other stuff?” But I sort of knew the answer. I was deep in grief at the time, and the small appetite I did have disappeared totally in a weird chemical cloud of Valium, vodka, and antidepressants. I knew I was fucked but I stopped caring about how to fix it. My weight, or lack of it, was the very least of my life problems.

Thin Michele in red

And I have to say, being very thin never stopped me having boyfriends or husbands. And yes, I know this is not supposed to be the benchmark of being attractive, but it was who I was. The skinny chick. A bit messed up but fun to go with to a gig. For a supposedly deep person, I was incredibly shallow, valuing my attractiveness to boys or men and being able to do, post 50, the whole mutton dressed as lamb thing for a long, long time. I could go into any shop except Primark and Marks, which run to big sizes, and find something that would cling to me in what I felt was a flattering way. I do remember a quote from Anthony Burgess, who wrote, “Going to bed with a skinny woman is like going to bed with a bicycle” and I laughed but recognised the truth in it. In my very skinniest time, when I was ill and deep into addiction, I did entertain an on again, off again boyfriend who, after a fractured and shitty liaison, called me Boney Maroney. He was not wrong. I was all hard edges and painful angles. How could that be fun, in bed?

Now I am bigger, I have no desire for boyfriends or the sex that comes with them. I feel this is down to hormonal changes and, according to a consultant I saw for a rather large ovarian cyst - which pressed on my bladder giving me frequent UTIs which are a total pain in the arse, so to speak - and all my bits are in a state of deterioration. Sex, if I had it, would probably be quite painful. Without a Boots-ful of some weird lubricant. And if I keep it at home, it feels presumptuous. Like, I know you want to shag me and I am prepared. Most nights, wait, who am I kidding, all nights, I go to bed listening to BBC iplayer, with my obligatory two post-menopausal-crazy-cat-lady-cats sitting on my chest.

I feel deep down this is the natural order of things. I can’t have what I don’t want, anyway. I love the memory of it, but I never thought of sex, at the time I was having it, was “making memories.” That’s a whole other kettle of fish gone off, and if I were to ever have it again, which I very much may not, it might not be all I previously thought, and knew, it was cracked up to be.

But I still love tiny dresses which no longer fit me. In the large scheme of things - and large works on several levels here - it really doesn’t matter. This is not even a first world problem but whatever comes BEFORE the first world problem. It totally does not matter to anybody but me.

And yet I feel, somehow, formerly thin women who are no longer as thin as they were, will relate. Or regular sized women who have gone up a size or two. You have to have a wardrobe clear-out, and this is like having a total flat clear, in my case. I remember the time my mum hit about 80, going to her flat and taking out about 20 pairs of stonewashed denim bell bottom jeans she wore in the 70s and early 80s. I told her, “These jeans suck now, and they did then as well, and they no longer fit you” and she said that one day, they would fit again, and she resented me telling her that they were crap, and that I was to put them all back in her wardrobe.

It was a wakeup call, and I duly put them back (after trying on a few pairs and deciding they were disgusting) in the cockroach ridden wardrobe, with all her old bags, shoes, and files of old taxes and school reports. I had a change of mind. Who was I to tell her what to save and what not to save? She was a good mum, raising her children in the best way she could, in light of very early widowhood and desperate and longstanding grief.

Now I am as old as she was, at some point, I can see that stuff that didn’t matter to her, also barely matters to me, though clearly it matters enough to write about it. My writing hero Nora Ephron wrote a wonderful book called, I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK and my mum pushed it onto me, saying how relatable it was, how funny it was. And she was right on both counts. I laughed out loud, in recognition, reading it, that familiar self-loathing, that pointless self-loathing. For another, opposite cultural reference, in the film of the book (which I despised at the time) Eat, Pray, Love, there was a scene where Julia Roberts - says to her friend not eating pizza because she felt fat - something along the lines of what man ever turned you down, naked? He’s hit the jackpot.

I laughed so hard at this, recognising the truth of the pizza naysayer. Guys, or I suspect any sexual partners of any identity, really don’t give a shit about how much you weigh, if indeed they are good people. If they are bad people, why are you sleeping with them anyway?

OK, end of story. I don’t much like the way I look right now. But also, I don’t much care about the way I Iook right now. Because attractiveness to another person has stopped being a priority. I love my children, my grandson and my rellies and friends. And they love me back.

As I was donating my teeny dresses to Esther, another friend (to be fair, I asked her) donated clothing to me that she had either got sick of or perhaps felt they just were not right for her anymore, and as such I got a fabulous wardrobe of beautiful dresses. I go to work every day feeling like a catwalk model. Life is good and this shit doesn’t matter, but IF it FEELS like it does (and it will, sometimes) But you have to tell yourself this does not matter. You will always have friends and if you want to, get laid.

How do you mathematically calculate the value of a worker whose contribution to the work force is to dance upon rolling caskets, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins, ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. You cannot calculate the value of such a thing and you ought not to try. That does not mean that it is valueless. (Charles Dickens, Hard Times)

One of my favourite Dickens novels is Hard Times. It is based in the industrial north and is a forensic look at industrialisation, the daily grind of the working people in the factories of Coketown, the controlled and factual world of the schooling of Mr Gradgrind against the backdrop of the pleasures brought by the visiting circus. The circus is a metaphor for the forbidden, the hedonistic; pleasure for pleasures sake. It is a place for pure release. That’s how I see and experience a music festival. And Hard Times was the book I took with me to Green Man in 2024. My first stint as a volunteer steward at the age of sixty four.

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I have been going to Green Man Festival for ten years so when tickets sold out for 2024 in a matter of minutes I was gutted. The prospect of the long wait for resale and desperate hope that we would be lucky was too much. I reflected on Green Man 23, which had taken place only weeks before, but was already a receding memory, with no certainty that I would be there next year. That festival feeling always stays with me for quite some time. The escape, joy, abandonment. The colour and connection. Conversations, discussions, art and creativity and bounded in one place for you to wander around, discover, enjoy! The final Sunday of GM 23 stuck with me.

Sunday morning. Early. If you go to festivals you know this moment. It is first light and you are desperate to pee but your bed, sleeping bag, whatever you’re cocooned is just too gorgeous to leave but bladders have a way of creating a sense of urgency so you grab the big sweater that you leave by your bed, creep quietly out of your tent so as not to disturb your fellow campers, pull on your wellies, tucking your fleecy pyjama trousers into them. The sun is already up, a brittle and brilliant light and you know your hair looks wild. A pair of sunglasses makes for a forgiving sight, and you stroll to the compostable loos a couple of hundred yards away. The occasional whisper is heard from a tent, a fidgety child already awake. You might see someone sat outside their tent, the gas burner lit, waiting for the kettle to boil for that much needed first cuppa of the day. You give a silent wave of acknowledgement. A tired father holds the hand of a small girl who skips along beside him. Having visited the loo, I head to the handwash and there were two men, about my age, in high viz jackets replenishing sawdust, loo roll, hand gel.

“Morning,” they call cheerily.

“Morning,” I reply with a smile, “thank you!”

“Hey we’re having the best time. If you haven’t done it then you should think about volunteering.”

The seed was planted, but I did not pay it too much attention, however when there were no tickets to be had - I thought about it a bit more. I did some research, joined a Facebook group of people who had volunteered at other festivals as well as at Green Man - I started to water that little seed.

I found out when the call for volunteers would go out; what the expectations were and decided I was going to go for it. My brother, my usual festival companion, was not particularly interested, had other uses for that weekend and so I decided to go alone. I knew I would be paired up to work with another volunteer and could only assume that they would be a good crowd, all with the same shared purpose and that I wouldn’t be lonely. It would be fun being part of the ‘circus’!

I signed up as soon as the call went out. I had not anticipated such a rigorous application process but it made sense. It was a pause for reflection as I considered, throughout my life, when and how and for what I had volunteered; what was my motivation? What was my experience in hospitality? I mined my memories, surprised at the common thread I had never noticed about service, creating and holding spaces for people to come together, to bond and have a shared experience. I knew that this was going to be something special and now I really wanted to be part of it. I didn’t need to be the bareback rider, but I would happily usher people to their seats!

I paid my deposit, submitted my application and crossed my fingers. On the day of the deadline, I had a casual Sunday afternoon conversation with my brother bemoaning the fact that he couldn’t go and I told him that I had applied. A flurry of frenzied activity and he submitted his application only just ahead of the deadline, and so we waited.

We were accepted and then invited to join the crew and volunteers Facebook group and I found myself in this wonderful community to which I now belonged, weeks away from the festival but literally part of the build-up. Seasoned volunteers offered advice, exchanged friendly chats with previous years helpers and I threw myself into it. I offered a lift to anyone who was travelling from my area and met the first of many fabulous people, a young music producer who lives in Falmouth but would be vacationing with his parents near where I live in North Wales before the festival and needed transport. Phone numbers were exchanged and a plan was made.

As crew - you turn up before the main festival on Wednesday to set up camp, walk the site and get a briefing. A couple of weeks before the festival we had the opportunity to select our shift pattern and a full briefing pack was sent to us. The details were fantastic and there really wasn’t anything there that was missing. It felt really well organised.

Arriving on site is the same as it always was for the main festival, the usual anticipation as you approach Bannau Brecheiniog and the signs for Green Man, but with none of the traffic. Cheerful car park attendants direct us, we go to the artist box office and check in, get our crew wristbands and head in to pitch our camp. There are already a lot of volunteers and stage crew camped but still plenty of good spots. We collect our kit from the car and as we settle for our first drink, realise that we have left three rather crucial bags of supplies in the garden shed. We have white wine, cheese, and all things cold including a bottle of chilled pink champagne, but the plates, glasses, mugs, cutlery, crackers, crisps, chocolates, gin, tonic, bag of essential drugs (antihistamines, hangover cure etc) and more are absent. We need food for the first night and discover that none of the concessions are open and the crew catering isn’t available to us as we haven’t started working yet. What to do?

We go to the camp kitchen, a focal point for volunteers. It is a large marquee open 24 hours, always an urn of water on the go, makings for tea, coffee, hot chocolate. Biscuits. And always a friendly face. We collect our hi viz jackets and I take a lanyard saying, ‘Dysgu Cymraeg’ (learning Welsh) to hopefully encourage people to speak to me in Welsh and to help me practice. We then gather late afternoon for the site walk round for new volunteers.

Our guide, Mark, is funny, serious, knowledgeable so it creates a sense of order and camaraderie but sensibility from the outset. The site that I am so familiar with is so strange as it is almost completely built up but there are no punters there. Food concessions are in place, all closed and we are able to walk unhindered by barriers which are still in the process of being erected.

Site walk complete we then go for the briefing in Babbling Brook, the talking tent. It is a celebratory event with the organiser, the head of security, the volunteer’s leader, and the accessible camping coordinator all giving a briefing on their role and on how we as stewards, litter pickers etc can support. Awards are given out to returning volunteers, including a man for whom this is his tenth year volunteering and, he is clearly quite a bit older than I am!

Briefing over, we return to the camp kitchen to see what other options we have apart from cheese and no crackers. There I meet Elb who is on shift and, it transpires, has worked the kitchen for a number of years in his four years of volunteering. He is the friendly face serving tea and biscuits today. I have a chat with him and he informs me that the only food is in the settlers’ field at the far side of the site, a burger van. I tell him of our dilemma and what we do have. He smiles broadly and suggests we take digestive biscuits back to our tent to have with our cheese. This we do and the jam jars I have brought filled with fairy lights became our glasses, hill billy fashion. Dinner is pink champagne out of a jar, digestive biscuits and a selection of cheeses. Result.

The next morning, Thursday, day one of the festival, the queue the other side of our fence is already back to the gates with people waiting to get on site to build their camps. There is something quite strange about being behind a high metal fence in a tented town while people wait to do the same, the essential goods for the weekend loaded on wheelbarrows and trolleys and all of us doing it for pleasure. The irony is not lost on us and is the subject of some serious discussion over the course of the weekend as we speak of Gaza, the Jungle in Calais, the plight of refugees.

Our first shift is a night shift from 1am to 7am. I stroll over to my allotted area, the campfire itself, where people are gathering after the evening’s revelries. My partner for the shift is a young student, and our job, to keep people safely enjoying the warmth and chat around the campfire. By 3am the fire is dying down and the visitors have thinned to fellow volunteers coming over for a bit of warmth. Highlights of hilarity include the security guards being called as late-night partygoers are spotted attempting to climb up the helter-skelter and a drunken man setting his foot on fire at the campfire and sheepishly confessing that he was a fire fighter. I suggest it is time for him to go to bed. Our crew chiefs drop by regularly to check in on us, which is much appreciated as they hand out sweets and good humour in bucket loads.

It is a still and cold night and quite magical sitting round the fire chatting softly with new friends, all with different and wonderful stories to tell; our ages range from eighteen to me at sixty four, and everything in between. As the site stills and quietens, we watch meteorites in a star-filled sky. Even a stroll to the loo is filled with wonder. There is a calm across the site and a beauty in the dark. Slowly the light changes and the lines of the mountain stage and surrounding hills are delineated across the skyline. The air shifts as the light draws its lines across the sky. We are all flagging a bit but one of the guys starts up a funny conversation about algorithms and we have a free fall discussion with much laughter. By 6.30am moods are lifting again as we know that our replacements will be appearing soon. They are a welcome sight in their hi viz jackets and we hand over walkie talkies and head to the camp kitchen for a coffee, shower and bed as the camp shifts into the day.

We have two more shifts over the course of the weekend and at different times of the day so see a side to the festival that we had never experienced. We quickly get to know the names of the security guards around our areas and everyone is friendly. My second shift is from 7am until 1pm and I am at the cinema tent. It occurs to me as I walk across the field to start my shift, that we each are suddenly the most important people to one person. The person that we are replacing. I had been that person the previous day so I smile and wave to a tired but smiling guy who is ready for his bed. Handover complete, I spend the next hour with Patrick from security, originally from Kenya, who tells me about his children with pride in their achievements as young black people growing up in the UK. The conversation is fascinating.

I am watching the site come to life as the day breaks into light and action. Sleepy dads cross the field to the cinema tent with lively children excited at the prospect of a robotics workshop. The recycling cardboard from across the site is brought in in grab bags and tipped onto the floor of the tent and creative artists work with the children to fashion magnificent machines, owl faces, legs and arms whilst a coding workshop takes place on the stage and I usher lost children back to their parents. And then silence as they sit themselves on the floor to watch a robot anime.

My final shift is on the last day, Sunday, a busy 1pm to 7pm. The weather is fabulous and the site crowded. I am with 19 year old Beth, a film student, and we are stewarding while The Lambrini Girls perform. We discuss feminism, their song, The Boys in the Band, and work out that I am the same age as her nan! These young women from Brighton are singing a protest about sexual harassment in the music industry and the lack of accountability that is no different to when I was a young woman. It’s a sobering thought but I don’t doubt that Beth will find a creative outlet to highlight these ongoing issues.

We leave the next morning but not before a final trip to the camp kitchen and a farewell to our newfound friends and particularly Elb, our angel with digestive biscuits. Elb has been volunteering for four years and finds it a great way to go to a festival when travelling solo. He shares his thoughts with me. “All life is here, from homesick sixteen year olds to people well into their retirement. I have met young people who had spent the summer volunteering at festivals with Green Man the last (festival for them) and they were all ridiculously brown and healthy and carefree.”

We talk of the busy times when crowds are moving from one act or stage to another and there is often a large crowd coming towards you. “There’s lots of very happy people and all they want from you is possibly some directions to water or toilets or bands and you have that information. And it makes them even happier. It’s such a contrast to a crowd in a city centre! Or the threat they you can feel in an urban crowd or going past a sports ground when fans are leaving.”

During the course of the weekend, we met up with various friends who we always see at Green Man, having watched their kids grow up over the years. I spent time with my de facto godson and his gang. We brought him when he was 17 to his first Green Man and encouraged him to volunteer, which he did, with that same gang of friends. Now they are in their late twenties, they go as punters, a fabulous group of young film makers, artists and media writers. We made great connections with new people, shared some wonderful experiences and saw the festival through a completely different lens.

I return to Dickens and ask; how do you mathematically calculate the value of a worker? (substitute worker with experience). It can’t be done but I do know that running away to the ‘circus’ was a great idea, so much so I have already put my name down for 2025. I have been accepted and am excited already about meeting old and new friends and fellow volunteers and being part of something that is bigger than me and designed to bring great pleasure and joy to a wide range of people. So important in the current climate of anger, madness, racism, misogyny and fear.

Finally I asked Elb for his festival essential. It is his knitting. “It’s a conversation starter and it also means that if you’re on your own, you’ve got something to do.”

Mine? Remember to check the shed before you leave.

Photo by Nichole Michalou

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