OK, so I had high hopes for Twinwood. After Friday night, Saturday morning saw me not actually wake up until about 11 or so. I wore just a random T-shirt and some trousers, and I used my old pair of office shoes, since I figured out in a grassy field they’d probably get trashed.

Finding Twinwood was more difficult than I imagined. I set off just following the road signs. I easily navigated to Bedford, but then got a little lost. Eventually I turned on my satnav device, which lead me back the way I came, and into Clapham. But there things went pear-shaped. TomTom had me driving round in circles round some people’s houses until I realised that when it said “turn right”, it actually meant to turn right and drive down that tiny little gated road between two of the houses. On the gate it says “Private Road, No Access to Twinwood Areana”.

Now, you try telling TomTom that there’s a roadblock. No matter what buttons I press, I cannot convince it that the gated road is blocked. Only the road I’m currently on, or roads near it. I also cannot convince it to take me by any other possible route; it insists that I must drive down this gated road.

Eventually I decided to tell it to take me to the next roundabout. But then you have to figure out how to do that. If you select the option to just point to it on the map, it takes you to the last place where you used this function — in my case, Lincoln. Which is nowhere near where I’m trying to go, and there’s absolutely no way of saying “show me a map of where I am right now!” You can see where you are now by selecting “browse map”, but you can’t set a destination in that mode. GRR!! Best of all, you cannot zoom in or zoom out of the maps. You can only change the magnification. Which, with the dodgy touch-screen technology, means it randomly flips between showing you the grass between adjacent houses and a map of the European continent.

Eventually I convince it to take me in the general direction I want to go in. (It’s not like I can navigate out of this housing estate by myself! It’s a maze in here.) And I get there and it says “you have reached your destination”. (Oh, if only!) I drive along a bit further, and see signs for Bodyflight Indoor Flying. I vaguely remember something about that being near Twinwood, so I drive that way. Past a few houses, and then along a big empty country road with a 30 MPH speed limit and a horribly concrete road surface.

As I drive along this road, there’s a bunch of signs saying “Twinwood Sold Out. Do not proceed past this point without a ticket.” So I guess this is the right way then? The car in front of me turns right into a field, and I carry on. Eventually I reach the end of this road, and it’s a dead end. (Entrance to some kind of industrial complex, and it’s gated.) So I turn round and drive back the other way. Turn around at the roundabout and drive back again. Turns out there is a small sign pointing into this field that says Twinwood on it, so I drive in there.

A multitude of signs say to drive very slowly. They aren’t even kidding! I’m getting scrambled around like an egg over all these bumps and ruts. It’s a bare earth pathway, compacted flat by traffic. At the end, a couple of marshals direct me into a large field, and I park up next to the other cars. So here I am then, parked in the middle of a field with 50,000 other cars.

Despite the weather forecast, it’s been a sunny cloudless day all day so far. I got out of the car with my backpack containing my precious dancing shoes and my programme. I decided I didn’t need my jacket. But I walked ten paces and decided to take the jacket anyway, so I went back for it. Helpfully, my car is parked right next to an electricity pylon, so hopefully I’ll be able to find it again.

So I stood looking at my surroundings for a while. Eventually I discovered that you’re supposed to make your way into the inconspicuous little tent at the corner of the field. The girl there wanted to see my ticket, and then she slapped a black sparkly braclet on me. Apparently this is how I get in and out. I left the other end of the tent, and climbed aboard the most knackered old bus ever. It’s all decked out in army green camoflage, and inside it’s so beat-up it’s untrue. Gradually the bus filled, and then it trundled about half a mile down the road and dropped us off, and we started walking. The car park is grass, but this path was woodchip. In spite of the sun, it was slightly boggy in places.

Since I first arrived I had noticed the costumes. Some of the people are just dressed in ordinary clothes, but a significant number of people are dressed in army or navy uniform (including the girls), or else dressed in the fashions of the 1940s. Ladies with big circle-skirts, short dresses, bows and polka dots, hear nets and bright lipstick. Gents in waistcoats and funny hats. As I walked down the path, I could already hear the irritating buzzing of 40s jazz brass, like so many mosquitos.

In summary, it seems the whole Twinwood festival is focused more on the war and post-war 40s, with its jazz and swing music, rather than the rock & roll of the 50s. Maybe it was a mistake comming here.

At the end of the path, a couple of marshalls disinterestedly ask you to flash your braclet at them. I get the impression that if you didn’t take the hint, they wouldn’t bother to press the matter and you could probably just stroll in with the rest of the crowd. And then I was in the main areana. There is a large, flat expanse of grass, with steep grass banks surrounding it on all sides. A quick squint at Google Maps shows that the areana is approximately 100 meters along its longest edge, and maybe 100 meters again across the widest part of its diammeter. But the areana is a strange irregular pentagon shape, which makes it hard to measure.

Nestled around the edge of the banking are innumerable marquees, selling everything from skirts to baguettes. Along one of the short edges of the areana is a large covered stage area, shaped like an aircraft hanger (i.e., a semicircle), with green camoflage netting over it. Looks like the SLO (Syd Lawrence Orchestra) are currently setting up. In front of this is a sea of deckchairs with people looking expectantly at the stage. Suddenly I almost wish I’d brought something to sit on. Near the middle of the grass is a small control tower where the sound desk is (plus a few additional PA units), and just behind that is a dance floor.

The dance floor looks like just some large sheets of wood laid on the ground. Hardly the “renouned dance floors for which Twinwood is famous”. But when I approached to investigate, it turns out the wood is actually bolted down quite seriously. It really isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I don’t know about “high-quality fully-sprung wooden dance floor”, but it seemed OK to me. A little further round, it turns out there’s a second, slightly larger dance floor too, nestled in amoungst the crowd.

As I casually strolled around the areana, I came upon an icecream van, so I decided to treat myself. I had to cough up £1.70 for a Magnum, but hey, festival food is always expensive. It could have been a lot worse. I climbed up to the top of the grass bank and sat in the sun, eating my icecream and watching the proceedings. Some old fossil came out onto the stage and started babbling incoherantly about nothing interesting, and after a while the orchestra started playing dull jazz music. A few people got onto the large dance floor and started to sway their way around it, but the smaller dance floor remained empty, hidden away behind everybody.

After a while I got bored and decided to investigate the Control Tower stage. I have no idea how to get there, but I walked down to the path leading out of the areana and into the woods and followed that. There were various stalls selling period clothing. The map talks about a “fire museum”, but rather than a collection of antique flames, it merely consisted of a few rusting old fire engines. There were various corrigated steel buildings painted in green camoflage, claiming to be museums of one sort of another. And I saw a row of classic cars, which somehow looked old and archaic in spite of their shining paintwork.

Eventually I arrived in front of another, smaller stage (again set out like an aircraft hangar), with a wooden dancefloor in front of it. This is obviously the place. The resident DJ, Strolling Steve, already had a few records playing. Every now and then, one couple would step onto the dance floor and jiggle around for a minute or two before sitting back down. Most of the people were sitting expectantly facing the stage, with their backs to the dance floor. Fortunately, there were a few picknick tables right at the back, and so I was able to find a (very uncomfortable) place to sit.

After a while I got up again to stretch my legs. While walking around, I swear I saw Bill from my old R&R class. At least, I saw three greasers walking round, and the one in the middle looked a lot like Bill. On the other hand, I walked right past his field of vision, he definitely saw me, but he didn’t seem to react in any way. So I guess it was just somebody who looked similar.

Still the dance floor remained empty. And then I heard the tones of Dynamo playing. I instinctively knew that this would be popular, and indeed already a number of people were making their way onto the floor. I looked away to see something else, and when a looked back a few minutes later, the floor was packed with people dancing. Everybody loves that tune! I don’t know why.

Finally, the Jazz Romeros appeared, and began to play. The music was reasonably danceable, but nothing special (from what little I can remember now). Part way through their set, some mannar of WW2 aircraft flew overhead. Now I’m not real big on air displays, but there was something quite majestic about watching such an enoumous lump of big iron actually fly through the sky. It was flying very low, and it seemed to be flying far, far too slowly to remain airbourne.

In fact, other the next few minutes, several passes were made. I couldn’t tell you whether they were all the same or different aircraft. Clearly some of them were different; I remember one was a small plane with a single propeller, while another was huge and had 4 propellers. All seemed to be moving absurdly slowly for such a heavy object to remain aloft. They were all painted very dark green. And they all swept past in elegant arcs and curves, accompanied by the unrefined roar of what is undoubtably a ridiculously fuel-hungry set of engines.

(After a cursory inspection of Wikipedia, I’m relatively sure that the big one was a Lancaster bomber, and the smaller one might have been a Spitfire or a Hurricane.)

When the Jazz Romeros finished their set, we had Strolling Steve playing canned music for half an hour while the roadies reconfigured the stage for the next band. The dance floor remained relatively full while this was happening. And then we had a band called Hi Voltage. (And no, they weren’t. They were OK, but again nothing special.)

While they were playing, I noticed the sky filling with some fairly serious clouds. I can clearly see that in the distance, there are really big black clouds, and it looks kinda dark below them. Looks like it’s raining over there. And the clouds seem to be moving fast in this direction. Hmm, all these dancers are gonna get wet! But no, for ages there were clouds above, but no rain.

Then the wind started to get up, and everything was blown around for a few minutes. And then the wind stopped, and I began to feel slightly moist. Already I can see people right, left and center packing up their belongings and leaving the areana. Not many people stopped dancing though; it was mainly the people not dancing who left. But all of a sudden, there’s quite a few less people. And then it turned from drizzle to actual raindrops that you could feel hitting your skin, and the dance floor just emptied.

So I’m standing watching people scampering off in every direction. Now the band are playing to a deserted dance floor (although there’s still plenty of people milling around beside it). I felt kind of sorry for them, still playing their hearts out but now to an empty floor. And I chuckled at all the people running away from a few little raindrops. So I strolled out into the very middle of the empty floor, and began doing some play-dance. Actually it wasn’t quite empty; there were two truly hardcore couples still tentetively dancing. But in short order they left as well. (That dress looks expensive — and probably transparent when wet!)

Soon the rain was really beating down. Everybody people were no longer scuffying away, they were running. And still I’m standing dead-center, shuffling my feet to the beat. I’m not doing any actual dance, I’m just grooving. And there was one other lady there, wearing a raincoat, dancing away. The floor has some quite bit puddles on it now, and it’s kind of slippy, so you need to be careful. All around me I can see people hiding under any and all available horizontal surfaces. They’re even hiding under the 6-inch awning of the sound booth! Like cochroaches scattering when someone turns on the lights. We laughed at them.

A bit later the girl brought her umbrella onto the floor with her, and she’s dancing there with her umbrella and her plastic wine glass. (I have no idea what was in it — mostly rainwater, I’d imagine!) Her friend, and a couple of others, had actually climbed up onto the side of the stage (which is covered), and they were huddled there, watching the band. My glasses were so covered in water that I couldn’t see a thing. Eventually I joined the girl under her umbrella, and we laughed and joked while we continued to groove along.

The lead singer was even talking about us in the song lyrics now. Each time they finished a number, it seemed we were the only two applauding. Almost unbelievably, they did an encore. (It’s almost a formality. It’s like they would have done an encore if the venue were empty and nobody asked for one!) And, when they were finished, we approached the stage, and the bassist jumped down and handed us each a free CD. (It should have been £10, but the band were vocally grateful for our support.)

Actually, it turns out the CD is rubbish. (I mean, when I heard them live they sounded better than this. It’s just a rather poor recording.) But hey, it was a nice gesture anyway. I spoke a little with the other lady. Her name is Lynn (or possibly Linn, I didn’t get that far), and she lives just down the road. I gave her my name and told her it had been fun.

At that point, my jacket and trousers were as soaked as they could get. (My T-shirt underneith was bone dry, surprisingly. Except around the neck, anyway.) The rain was cold, but so long as you keep dancing, it’s actually quite warm. But by now, my skin is going all floppy, and my wet clothes are rubbing against my legs and making them sore, and my muscles are cold, and I’m just generally uncomfortable. So I decided to go home and get dry. As I ambled off, one lady told me my dancing was very impressive. I of course thanked her.

Bowling back to my car, the rain had more or less stopped by now. People were walking around as usual. I almost wanted to go up to each and every one of them and boast about how I danced in the rain. But I didn’t. I just made my way back to the car. The ground was quite wet and boggy. I’m glad I wore my knackered old shoes!

On Sunday I had much less trouble finding the place. But it rained all the way there, and instead of driving into the grounds, I parked on the long empty road outside and contemplated the rain. I decided to sit there for a while to see if the rain would stop at some point. I don’t fancy driving into the grass car park if it’s under water. I sent Pam a text, and she said she was at the Control Tower area. Outside, the rain continued to fall, and the power cables above me were straining in the wind.

Eventually the rain stopped, and I drove into the grounds. I had to wait a while for the bus to fill, and then I walked down the boggy woodchip path to the main areana, and from there I walked to the Control Tower. It took a moment or two to find Pam. Clive was dressed in army uniform. Apparently it’s a Belgian uniform from the Castles army surplus shop, but it closely resembles the USA army uniform. He didn’t have the hat. Pam had bought a nice dress which she showed to me. It’s white with large black polka dots, and three big red buttons that don’t actually do anything.

A couple of other people were with them. There was Clive’s sister, and a few other people who’s relationships I couldn’t keep track of, never mind their names. In particular, there was a guy in a rather impressive black suite with blue velvet trim and big blue shoes.

The band who were playing weren’t much good, so we wandered off to the main areana. It was still quite windy, and when we got there, the performers were having trouble with the sheet music being blown everywhere. Lots of dull old music was played, with the old foscil singing. There was also a lady, who was quite good. With various people wandering off, there was just about enough deck chairs for all of us to sit down. I bought myself a mint Feast and spent my time munching through that. Pam offered me various other nibbles, but I wasn’t actually hungry.

While we were sat there, I again saw that guy that looked like Bill, and Pam seems to think it was him. They were quite a long way away though as they walked past. Looked like they were leaving.

After a while we got bored and trudged back to the Control Tower. The music had improved somewhat. The wind had not. And the smell from the toilets was interesting. But still, we sat and listened for a while. Eventually they finished, and we walked back to the main areana again. Two ladies dressed in wartime uniforms were singing, and promoting their CD, profits for which go to various war survivers charities. That was eventually followed by the Kremlinaires, who practise “Soviet Swing”. I was interested to hear what this would be like… but as it turns out, nothing of interest. After a while I got bored and told the gang I was going home.

I arrived at Twinwood quite late on Monday. The place seemed comparatively dead; there were far fewer people milling around, and the main areana seemed quieter. The Control Tower was as busy as ever though. I got there in time to catch the last ten minutes of the Ding Dong Daddios. From what little I heard, they were quite good. And then there was half an hour of Strolling Steve. The dancefloor remained packed throughout.

Next we had the Firebirds. They were the best band I heard the entire time. Their music was fast, frantic and featured a surprising amount of electric guitar. They had the place properly rocking. Good stuff! Apparently these guys are ones to watch out for. (As an aside, both bands played Long Tall Girl. And I liked it both times.)

After they finished playing, the stage shut down, and everybody walked off. They were the last band to play at the Control Tower, and already many of the stall owners were shutting up shop. There was some kind of jazz playing at the main areana, but I just went straight home.

So there you have it then. The Twinwood festival. Not as good as I’d hoped, but not a bad weekend. But for something that was merely OK, it’s not really worth paying £56 for. Pam said something about “I kinda bad dragging people here under false pretenses. It’s not all that good this year. It was better last year — and much better the year before!” Ah well, I guess you’ve got to try these things once.

What I didn’t try was the nightlife. The brosure claims that a lot goes on at night at Twinwood, but it seems all the live bands are in the daytime, and Pam claims there’s actually not much to see at night.

Meh, I guess I won’t bother next year.