My feet are killing me. And my shoes are falling apart. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

I should make it clear I’m having a perfectly nice time here, I just need to sit and rest for a while. This Guest Cafe is within the Press Tent’s wonderful WiFi range, so I can just whip out my iBook and post a diary entry from a field in the middle of nowhere. Well, nowhere as far as some modern concerns go. I’m at the Latitude Festival, near the resort town of Southwold in Suffolk. Southwold is slightly – happily – out of time. There’s even a Campaign To Have Broadband In Southwold, as if it were a small developing Third World country. In fact, I can get a better mobile phone signal in Tangier, Africa, than I can in some parts of Suffolk. Suits me fine, of course, as someone who is a little out of time myself.

My parents are staying at the Southwold cottage they usually rent for a week every year, and I’d be visiting them for the weekend regardless. When I heard a new Mean Fiddler festival – featuring more than a few acts I either admire or am acquainted with personally, or both – was not only taking place near Southwold, but during the same weekend of my stay there, it seemed the height of sarcasm NOT to seek out a weekend pass. So here I am.

At first I attempted to procur a pass as part of paying work, reviewing the festival for a magazine or a commercial music website. I tried two magazines and a website. That failed. No one can accuse me of not trying to apply for work at every opportunity. How can I be anything other than a freeloader if I am deliberately denied employment for the only skills I have been told I am any good at, to wit writing and performing and DJ-ing and looking strange? So I switched to Well-Mannered Hustler Mode and secured a VIP guest pass by dint of being vaguely connected to the better connected. It was always thus.

Actually, Plan B have asked me to review the entire festival for free, but they’ve only demanded a 200 words thumbnail live review. 200 words for about 500 bands and acts. More bands than words to review them with. So I should really select certain adjectives to cover a whole group of bands at a time. How’s this:

“EDGY”
“ANGULAR”
“LILTING”
“SOARING”
“DYNAMIC”
“MELODIC”
“DEBUT”
“CATCHY”
“ECLECTIC”
“BEARDED”

There you go. When dancing about architecture, there’s only a limited amount of steps. Pick and mix the above, apply to absolutely any band ever, and you need never read a music magazine again. All part of the service of being a Dickon Edwards reader.

I like to think I pay my way by looking vaguely interesting, by not letting the side down. Brightening up the place a little. So I’ve got freshly bleached hair, and a freshly dry-cleaned white suit. At a boiling hot rock festival. This is the price I must pay, in lieu of the £105 ticket. Shame that my loafers have decided to give up the ghost, as I’ve had to do an awfully large amount of walking since I’ve been here. But even the most dilapidated loafers look better than brand new puffy trainers. At least on me they do.

Sleeping in a proper room – and one right opposite Southwold Lighthouse – as opposed to a tent really swung it for me. This morning I was awoken by raucous gulls. I think they’re on at the Uncut Stage at 14.30.

I do like tents, it’s just campsites that irk me. At 10.30am today I returned to the site and walked past a long, long queue of people waiting for a shower, even in the Guest Camping area. That’s the side I’m not keen on. Not when I’m wearing a nice suit, anyway.

My last festival as a punter was Reading 1997, when I pretty much said goodbye to the experience. After this, I promised myself, no more festivals unless I’m working, performing or am otherwise involved in a non-spectator capacity. It was the time of Many Endings. Orlando had failed to sell records and be famous, I was leaving the band, so I was spending my dwindling share of the record company money on a vaguely luxurious life, almost by way of compensation. Like a trip to Disneyland for a terminally ill child. Taxis, hotel rooms, binges. The benefits with none of the work. So I blagged a Reading pass, and booked a hotel room within walking distance on the site. Bliss. I shared this wealth, though: making it known that I had a room and the drinks were on me. Erol Alkan, now a top London DJ, slept on my floor. A thin, pretty girl who said she was a presenter on the Nickelodeon Channel shared my double bed, entirely chastely and non-nude. (And as I add that last detail I really wish I hadn’t.)

As Mr Alkan snored, Ms Children’s TV Presenter and I watched the late night movie, sitting up in bed, like a slumber party. With consummate irony, I recall the film was Alan Parker’s ‘Fame’.

So today, as per the whole weekend, I’m wandering around this leafy field-based Suffolk rock festival in a white suit and make-up, lurking backstage at the Literary Tent to chat to acquaintances who are actually booked to perform. The tent is shared by ‘Vox N Roll’, the book reading evening hosted by my friends at The Boogaloo pub, and ‘The Book Club’, the jazz-like comedy variety revue featuring my friend Mr Martin White.

So it’s a fair mistake to make when the most common question I hear from approaching strangers at Latitude is ‘when are you on?’. Even programme sellers have raced over to me ask this question. What can I say? I SHOULD be performing, damn it. Why aren’t I? I’m available and willing and I make the effort in looking interesting. Whether with Fosca or solo, whether doing music or text. Fosca can be invited to play Swedish festivals in lovely lakeside forests – the sort of event that Latitude is clearly influenced by – but none in my own country.

The cynical answer is “Because you’re a rubbish performer, Dickon. And your work is rubbish too. Even the Friday At Noon Acts on the White Lightning Cider Stage are a million times better than you. They have ungroomed beards and trainers and are trying to sound like a watered-down Snow Patrol, who in turn are a watered-down Keane, who in turn are a watered-down Coldplay, who in turn are a watered-down Radiohead, who in turn are a watered-down Pink Floyd. But that’s still better than your brand of ‘well-dressed wordy misfit’ songs and stories. Dilution of fake emotion, darling, is the new rock and roll!”

Maybe it’s because although I’m lucky as a ligger, I’ve never been lucky as a performer. Never have been. Why weren’t Orlando performing at any of those 1996-7 UK rock festivals, despite being on the mighty Warner Brothers? Not even at noon on the Friday on the smallest stage? John Peel played Fosca a number of times, which is more than some acts on the John Peel Stage at Glastonbury can claim. Hah, listen to this faux-haughty bitterness raging!

I can only assume the three or four shadowy people who pull the strings in the UK festival booking world just didn’t like Orlando, as I guess they don’t like me and Fosca. Well, let’s say up until now. Fair enough. But I live in hope things will change. Perhaps it takes a new Fosca album released on just the right kind of label with just the right kind of PR people and management, at just the right kind of time. With just the right kind of soundbitey pitch. ‘Cult Blond Fop-Rock Songwriter Dickon Edwards promotes his new album on Fashionably Acceptable Records’. People need The Angle. The Twist. The Pitch. The Story. Also, many of the music biz and press people in 1997 who clearly didn’t want Orlando anywhere near their nice festival stages have been replaced by much jollier younger models in 2006, who find it easier to defer to my wiser, aloof older man allure, ho ho. My age alone in such an acne-saturated environment suggests I’m ‘someone’. I’m not ENTIRELY joking.

And so I go on. Even though I never ‘go on’.

I was going to write about the bands and acts I’ve seen so far. But I appear to have filled this page quite easily talking about myself.

Hmm.

I’m off to photograph coloured sheep.