Saturday: Latitude Ahoy

I am not here to see music, but The Waterboys are playing. They were the first band I went to see back in the day, and sentimentality drags me across the festival.

Latitude rightly boasts that it is more than just a music festival: it is one of the main stops for acts honing their shows for Edinburgh Fringe. It’s why I am here, and it appeals to more than just music lovers. Middle aged parents introducing their kids to the outdoors vibe, older men digging the cross-platform vibes, devotees of the outré chasing Scottee from London’s alternative cabaret scene around the tents: we huddle together beneath shelter, hoping the rain will break so we can get to Adam Ant.

I have a bigger mission. Bryony Kimmings has arrived with her show about being drunk for seven days, and the connection between alcohol and creativity. I went for a drink with Kimmings and Dedominici and Scottee at the Fringe last year. Having seen that, I am certain the show will be carnage.

Of course, it isn’t. Kimmings is another intelligent Live Artist who laces her observations with humour and a sexy playfulness. As she points out herself, there is less singing in this show than usual – the booze stifled her song-writing skills, she claims. Movingly, Kimmings discovered a profound loneliness at the bottom of the bottle. Quite naturally, she recreates this feeling by generating a snogging orgy around her at the finale.

In the afternoon, I watch another three hour long play – Prudentia Hart was about three hours, including the break for refreshments – which is a brave choice for a festival crowd by Fuel. Their Summer House follows the adventures of three stags, who are haunted by the legends of a local Viking tribe and a very real gangster threat.

The male bravura and bonhomie gradually recedes like a hairline as the alcohol flows into the men. Long friendships are damaged, the wounds revealing older, deeper scars: the ghosts of the Vikings, who are the proper hard-men modern thugs long to imitate, linger at the edges of the party’s own macho fantasies, both Warning From History and echo of warrior heroism. I distrust long plays, believing that most ideas can be conjured and explored in under an hour, but the Summer House intrigues. It is partially the plot: gradually, it becomes clear that one of the men is not who he claims to be, and is tangled up in some nasty business. Yet the dynamic between the three men captures something of the awkwardness of masculine friendship, suggesting that even the most sophisticated gentleman is still a barbarous moron at heart.

As the evening fades in, I discover the Lavish Lounge, home of BBC’s Late Junction during Latitude. I sit around in the comfy seats, listening to some story-telling and wondering whether I could tell the host that he inspired my leap into radio presenting. I conclude that he is too nice a person to have that on his conscience. I go back to my tent, and try to fix the leaks.