Too old, too young: why Lovebox might have passed its sell by date, and Citadel failed to find its feet with families

As part of a summer of nonstop activities marking our first where both kids have been a) old enough to do grownup-ish stuff without being a megahassle and b) we have enough disposal income to splurge on fripperies, we spent this weekend taking advantage of having two festivals on our East London doorstep to have some fun ourselves and introduce the kids to the joys of live music ahead of Camp Bestival, the first part of our coming summer holiday.

We skipped out on Friday night’s Lovebox dance extravaganza, only bearing witness to the flood of people emptying out along the road to Mile End station at turnout, and the increasingly oppositional residents’ comments on the Victoria Park Friends Facebook page. If there’s one thing for certain, Vicky Park peeps are getting fed up with having their ends turning into a tourist destination with monotonous regularity. The problem is, the once sleepy backwater of Victoria Park has become, like the land at the top of the Faraway Tree, host to all manner of weird and wonderful creatures visiting the various events that crop up almost every weekend during the summer months, and increasingly, in the winter too; which, while some residents delight in the opportunity to have a wealth of experiences on the front door, is increasingly upsetting others who have borne witness to what many now believe to be the birth of a monster.

From fights erupting down Vicky Park road, to nitrous oxide canisters left in the local park, many people are up in arms about the effect of transforming a residential area where people live, work and raise children, into a clubbing scene reminiscent of Ibiza (although most mothers aren’t so concerned about the effect of laughing gas on their children when they’re having them, but that’s probably beside the point.)

Since we are unlikely to beat them, even with the collective griping on the Victoria Park Friends page, Tom and I decided to join them for one last hurrah, having enjoyed the odd festival in our (my) somewhat curtailed youth. It was very nearly a disaster. Having ‘larged it’ with the Aussie neighbours the previous weekend, I was not exactly ‘down to party’, and having already attended one – for a six year old – that morning, Tom had probably more or less had his fill as well. However, after a relaxing lunch on the garden sofa, we wended our way amid a stream of short shorts and flower crowns to the park gates whereupon we waited in line to show our tickets, and then again for a cursory search (someone got shot last time Snoop played, appaz). Waiting in line was an experience swiftly to become a running theme. Or perhaps a standing joke…

The queues were basically ridiculous. From the beer tents, to the loos, there were simply too many people trying to have fun, which severely curtailed the likelihood of anyone actually having any. We amused ourselves by taking not very feminist body shaming photos of women with their actual labia hanging out of their shorts (I mean seriously, ladies!) and tried to watch Jessie Ware on the main stage but it was too hot and by then, I had broken the seal, which basically meant I spent half my time in frankly disgusting portaloos.

I consoled myself with some kale, kimchee and halloumi brown rice, and felt rather too wholesome for the surrounding melee of glitter and youthful arsecheeks.

Round about six pm, I decided I’d had enough, wanted to be home having a cuppa, or at the very least drinking wine in the villarge with Reprobate Kate. But then we found the Little Gay Vegas tent. And that’s where the fun started.

There were drag queens, there were bondage boys. There were lovely ladies in stripper shoes and pasties. I’d found my natural home. And best of all, they had a pole.

They also had a cocktail bar, and it took not a few prohibitively expensive Mojitos to get up on it, but once there, you couldn’t get me off. I surprised myself with not actually being all that rusty, and surprised the crowd by being ostensibly the least likely pole dancer there, in my Birkenstock sandals and frankly sensible pants, which I gave unwitting spectators a glimpse of as I effortlessly turned myself upside down to widespread applause.

To be fair, I can no longer fully extend my arms, and my back knees are so covered in bruises I’d give a week old banana a run for its money. But it was a joy, pure and simple, and with that, I was able to down po-face and set about enjoying myself with the best of them.

We headed to a castle where there were ten foot tall bindi girls on stilts, as magic carpet, exploding streamers and some not bad tunes, (Little Gay Vegas was resolutely cheesy house, which got a bit much after a while) amid much chatting to random stranger and a little bit of Snoop, whose cornrows are beginning to grow a little far apart, and whose 45 minute set appeared to disappoint the crowds who were leaving in droves.

My verdict? Not enough music, too many people, and bearing witness to the certain destruction of my local park’s grass (lawn, as opposed to supply) for the next year was in some ways like witnessing the last days of Rome. The festival itself was a disappointment. The fun really started on the way home. People are nice when they’re off their faces, well at least the night revellers that we met were, to whom we handed out tumblers of wine and  let them nip in to borrow our loo amid much earnest conversation, though Reprobate Kate reported fights and territorial pissings on t’other side of the park.

But one of the nicer bits of community cohesion (if being pissed with people in a field can be called as much) was the melding of people who might otherwise never have met. I had some lovely conversations with these characters, from Papa John’s in Stratford (particularly loving that they wore the T-shirt), who said with a degree of bathos that “us guys just wanna have fun too”, plus a whole bunch of other colourful types to whom we swapped fellow feeling and joie de vivre with for a few moments of unbridled joy.

Tom had his sensible hat on and ushered me into bed at midnight with a sleeping pill, and I would’ve had a lie in had it not been for Reprobate Lin’s Ronnie Facetiming an absent Jonah (who’d spent the night along with Ava, at Tom’s mum) to play Minecraft at 8.30 am. Suffice it to say, I wasn’t best pleased.

After a breakfast of sausages and ketchup in bed, Tom roused himself to pick up the kids while I retreated to the garden sofa for coffee and Go Set A Watchman, which I’ve practically finished in just under two days, and which so successfully transported me to another time and place I found myself disappointed (except for the institutionalised racism of the American deep south in the 50s) to be disillusioned back to East London in time for the kids return, a houmous and veggie pseudo-lunch, and yet another festival.

Citadel, new to Victoria Park, was billed as the family alternative to Lovebox, with kids’ tickets for a bargainous fiver, which, having won adult tickets in the residents’ draw, seemed worth it to give the kids a taste of what to expect at Camp Bestival in a few weeks’ time. It was an unmitigated disaster.

Despite the promise of expensive rides, delicious Bleecker Street burgers, ice cream, and the momentary joy of bumping into two of his best mates, as well as the one we’d planned on meeting (the aforementioned Ronnie), Jonah was determined not to enjoy it at all. Even through the crowds were much thinner on the ground, the line up much gentler, with the likes of Ben Allen and Roots Manuva on the bill, and the free availability of earplugs from security staff handing out tumblers of water in the Big Top, Jonah determined to grump his way through it, when he wasn’t winding up his schoolmates ( I take it back about the bullying – he can be a total pain in the ass).

Ava, all floppy hat and sixties rat’s nest, made a better effort to enjoy herself, consenting to be raised on Tom’s shoulders for the best part of Bombay Bicycle Club, but by then, all of the boys were miserable, one of them had taken to drawing on himself alarmingly with a stick; and to be fair, it wasn’t until we’d made our minds up, at around 7pm to leave, that Jonah recognised any of the music, by which point he seemed to enjoy himself for a sugar-fuelled journey home, whereupon we took the pug out for a swift bike ride, and ordered a much needed Chinese.

It’s not a cheap way to be fun, and for parents and kids alike, there is much to be said in not overdoing it, for everyone’s sanity. I think it’s fair to say the current generation of kids dragged along to festivals by their won’t-give-it-up-parents, might not be such keen festival goers in the future, but whatever way they choose to have fun as young adults themselves, let’s hope they can do with without bankrupting themselves, which after all, seems to be the most salient point of these cash cow events, with the real winners being, of course, the event organisers, and the councils cashing in on hosting them.