I’ve taken a few hours off work to take my son and his mate to an unmarked field on Google maps where they are going to spend two days and nights listening to band after band armed only with a bit of camping equipment and various strengths of alcohol.

I have explained at length several times over the past few days that I will be home by midday and that we need to leave pretty well immediately so that I can find whichever Somerford it is I’m looking for, throw them and the tent out of the car and return for a meeting at three.

So obviously I’m not surprised when I let myself into the house and discover my son asleep and his mate absent.

Neither was it difficult to predict that the hall, which was the agreed assembly point for everything made of canvas, Gore-tex or distilled grain, would be empty. I shout loudly up the stairs and some minutes later a bedroom door opens and my son emerges, looking astonished that yet again day has followed night and is getting on with being day without so much as consulting him.

He heads off for a shower, so I go and put the kettle on, though I know from experience that I could probably knock up a roast dinner with all the trimmings in the time it will take him to get ready.

Many cups of tea later, he emerges, still blinking with sleep, and starts bringing stuff into the hall.

Every sentence I utter begins with the words “Have you remembered ….” and runs through pretty well every single item anyone could ever need to live a long, happy, safe and comfortable life, rather than spend a weekend at a modest festival.

I don’t really blame him when he stops bothering to answer me, for while it’s reasonable to suggest he takes suntan lotion, even though rain is forecast, he’s not really likely to die if he hasn’t got two pairs of clean socks or some tea-towels in his rucksack. It’s gone 1pm when we’ve crammed the last few bits into the boot and the house phone goes. It’s his mate. “I thought you were picking me up around 12,” I hear him say to my son. “Tell him we’ll be with him in five,” I say, and sure enough within five minutes I’ve drawn up in front of his house.

It’s not exactly what you’d describe as a hive of activity. The curtains are all drawn. There are free papers hanging out of the letter box. “He’ll be out any minute,” my son says confidently, and leans back for 40 winks.

When he says any minute, I realise he means it literally. It could be any old minute that his mate turns up – one of the next five, or some minute scheduled to appear any time later this afternoon.

“I thought he was ready”, I say. “He phoned to ask where we were.”

My son looks at me blankly. The idea that I could have inferred he might be ready, just because he asked where we were, is clearly foreign to him. The car door opens and in climbs his mate, accompanied by an enormous rucksack and a coolbox.

It’s almost a quarter to two. We head off, a printed out Google map on my son’s knee. There’s a brief difference of opinion between the two of us as we leave Brinkworth behind and pass a golf club – my memory of the map was that we’d have to turn off left, whereas my son is convinced we need to turn right quite soon – but this is soon resolved when I spot that he’s tracing his finger along the Paddington to Swansea railway line rather than the B4042.

We find the right Somerford and are guided into a field where scores of people are getting ready to have a good weekend. I check my watch. Just time to make the meeting, if I’m lucky.

They jump out and start unloading the boot.

My son puts his head in through the window.

“Er, have you remembered the tent?” he asks.