I'll spare you the details why this rings true but suffice to say, after three days and two nights, there was no way I was braving the portable toilets.

And so last Sunday I, along with a friend I've known 15 years – although never before quite so intimately – slummed new depths of indignity. Behind a Lake District bush.

All in the name of music.

Kendal Calling festival.

It was mud and rain and undercooked food.

Devastation and carnage doesn't cover it...

"It'll be ace", my friend had said. "A weekend in the Lake District at the start of August, what could go wrong?"

I wasn't buying. Plenty could.

A younger and clearly wiser me had vowed never to go near a festival. I liked my gigs indoors.

Being a Scout had taught me I was no camper. I didn't like tents, sleeping bags or wet-wipe washes. I didn't like the great outdoors. They're too great for me, frankly. They're too... out of doors.

I half relented last year for a Spanish fest. It was decent. At least it was after we abandoned the tent and booked into a hotel for the week. There's something about having air-conditioning, running water and a toilet not decimated by thousands of Brits on drugs and hotdogs that makes a holiday more enjoyable.

But Cumbria? No chance.

"British Sea Power are headlining and it's only £50," he'd said.

And so I ended up in a car heading north with the windscreen wipers on full power and a pack of wet wipes in my bag.

The rain relented after 18 hours.

The sopping mud didn't. It was a quagmire of Saving Private Ryan proportions. Even quadbikes were getting stuck.

It got everywhere. I abandoned my sleeping bag before the first night was out. I abandoned my trainers the next day. They were both ruined.

There were seasoned campers next door to us packing up and going home after one night. The music wasn't worth the mud. The dancing couldn't outweigh the downpour.

"Escapists," my friend scorned as, wearing poncho and woolly hat, he pulled up a wet camping chair and hit open a beer. It was 10am.

We did the same. It seemed the only way to survive. Probably, that's why even on trench rations soldiers were allowed rum.

My dad, cleaning my shoes, three days later wondered how it was. "Go home and pray you'll never know the hell where youth and laughter go," I muttered.

But was it worth it, he said? The war? Well, yeah, probably, democracy seems a pretty good thing. And the festival?

Absolutely. British Sea Power were blinding.