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The Bootleg Beatles at Cropredy
A Memoir: a tale of two men
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. My marriage had ended and ahead was learning to be a father, defined by the restrictions of access visits. A course set by a raft of solictor’s letters. But much of that was still to come. I was blissfully unaware of the future pain, including all that I was inflicting on others. But already I was saying goodbye to the person I had been and another was waiting. But for the length of that summer, they both struggled to survive.
As far as I was concerned my duties as a father had not, and would not, be changed. And, of course, my love for my children had not changed. So my relationship with my children, I believed, would stay unaltered. After all, it was my marriage that had failed. I had failed as a husband, not as a parent. My naivety was breathtaking. I guess I wished that my duties as a father would not be compromised and so I believed it to be so. All I had to do was wish, right? Reality had yet to catch up with me.
It was under this cloud that I went with Laura to first experience the annual Fairport Convention Festival in the little village of Cropredy in Oxfordshire. All a lifetime ago now.
The festival at Cropredy had started in the seventies, orbiting round the folk-rock band Fairport Convention. The band…
