Jump

We did Glastonbury again this year. 

We didn’t have to pay, we didn’t get trenchfoot, we didn’t have all the stuff nicked out of our tents, food and beer was cheap/free and plentiful, and we were right down the front for all the bands we wanted to see.

Yep, we did it at home. With the big screen pulled down, and presenter-free live feeds from the BBC red button/iPlayer beamed onto it.

My seven-year-old boy and his mate were on the door, sporting SECURITY T-shirts and armed with a guest list, a pen, and a sense of officiousness.

The party occured in two waves: an afternoon session and BBQ, with the kids left to go feral as they took part in an epic Nerf Gun War (the neighbours will be picking out foam bullets from their hedges for weeks to come).

Then there was a second evening rave wave.

My girl, who doesn’t like loud noises, loud music, or staying up late, made an amazing decision. Party rules were going to be applied. She didn’t reach for her ear defenders, she didn’t complain once about the volume levels, and she decided she wasn’t going to go to bed early as originally planned. 

“I’d like to stay up until 11,” she announced.

And then, the next thing I knew, Fat Boy Slim ‘dropped some beats’ (as I believe the yoof liked to say about 20 years ago) and me and some creaking middle-aged friends and some remaining bouncy kids did our literal interpretation to the lyrics of Norman’s remix of House Of Pain’s ‘Jump Around’. I say literal, because we did, indeed, ‘jump around’ and after five minutes of that my calves were burning, my heart was thumping, and I was in - if not a house of pain - at least a caravan, or maybe a bungalow of knackeredness.

But it was my girl, my girl, that got my heart really racing. She got up from the sofa and joined her dad in what can only be described as ‘throwing some shapes’. Not since her pogoing to Sheena Is A Punk Rocker, aged 6, have I been quite so surprised by her sudden enthusiasm for a random song.

This made me very happy. You can see that in the photos. (Grinning idiot on the left in the bottom pic, if it’s not obvious).

Video is a mobile phone YouTube video of Fatboy Slim's remix of Jump Around, just to give you some idea of what it was like in my front room. (It was a slightly smaller crowd, obviously).