Once Upon a Time at Port Eliot

Food, fashion, music, books, or any combination of the above, are the main ingredients of this magical gathering. The walled garden saw the literary elite delighted by a diet of Cornish authors such as Patrick Gale and Nina Stibbe and local seafood, decadently served by The Oyster Shack.

Our go-to fast food joints were the South Indian Thali hut, for a delicious crispy pancake roll crammed with paneer, chilli and bombay salad, and the donut stall for hot sweet deliciousness (and at half the price of the churro café). For looks alone, the cake competition won hands down, with fantastical sculptural sugar arrangements fiercely guarded by members of the local WI.

Fumaca Preta, a post-punk Portuguese band were, unexpectedly, my musical must see. Wearing spandex and head-banging their Afros, the band boasted a sense of the absurd not seen since The Darkness. Less exciting, though just as intriguing, was Gwenno, an enigmatic Welsh girl singing in Cornish to electro beats.

Rogue Theatre returned to Port Eliot in The Hullabaloo, and although their performances lacked the strong storylines of the Tehidy Woods shows, their curation of activities within the children’s zone was joyful and varied.

Tom Hodgkinson’s Idler Academy featured characteristically off-beat authors and ideas. Laura Barton spoke mournfully about music and sadness while the brilliantly amusing David Bramwell, author of the crowd-funded book The No.9 Bus to Utopia, discussed ghost villages (including Samson island, once part of the Scilly Isles).

Critics say that the festival peaked in 2010, with acts like Jakob Dylan and Jarvis Cocker. Locals say it costs too much to go (it’s only free to under 7s, unlike Glastonbury, which is free to under 12s). But in the words of my mate, who’s just returned, ‘filthy and like a hoary old Cornish woman’, the only down-point was ‘not being able to fit it all in’.