By Isle of Wight Observer
West Wight residents were incandescent last Sunday, but they weren’t fretting about bunker-busting bombs dropping on Iran. Over in Freshwater, Tesco’s doors had jammed shut, and, in the absence of a manual override or mechanical engineer, the entire store was closed. We don’t yet know if anyone inside the store exited via fire doors, but I hope so. As the hours passed, you could see the crisis unfolding on Facebook. No-one had a quick fix or screwdriver. Social media was abuzz.
To calm the populace, a Tesco spokesman reassured them: “an engineer had been summoned from the mainland”. Unfortunately, the spokesman then explained that the engineer was delayed “due to the festival”, 11 miles away in Newport.
Most Islanders under 65 seemed to be enjoying the last day of what had been another successful IW Festival. With a claimed 53,000 people present, why did no-one think to ask from the stage: “Is there a door engineer in the house?” Sadly, they didn’t, so the front doors remained firmly shut at Tesco. Alison Moyet was on stage, performing some of her biggest hits, including, ‘It won’t be long’, ‘Wishing you were here’, ‘Nobody’s Diary’ and ‘Situation.’ All seemed apt, bearing in mind the ongoing drama out West.
Having delayed my own grocery shopping until Monday, I was relaxing at the festival, Mermaid G&T in hand. But I’m a natural problem solver, so wondered why someone hadn’t thought to ask John Giddings if they could requisition a festival helicopter for the missing engineer. Let’s face it, only Tesco and rock stars can afford choppers. As the artists were coming over anyway, surely a door engineer could hop aboard. If anyone had thought to ask him, I suspect even Justin Timberleg would have been more than happy to share, as long as no-one mentioned Britney. A waiting car could have easily sped the engineer out to Freshwater in 20 minutes. Problem solved.
Unfortunately, no-one thought to do that either, so Tesco’s doors remained firmly shut.
Back at the festival, a different crisis had been evolving all weekend. The 2025 festival will go down as one of the most memorable ever.
Ten years from now, few people will remember Sting or the Stereophonics headlining – they’ll mostly remember the Year of the Chair.
As 53,000 people descended on Seaclose Park last weekend, at least a half of them decided to take chairs. Some had picnic blankets and tables too. Pretty much everyone else took to social media and moaned about all the chairs impeding their progress around the site. I kid you not, I’ve never seen anything blow up quite like those chairs. Chairs and pictures of chairs seemed to be the only talking points. It was surreal, normally when you wander between festival stages, you bump into friends who excitedly ask: “Did you see X; what did you think of so and so?” This year, all you heard was “What about all these chairs?”
I don’t camp, so by the time I got home at night, the news sites were buzzing with America bombing Iran, World War III might have been an imminent possibility. It says a lot about the Isle of Wight that our dual obsessions were a pair of jammed supermarket doors and thousands of chairs.
As the sun set on Sunday, the festival concluded with the band ‘James.’ If you didn’t know, their biggest hit and anthem goes: “Oh sit down. Oh sit down. Sit down next to me.” It was almost as if someone had planned it.
It’s Monday morning now, all’s quiet at Seaclose, the chairs have gone, and someone fixed the doors at Tesco. There’s a fragile cease fire in the Middle East too, so “all’s well” as they say.