Pete Hughes, guitarist with Oxford maffrobeat* band Bright Works and also Oxford Times reporter, on festival spirit

‘Why are there so many children everywhere?” Jake asked me.

Jake is new to Oxford, he just started a job at the O2 academy so we were introducing him to one of our county’s finest festivals — Truck Fest.

I have been going to Truck since the days when the main stage really was on the back of a Truck and it was £15 for a weekend ticket, so in my eyes it’s always been the rockingest rock festival around.

But as soon as he said it, I suddenly realised he was right.

Everyone there was either a teenager at their first festival — getting excited about drinking beer — or parents, papoosing their ear-muffed offspring around the site, tucking into a nutritious fruit salad and organic oriental curry.

Under the helter skelter next to the quirky sock hut I replied: “It’s just like a giant village fete, isn’t it?”

Certainly part of the problem was the quality of music.

Admittedly, I was only there for the Friday (I couldn’t bring myself to shatter any more childhood dream by going back on Saturday), but I saw at most 30 minutes of good music, and even that wasn’t local.

Truck used to be a showcase for the best breaking new bands, experimenting with the boundaries of performance art and sound.

But this year it just felt like I was watching rehashed parodies of other bands.

Now Supernormal — that’s an interesting festival.

Set in the grounds of Brazier’s Park, a commune in a 19th-century Manor House and estate outside Wallingford, it’s the right start for a quirky weekend.

Last year was my first time at Supernormal, and I watched a man play a bike like an instrument, two members of a Brighton arts collective playing a floor full of children’s toys, in no particular order, and made some seed bombs. That experience conjured up in me the same magical spirit that Truck Fest did when I was 13 — venturing into the unknown; I felt like I was on some wonderful hallucinogenic drug even though I wasn’t. It did also have real music, like, stuff you could dance to, but it had the proper spirit of festival, not village fete. As we left Truck on Friday night once the live music finished at 11pm, we noticed how even the tents in the campsite were neatly arrayed in rows and columns. Before we drove off we sat in the car and watched the lightning streak across the clouds over Didcot in the flash storm which made the following day’s papers.

* Maffrobeat is a cross between Math Rock and Afrobeat, pioneered by Bright Works. Take a listen at brightworksband.com