Straight off the Dublin ferry at 5am, we made our way through the quiet streets towards Boris. We weren’t allowed to show up until early afternoon, but thankfully friends in Kildare were awake enough that we could visit them along the way. I was towing the Cabanon trailer tent, which added to the fun and games.
When we finally pitched up in Borris, the hard standing was basically a car park with some fine gravel on it. The neighbours were very friendly, especially one we spent a good deal of time with. She even made us tea in the mornings, and we shared our banana bread. The camping facilities were woeful, unfortunately. For a festival that’s not really aimed at the same demographic as Electric Picnic or Glastonbury, they really should have provided enough portaloos and ensured that they were hygenic throughout – at one point they’d run out of running water.
The shower was a converted horse box, which obviously struck someone as quirky and fun at the time, but was heavily over-subscribed. The only thing in its favour was that I met some interesting people while queuing for it in the mornings.
There were a number of speakers on at any given time slot, so choosing was quite difficult with some of them. Thankfully the same speakers gave different talks throughout the weekend, so if there was one particular person you wanted to see, it would probably be possible if you weren’t so worried about their topic.
The Friday programme was quite speaker-packed, despite the shorter time available.
4-5pm: The West Cork Podcast crew discussed their true crime reporting of the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder case. It would probably have helped to have been following their series, but I’d read about the case before at least. If I’m honest, I found it a bit ghoulish, but what could you expect?
5.15 – 6.15pm: Crimes against humanity? Philippe Sands discussing the road from Nuremburg to now with the great Fintan O’Toole.
6.30 – 7.30pm: Water off a duck’s back? Carl Bernstein, Martin Amis and Ed Vulliamy discussing the difficulty of reporting on scandals nowadays when investigative journalists are branded ‘enemies of the people’.
7.30 – 8.30pm: The Misinformation Age: Simon Schama, Misha Glenny and Fintan O’Toole talking about the survival of democracy in a world run by algorithms.
Drinking then ensued.
