Josh Lacey makes an enchanting discovery at this year's Port Eliot LitFest.
Just when we thought the night was coming to an end, someone said, "Where's that music coming from?" We wandered away from the beer tent and stood among the trees, listening. Somewhere, not far away, someone was singing. There was music throbbing through the air, loud and close, but no one knew where it was coming from.
People walked back and forth, trying to find a path through the foliage. Everything was dark. It was impossible to see more than indistinct shapes - a tree, a hedge, a person.
We walked one way, then another, and suddenly found ourselves standing at the end of the pathway. Down at the other end, fenced by tall hedges, there was a marquee. It looked huge. Bright lights shone through the red and white canvas. The music was louder now.
As we came closer to the marquee, and our eyes adjusted to the gloom, we saw it was actually quite a small tent. 60 or 70 people were crammed inside, dancing. The air was hot. A man in a suit was hunched over a laptop. A woman was singing into a microphone.
This is the House of Fairy Tales tent, I discovered, returning to retrace my steps in the morning. During the day, performers tell stories to children or make puppets and masks. At night, hidden in the forest, there's music and dancing. It's a tribute to Jago Eliot, the eldest of the three sons of Peregrine Eliot, the 10th Earl of St Germans and founder of the festival. A sometime magician, champion surfer and cyber artist, he died earlier this year, at the age of 40, after suffering an epileptic fit. The House of Fairy Tales has been out together by his friends in his memory.
The literary festival at Port Eliot feels as if it's full of secrets. You wander through a door and find yourself in a walled garden. Someone is reading poetry. Keep walking and you come to a tent where fifty people are watching a movie. Round another corner and you're in a café or watching a man with a guitar or looking over a huge field packed with tents or standing in a queue for the loos.
I talked to someone yesterday who said that this festival feels more like a wedding or a party than a literary festival. There's the same laidback atmosphere that you'd get at a party. There's no sense of hierarchy. Strangers chat. The food and booze isn't free, but it's not exorbitant either. You can hurry across the small site, hearing a bunch of poets crack jokes in one tent or watching Martin Parr discuss his own photos in another, nipping from one to the other when your attention wanders. And just around every corner, there's a secret waiting to be discovered.
