Despite the downpours, the semi-flooded campsite and the armies of mosquitoes which have left me looking like a bad case of chicken pox, I return from Port Eliot firmly convinced that this is a truly fantastic festival.
With just over 1000 people attending, this is an intimate festival in which performers and punters mingle in the beer tent and a firm lid is kept on starry egos. It is remarkable for its easy-going friendliness: you could come to Port Eliot on your own, party all night and make new friends in a weekend. Equally, the families that I spoke to were raving about the children's entertainment, provided by a Devon-based group, Rattle Bags - the legions of happy face-painted, welly-clad children scampering around the site bear witness to the festival's family-friendly credentials.
It also helps that the site is stunning. Events are centred around a walled garden and bowling green and the sense of privilege the festival-goers feel in being able to freely roam hundreds of acres of beautifully maintained 18th century parkland is reflected in the courtesy they offer back – the site remained spotless throughout, despite sporting relatively few rubbish bins.
However, it is the imaginative programming at Port Eliot that makes it so much more than your average literary festival. Yesterday afternoon in a few short hours I learnt about crop circles in a talk and slideshow by John Michells, a rather patrician 75-year-old writer on sacred geometry, then heard Richard Sill, a 24-year-old professional international surfer-dude, discussing the terrifying 50 foot waves of Hawaii, followed by stand-up comedian Simon Munnery's impressions of Bob Dylan.
Rounding it all off was a table-top Greek tragedy in three acts. Armed with only a dining table and an assortment of crockery, Claudia Egypt deftly and humorously condensed eight and a half hours of The Curse of the House of Atreus into 30 minutes. Agamemnon was a bottle of red wine, Clytemnestra a corkscrew, Aegisthus a hardboiled egg, Orestes a plastic fork and the Furies a bowl of noodles. It doesn't sound like it could work but it did – brilliantly. As James Flint, novelist and curator of the film tent told me, "we don't invite people here to read from their books. We invite them here to have some fun and to let us join in the fun with them".
Port Eliot could easily fall into the trap of being nothing more than a weekend in the country for London's literati to play in the grounds of a stately home. While there is an element of that, to be sure, the balance the organisers achieve between the bigger names – Ralph Steadman, Louis de Bernieres, Martin Parr – and the nurturing of local talent, without ever giving the festival a parochial air, is impressive. The film tent, in particular, is strong on local input, courtesy of the Cornish Film Collective, and most of the musicians were also west country born and bred.
I caught up with Peregrine St Germans and the rest of the organisers last night as they started to wind down during the final few hours of the festival. After Michael Eavis's semi-serious quips about Port Eliot becoming a mini-Glastonbury, I wondered what the future holds for the festival. Can it retain its intimacy while, as word spreads of its appeal, inevitably attract more people?
The key, according to St Germans, and his co-director and fiancée Cathy Wilson, is to increase the number of venues for performances on the site while keeping each individual tent small. Next year they plan to have a theatre tent in which writers can put on their one- or two-hander plays, and they also hope, funding permitting, to have a writer-in-residence. They do not seem in any great rush to get hordes more punters through the gates which I, for one – in a purely selfish "I've discovered this amazing thing and now I don't want lots of people to make it messy" kinda way - am very pleased about. I feel obliged, however, to tell you that the festival will be running again next year, same time (July 23-25), same place. See you there.
