Just five days before my first ever organised open-air event of music, the Jamboree Night, and it was raining. Seriously raining. At this point, I had an insight into the conditions the officials at Wimbledon LTC or the organizers of Glastonbury must be subject to the fickleness of The British summer weather.

I hadn’t really wanted to take into account the possibility of bad weather conditions for the night of my proposed open-air concert in the lovely garden at “The Famous Old Barrel” inn, Penryn, Cornwall. Apart from everything else, I had arranged that the main seating for my hoped-for hordes of attendance should be bales of hay; easy to transport, manipulate, relatively comfortable and definitely not water resistant!

I had an agreement with a good friend, Rowena, a keeper of horses, that I could borrow a large quantity of hay bales for my audiences’ comfort, on the condition that they did not get wet or even humid.

It was Thursday morning and two days to go and still cats’ ‘n’ dogs in the rain department. I refused to contemplate the word: Jamboree-cancellation. I had ordered some 150 beef burgers, onions, sauces of all possible descriptions, an unbelievable amount, as it seemed to me, of burger buns (apparently this is a normality, whatever “normal” is), did I offer baked potatoes? I simply can’t remember, shed-loads of salad-stuff, spread publicity everywhere, sold (some) tickets, invited friends and family for the weekend (camping in the field behind my flat), (in the rain?) and generally worn myself thin. And not believing that the word “cancel” existed, at least not in my dictionary.

I awoke on that Saturday morning of the 29th July 2000 to bright sunshine.

The weather forecast mentioned showers, not too reliable at the best of times. I’m not much of a gambler but as my father was a bit of a one for the horses, I decided to go for it. I phoned Rowena who turned up with a lorry full of hay bales, then Alex, another friend and local man, who had volunteered to handle the catering and he promptly arrived and set up the bar-be-cue, the ubiquitous half oil drum, which belonged to the pub.

Another concern was the local residents association who inhabited a newly-built block of flats on the opposite side of the river. These people normally make it their business to kill other mere mortals’ joy at any possible opportunity they can. Angie had taken me to one side on a couple of occasions warning of possible phone calls to the local constabulary from the association. We both chose to ignore these threats, as Angie put it: “It’s a one-off, after all.” They’re lucky they don’t live near the Jacob’s Ladder, I thought.