This column was completed in a tent on the borders of Dorset and Wiltshire, during the somewhat bleary morning that followed a brilliant Saturday night. I was among 17,000 people trying to hang on to the remains of summer in a set of fields, woodland and Victorian gardens, over four nights and three days of dizzyingly eclectic music that spanned an array of textures, genres and cultures.

As sometimes happens at such events, I regularly looked around and marvelled. Most of us worry about how much human beings directly interact with each other, and the way that social media have sown misery, division and mutual loathing. But here was something completely different: a temporary town where people happily chatted with strangers, and enjoyed themselves to the full while respecting the necessary rules. In the context of a toxic and often terrifying summer, such a peacefully joyous weekend felt almost utopian.

The End of the Road festival has been going since 2006, when it drew a crowd of 1,500. A few days before this year’s event opened, I interviewed Simon Taffe, the lifelong music obsessive who founded the festival when he was only 25, using some of the proceeds from selling his first house. “I didn’t realise how crazy and risky festivals were until I got into it,” he said, but he now speaks with the calm assurance of someone long immersed in a strange year-round working life centred on a few crucial days.

Since the pandemic, he told me, his costs have rocketed, as energy tariffs have increased and many of the businesses involved in outdoor events have continued to claw back money lost during the UK’s lockdowns. This year, 60........

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