Summer's end 1975 rolls around, and we all head off to Watchfield. After the officially-sanctioned violence at the end of Windsor the previous tear, there was no way a festival was going to be held there in 1975, or any other year for that matter. The actions of the police had drawn heavy criticism, but no matter; the desired result had been obtained. There would be no more of that nasty rock music in Her Majesty's back yard, thank you very much.

As a sign of its infinite generosity of spirit, the UK government came up with some land for a free festival in 1975. A state-sponsored festival of freaks! What a laugh. Whatever next?

The venue for the late summer extravaganza was Watchfield in south Oxfordshire. For me at least, the event proved a dispiriting experience. The venue was a big part of the problem: a flat, soulless piece of ground, a former airfield, now unkempt and uncared for. 'South Oxfordshire' sounds rather quaint, but the reality was a patch of land a few miles outside don't-go-there-unless-you-really-have-to Swindon.

How are the mighty fallen; what a nosedive. From the enchantment of the north Devon fields and dramatic crashing waves of the coastline at Trentishoe two years ago; to Windsor Great Park, a magnificent place just up from the river; to some semi-wasteland in no-man's-land. 

Unlike the crazy but overwhelmingly relaxed and friendly atmosphere of Windsor, there was a real edge about things at Watchfield. Especially when some of the Hell's Angels and other heavy biker sections turned up in their droves, looking ready to pull a knife on you for the fun of it. I felt on constant alert. The co-operative anarchism of the earlier festivals appeared to have given way to a general sense of lawlessness; it showed.     

Somehow I ended up sharing a tent with Lawrence from the Black and Decker days. I rolled up at Watchfield with a big bag of grass, but it quickly proved to be a bum deal. "I think I'm getting something," Lawrence would utter as he took another deep toke on an enormous joint that he had somehow managed to concoct. No, Lawrence, all you're getting is permanent lung damage. This seemed to sum things up.

Attending the Watchfield festival was a collective error, and pointed to a fatal flaw in our approach to this experiment in communal living. We were all taking it a bit too seriously - or, rather, being serious in the wrong kind of way. All work and no play, that sort of thing. We went to Watchfield because it was easy, convenient; just down the road, really. We would surely have been far better off making a little more effort, and heading off to Meigan Fayre in mid-Wales, for example. This sister festival to Trentishoe accommodated serious, hard-core, but playful countercultural folk. These were people capable of inspiring and energising us in our endeavours. Our batteries needed refuelling through contact with others who were bobbing along quietly outside the mainstream. But we were too busy doing our own thing, regarding our own little project as the end-all and be-all. We were losing the magic collective fire.

Concerning my own inner magic fire, it was dampened by the dwindling contact with, and eventual evaporation from the map of, the one and only Jimmy Keys. In youth, strong connections are quickly forged and fractured; so it was with Jimmy.   

Of the many people I met in the communes movement, there were only two with whom I truly shared that magical kind of relationship - the type which affords unspoken understanding, spontaneous outbursts of joy and unbridled fun, that sense of being at total ease with another person. Liberty Fox was one, Jimmy Keys the other.

As time passed after our initial meetings in Bristol and Trentishoe, it began to emerge that Jimmy had 'issues'. Not least of them surrounded his sexuality: he seemed to experience great inner turmoil and confusion about his orientation. He put on weight as a symptom of his inner conflicts, and the anxiety sometimes shone through, getting past his laconic conversational style and overall genial exterior.

It became clear that neither I nor any of my fellow communards could help out Jimmy in any way. He was far more experienced in many matters of the world; we were simply not qualified. As a result, a space began to open up, growing wider and wider until we lost contact altogether. I only know that my own life was all the poorer for that loss.

Collectively, that magic fire failed to be stoked by fresh blood. A number of prospective members paid us a visit, but nothing was even close to working out. One was a very sweet and timid girl, to whom the prospect of living with four single males was clearly not on. Another was a guy from Newcastle, whose drug of choice was valium. This absence of new members with new perspectives hardly helped our flagging spirits.

Autumn came, and the first signs of early winter. As the sun continued to journey ever lower across the darkening sky, so did the commune's fortunes appear to be sinking on a daily basis. Like some ominous casting of the I Ching, the dank foggy air that would sink over the city of Oxford in late autumn seemed to presage the coming of a period of difficulty. 

Resources. It seems that some people had a better time at Watchfield than me. The entries on the ukrockfestivals site on Watchfield offer a fascinating insight into the life and times of a free festival. Well recommended a few minutes of your time. The photos are from the site as well. In the first photo, the two standing people immediately to the left of the black dancing guy look rather like Mottie and Liberty Fox, but I don't know.

https://www.ukrockfestivals.com/watchfieldfestival-menu.html