Well I passed the Posh Police and am now ensconced at the Port Eliot Lit Fest.
Even as the drizzle mizzles down relentlessly on the site, it is a truly Arcadian setting. All the events take place in and around a stately home so there are manicured lawns everywhere you look. There are numerous walled gardens, a sprinkling of fountains, loveseats tucked into nooks and crannies among the trees and a tunnel running under the length of the house which is the damp and slightly spooky venue for exhibitions by digital artists.
The 'champagne bar' offers local fizzy cider while the organic barbeque is stocked with locally produced goodies. But the true measure a festival, for me, is marked by the quality and quantity of its cakes. And Port Eliot is scoring very highly indeed on the Culture Vulture cakeometer with a wide selection of home-made and very delicious gateaux. I'm working my way through the lot.
What's more, one of the most popular events so far this morning (and not just because of the free cakes on offer) has been Simon Jameson speaking – and eating – on the concept of 'Gateauism'.
According to Jameson, philosophers throughout the ages have sought and failed to find an objective measure against which all art can be judged and evaluated. The solution has been to admit failure and embrace relativism. However, Jameson believes that he has found a new and ingenious solution to creating a hierarchy of art - gateauism.
All art can be compared with, and ranked against, cake. But what about the problem of ranking cake? Jameson argues that there is a group of experts who have solved this problem too. The WI. Stay with me here ...
So, in front of a visibly dribbling audience, Jameson feeds five volunteers seven different kinds of cake in turn, ranging from Victoria sponge to meringue. Each is matched with a piece of great art which they listen to or look at as they munch – the music of Mahler, Ravi Shankar and, er, the Moody Blues; the words of Goethe and the Gilgamesh; and the art of Braque and Picabia. The jury score the art and cake in each case. Finally, the expert witness steps up – Mrs Bell from the WI. She tastes all the cakes and gives each a score out of 100. Jameson performs some complicated maths and reaches the incontrovertible conclusion that the greatest work of art – as ranked by cake – is the Moody Blues. The audience finishes off the cake, reeling with sugar-induced early-onset diabetes but confident that a valuable lesson in philosophy has been learnt. Even if they are not exactly sure what it was. And that seems to be the way of Port Eliot.
Coming up later is more food, as Sam and Sam Clark of Moro restaurant demonstrate how to cook paella on a camping stove, then a festival-eats-itself moment as Glastonbury supremo Michael Eavis talks about his life and times, followed by a tasty session with Ralph Steadman dressed as Hunter S Thomson.
