And so, Sunday arrived, along with a feeling of sadness that the Isle of Wight Festival would soon be over for another year, combined with a wee bit of relief that we could get an early night on Monday.

The main act we were looking forward to on Sunday was not Biffy Clyro, Keane or Richard Ashcroft, though I have a level of interest in all of those.

No, the big event for us was Bjorn Again at 1.35pm on the Main Stage. 

For the last year, the first Mamma Mia soundtrack has been going round and round in my car, at the request of the children. They've never seen the film (I'm not sure they're ready for the saucy bits) but they still insist on every car journey involving Honey Honey and a medley of other Abba hits.

You'd think this repetition might be a bit much, but I've decided to embrace it. Whenever one of them was on the verge of a public tantrum over the weekend, I distracted them with a reminder that we would 'soon be seeing the Mamma Mia band'.

They were so excited by this, that I decided not to explain that it was a covers band. I've since wondered if I could get away with persuading them that Blackgang Chine is actually Disneyland, but perhaps that would be pushing it.

I danced awkwardly with the two year old as Bjorn Again worked their way through Dancing Queen, Take A Chance et al. Child one could probably have watched for another three hours, but it soon came to an end and we spent a happy afternoon trying on princess dresses in the Kidzone. Kudos to the dad who was there at the same time as us and managed to squeeze into a Snow White outfit designed for a nine year old.

Most remarkable in 2019 is that the weather held out. Sure, we had the odd smattering of rain but the site remained habitable thanks to a combination of Isle of Wight sunshine and lashings of wood chippings. 

Granny Guru is thoughtful enough to live in a house near the festival, and also willing to be on babysitting duty for the weekend, so we manoevured the children to bed and returned in time for a final evening. 

As Richard Ashcroft led us in a singalong of Bittersweet Symphony I began to get a little emotional about the whole thing. I didn't exactly start weeping in front of Mrs Guru, but I did feel a whiff of pride that the Isle of Wight manages to host once of the biggest and best festivals in the country, despite being a rather small place which didn't even get an escalator until the mid-90s.

Many of the UK's other big festivals from my youth have moved or disappeared (V Festival, Bestival and T in the Park most notably) but the Isle of Wight Festival has kept on bringing culture, jobs and attention to the Isle of Wight for which it deserves a heap of credit. 
​
Good job, Isle of Wight Festival. Good job (*sorry, got something in my eye*)

Here's one final selection of the 'official' photos from Isle of Wight Festival, featuring the likes of Richard Ashcroft, Biffy Clyro and Madness. 

Here's our selection of the official photos from day two of the Isle of Wight Festival 2019, featured Fatboy Slim, George Ezra and a couple of astronauts. 

Credit: Isle of Wight Festival

I'm always impressed with older people who are still going to festivals.

I don't mean people in their 50s and 60s, since that's neither old nor unusual nowadays.

I'm talking about the couples in their 80s who are still turning up and barging their way past you whilst holding two pints in plastic cups to get slightly nearer the front for Fatboy Slim. 

I like to think I'll be one of those people, although I've got to say it's not quite going to plan.

Mrs Guru and I have accepted that we generally need to get to bed by 10pm every night to allow for the usual 6am wake-ups and the occasional midnight call to deal with someone who is too hot, too cold or has an urgent question about why the sky is blue.

And so it caused a bit of a hoohaa when we realised that one of my favourite acts - Garbage - were due on stage at 11.45pm on Saturday night. 

"That's when they start?" asked Mrs Guru, who was doing calculations in her head about what time we'd get back and what time the children would wake up.

We concluded that Mrs Guru would sit this one out and I headed to the site to meet up with friends.

The evening raced by with George Ezra putting in a decent performance despite being 'dosed up on anti inflammatories' after a jogging mishap (one of the more wholesome drug-related stories you'll hear from a headliner).

Rather confusingly, the headliner wasn't on last, which reminded me of the decision to name the third tier of professional football as 'League One'.

After a few minutes of 80s anthems in the Electro Love tent we headed back to the Main Stage for Fatboy Slim who pumped out some banging beats like, er, an efficiently engineered Victorian pumping machine (note to self, don't apply for a job at NME).

Then it was time for Garbage, appearing at the festival for the first time. The band played a festival-friendly set, rattling through most of their best-known songs for just over an hour. In my head, I was 15 again, even if my body was telling me that it would really rather be tucked up in bed by now.

By the time I crept into bed, it was 2am. Not-enough hours later I was sat on the sofa watching CBeebies. Still, I concluded it was worth the struggle. 

​Perhaps when I'm in my 80s I'll be able to have a lie-in...

My photography skills are a little hit and miss. I occasionally get lucky, but only in the same way that a monkey with a camera would eventually produce something brilliant.

Thankfully, the good people at the Isle of Wight Festival have given us permission to share some of the highlights. 

​Here are Friday's photos:

Credit: Isle of Wight Festival

John Giddings must have had an exceedingly sore neck by the time we got to Friday at the Isle of Wight Festival 2019.

Throughout Thursday and Friday, the Isle of Wight's weather was teasingly indecisive. The festival's organiser has said in the past that he spends the preceding week constantly looking up for signs of rain which might pour on the festival.

I remained confident that the rain would stay away, based on a couple of the more favourable forecasts and a blind belief that the sun always shines on the Isle of Wight.

Sure, we had a couple of short showers in the campers' field on Thursday night and Friday morning (the only showers most people will have over the weekend) but by the time the main arena opened at 2pm, the weather was spot on. 

For the first time, we were attempting to take the whole family, including the darling daughters who are two and six. We are not the kind of parents who climb Kilimanjaro with young children, so this was a big deal for us. 

It started start badly, with the youngest falling over her feet in the queue and then taking great offence at having to wear a wrist band. Thankfully, she was calmed down by a tasteless rice cake and we were free to explore the site. 

I've said this before, but the Isle of Wight Festival has grown massively since the early noughties. I seem to recall (perhaps not completely accurately) that in the early 2000s, there were only half a dozen food outlets. The queues crawled all the way back to Nettlestone and they all offered a limited choice of chips or fries. 

Nowadays, the site offers trendy food I've never heard of and several rides that you shouldn't really go on after eating a spicy meal. There are many more stages than there used to be, and then there's the Kidz Zone where we spent most of Friday afternoon. 

Child one and two both joined in with the parachute games in the Kidz Zone without embarrassing us and then we spent a fair amount of time wandering the site whilst child one asked a series of questions I didn't know the answer to ("why is that man wearing an orange suit?" "why has that man got glitter in his beard?")

Granny Guru lives quite near the site, so after a couple of hours we decided to return home, put the children to bed and then come back in the evening without them.

And so we returned, just Mrs Guru and I, free to sip prosecco and enjoy the festival. 

It had been many years since Mrs Guru had been to the festival, so I began by taking her up the big wheel (ooerr...) whilst Lily Allen was onstage. The big wheel is an essential part of the festival experience for me, as it gives a chance ​to see the scale of the whole thing, and it's not massively expensive at £5, considering the location.

After failing to meet up with some friends and doing a little more wandering, we settled down for the Courteeners followed by Noel Gallacher's High Flying Birds.

The sun slowly set over the River Medina, I ate some curly fries with barbecue sauce and Noel Gallacher sang Wonderwall. 

What more could you want in your backyard, eh?