No cycling this weekend...

I can't blame the weather. Alright, I can blame a week in Dusseldorf for taking it easy on Saturday morning, although I had planned to ride over Woodmansterne way to meet Bon. We hadn't arranged anything, but I could have called him or left a text and that way I would have committed myself. But I didn't call or text. In fact, sitting here now, at 1838hrs on a Sunday evening, Kylie Minogue performing at Glastonbury - "Put your hand on your heart and tell me" - I'm feeling a bit ashamed of myself for doing absolutely no exercise. I've slobbed about, I've taken the car over to mum's, eaten cake and biscuits, then changed a pair of trousers in M&S and there's not much else I can remember about Saturday.

As for Sunday, I had a golden opportunity to go cycling, but decided that a planned drive into darkest Sussex took preference and, ultimately, I kept the bike under lock and key. Once I'd abandoned the proper ride, which would have been to meet Bon on Woodmansterne Green, all that was left was riding the Woodland Trek. Well, I sent Bon a text, but he'd had a rough night and didn't fancy it. I texted back to say that I had some driving to do so perhaps cycling was a bad idea. Let's meet next Saturday, that seemed like the best policy.

Suddenly I felt 'off the hook'. I mooched around the house, still considering the aforementioned Woodland Trek, but time was ticking, time was running out. I didn't go anywhere, other than deepest Sussex in the car. On the way back I was feeling sleepy and had to stop in huge Tesco store in Pulborough where the shelves were empty in places. I bought a bottle of mineral water and a Bounty and miraculously I was able to drive again. This happened once before; I was feeling sleepy so I ate a Bounty and was instantly revived. Anyway, I got home otherwise I wouldn't be writing this. Kylie's still on and, to be honest, she's putting in a pretty lame performance. Even when Nick Cave joined her on stage, it was underwhelming.

Reading a great book at the moment, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs. Brilliant, but I'm only on Chapter Four so I'll keep you all posted. I'm also reading Another Fine Mess by Tim Moore, which is all about a journey across America, through Trump's America no less, in a Ford Model T.

What's happening in the world? The Tory party leadership battle continues with two contenders left in the race, the obese buffoon that is Boris Johnson and the slightly more palatable Jeremy Hunt. I don't want either to win, but if I had to make a choice it would be Hunt. Also in the news, a pregnant woman was stabbed and killed in Thornton Heath, near Croydon, Surrey. The baby is in a critical condition in hospital. I've mentioned Glastonbury. Last night's performance by the Killers was good, especially when the Pet Shop Boys and then Johnny Marr appeared, but I haven't really been watching it. Kylie is still on, getting emotional. Worse still, that awful Chris Martin has just joined her on stage. That bloke is always gate-crashing other people's acts and he's so boring, not very rock and roll is what I'm saying. Get off the stage, you cock! I can't stand him or Coldplay. One person we should all try to get out of heads and minds is Chris Martin, the cappuccino 'rocker', the skinny latte of establishment rock, the clean-cut nob cheese of popular music. Oh, I do hope Coldplay won't be performing, I really do.

Church bells are ringing out from the Glasto stage and Kylie's performance is now confirmed as absolute girly bollocks. Especially for you, I wanna let you know what I was going through...no!!! Anything but that song. I suppose Donovan will be waltzing on to the stage in a second, let's hope not. Look, I'm signing off, it's all too depressing.

To Flowers Farm...to discuss Glastonbury, charity songs and one minute's silence

There has been some extremely hot weather in the UK this past week. Some have likened it to the heatwave of 1976, which British people will never forget. When I jumped off the plane from Stockholm on Wednesday afternoon I was hit by the heat as if I'd just arrived in Athens or Malaga. It was oppressive and all week the windows of the house have been open throughout the night.

It's now Saturday, 1250hrs, and I've been back from the ride for a good three hours. The weather is still hot, but not as oppressive; it's not warm enough, for example to make sitting in the conservatory unpleasant.

Tea and cake at Flowers Farm near Godstone. Pic by Andy Smith

We rode to Flowers Farm for tea and cake and the ride was perfect, certainly on the way there, although the return journey was made all the more challenging by the huge hill that takes us from the farm all the way to the golf course at Woldingham. It's a long, hard slog peppered with patronising Lycra Monkeys. "Well done," one of them remarked as we climbed the hill and he rode down. "Fuck off, you ----!" is what we felt like saying, but it would have been most unsportsmanlike of us, so we both emitted an awkward and insincere laugh that roughly translated to 'Fuck off, you ----!' But it's water off a Lycra Monkey's back and in all honesty we're not really bothered. What gets me most is their shouting when a bunch of them hurtle down hill and spy a car approaching from the opposite direction. "Car!!!!"

We laughed off the lunacy of Lycra and continued on our merry way, parting company at the top of Slines Oak Road. Andy continued towards Wapses roundabout where he climbed towards Caterham-on-the-Hill, while I got my head down and tackled the mountain that is Slines Oak Road, emerging on the 269, turning left and heading for Warlingham and then Sanderstead. I reached home around 1000hrs and treated myself to a relaxing cup of tea.

While scoffing cake and drinking tea at Flowers Farm we chatted about all manner of roasted meats including how Glastonbury has become an establishment event reserved for those who can afford the extortionate price of what has become a kind of 'rite of passage' for young people, an event controlled by the establishment and no longer a hotbed of drug-taking subversity and anti-government feeling, but instead a kind of musical version of Wimbledon. Except that it's not Sue Barker telling us that Andy Murray is on Court One playing Federer, it's Jo Wiley, the eternal student, informing us that Radiohead is about to perform on the Pyramid Stage.

Outside Flowers Farm. Pic by Andy Smith

I like Radiohead, but why they used the occasion to 'get political' I'll never know. What's the point when you're playing at an event that has been hijacked by the establishment and where the audience largely consists of little rich kids whose parents voted Conservative and are probably back at the tent making a chick pea curry for supper? It's all so middle class. I found myself wondering what was left for the great unwashed and couldn't think of anything.

As if on cue a charity record came on the radio and Andy fidgeted uncomfortably. We both wondered why charity records have become so popular and how every disaster, natural or otherwise, has to have one. In the olden days there was no such thing as a charity record. I don't recall the Beatles and the Rolling Stones getting together to produce a charity record for the Aberfan disaster. And what about the Staines air crash or the victims of the Moors murderers or the Herald of Free Enterprise horror? But suddenly there's Cowell and Malone rallying the troops for yet another poppy show of low octane popsters wearing headphones 'in the studio' or singing in front of one of those huge, retro microphones. Give it a rest, guys.

I suppose if we're talking about charity records we might as well have a word about the one minute's silence. They seem to be quite common these days thanks to terror attacks and awful tragedies like the Grenfell Tower fire, but ultimately their potency will wane if we have one every week. Again, in the olden days the one-minute silence was reserved for armistice day, not everything bad that happens in the world. When will it end? And, worse still, who decides on what warrants a national one minute's silence? If we've done it for one terrorist incident, we've got to do it for all of them or somebody's going to feel that their tragedy is being downgraded.

It was time to leave and a punishing hill awaited us, but you've read about that already.

To the Tatsfield Churchyard to talk about Glastonbury and stuff...

Great weather – blue skies and sunshine – and Andy and I met on the green and decided to ride to the Tatsfield churchyard. Armed with tea and BelVita biscuits we rode along the 269 and discussed our working week and then, on reaching the churchyard, we parked up, sat on our bench and put the world to rights as usual. Today's topic was Glastonbury and after we'd exhausted the subject, we rode home and that was it for the weekend. I slept badly on Saturday night and so aborted in the early hours, sending texts to Andy and Phil. Andy had already aborted and Phil was glad that I'd aborted as he'd had a late night.

Sunday's weather was changeable – raining one minute, sunny the next – but we would have escaped a soaking. Not riding was good in a way as it meant a later start and a more leisurely breakfast.

At 10am I drove Phil over to our mate Dave's house to buy his Kona Smoke. I had brokered a deal whereby Phil bought the Smoke as Dave never used it and Phil needs a new bike. It all went smoothly and Phil rode back home on it. Now we all have Kona bicycles. I really ought to be a Kona salesman.

Getting back to Saturday's ride, here's roughly what Andy and I discussed as we sipped tea and munched our BelVita biscuits.

Has Rock and Roll finally died?
There's always a danger of sounding like your dad, whenever discussing how things used to be. Back in the day – and that's another sign, the phrase 'back in the day' – when I discovered rock music and being a 'yoof', I often heard my dad passing comment on the music I was listening to, along the lines of, "he can't sing" or "that's just a noise" referring, perhaps, to an album by Frank Zappa or Pink Floyd or The Clash. He would often hark back, longingly, to the music of his own youth – Bing Crosby and other crooners were name-checked alongside phrases like 'they don't make 'em like that any more'.

Library image of the Tatsfield Churchyard steps

In all honesty, I find myself doing the same thing and I think it's because we all have our moments in time, our eras, and somewhere along the line we turn a certain era into our default, boot-up setting, our home page, so to speak. There are people, for instance, who epitomise certain times – in my mind Dawn French and Ade Edmondson, for example, will always remind me of the 'eighties' and if you want to be a little more 'international' Don Johnson of Miami Vice fame would fit the same bill. There are loads of people who can be pigeon-holed this way, obvious ones being famous icons of popular culture, such as Mick Jagger and Twiggy who would represent the 'swinging sixties'.

But once past the 1990s – a decade characterised by 'Britpop' – we enter a bit of a cultural wilderness that cannot be defined by a specific type of music or a particular group of bands (it's populated by X Factor contestants and hip hop artists) and that means only one thing: there are no more 'tribes' or cults, such as teddy boys, mods and rockers, punks and hippies with their own attendant group of bands that somehow support the cause and provide countless songs that define the people who follow them – and introducing the age-old 'chicken and egg' argument (in this case what came first, the band or the cult they represented?).

It's the Glastonbury weekend and these days, like most things, the festival has been hijacked by the corporate world, which means it costs a fortune to gain admission. In short, like most festivals, it's no longer the home of the great unwashed, but a place where the washed and the well-educated can play-act at being part of a phenomenon that is long past its sell-by date. The great unwashed and the middle class bohemians are either dead, mad or vagrant – or they've grown up and live respectable lives – and the entire premise behind music festivals (and the music itself) is not only greatly diminished but, in a sense, pointless – a bit like Roger Daltry singing My Generation the other week on a one-off (but soon to be repeated) TGI Friday on Channel 4. When Daltry dies, thankfully, he'll definitely be 'old'.... and so will Pete Townshend.

Anthems of rebellion that might have resonated with somebody speeding their brains out in the mid-70s have somehow lost their potency in the 'sober' new world of today, bringing into question, perhaps, whether they were ever potent in the first place. In fact, the aforementioned anthems, when performed by now crusty old people who manage to retain a sense of youth by dying their hair and relying upon their hefty fortunes to fight the ageing process, are often viewed by the BBC's Glastonbury presenters with mildly amused nostalgia in memory, perhaps, of a time before Health & Safety and the nanny state.

Nineteen-year-old girls in 'shorty shorts' and Wellington boots are, in short, a contrived version of those who went before them and many – according to Mark Radcliffe on Friday – are simply apeing Kate Moss from a few years ago when she made a fashionable appearance at Glastonbury, possibly arm-in-arm with Pete Doherty. Doherty and Moss, incidentally, were pretty rock and roll and, arguably, kept the flame of yesteryear burning bright – because, like American comedian Bill Hicks used to say – I want my rockstars to rock!

In fact, that phrase, "...a contrived version of those who went before them..." encapsulates the problem of today's rock music scene.

As I write this, Lionel Ritchie is on stage at Glastonbury. Lionel Ritchie! Back in the day it would be unwise to admit to liking Lionel Ritchie. Only 'straight people' with aeroplanes all over their round-collared shirts and little in the way of street cred liked Lionel Ritchie! Now he's headlining the festival, albeit in a kind of "while we're all pretty wild rock and rollers at heart, we like to tone it down a little now and then and appreciate the dulcet tones of Ritchie" sort of way. Or perhaps, more alarmingly, he's just headlining the festival.

Perhaps I'm mourning the loss of my own youth, but that's not the whole argument. In fact, there are many points to be made. I've got mates who would still go to, say, an AC/DC gig. Why? Are they going to drink half a dozen pints of lager in the pub before the concert and then headbang their way through the gig in front of the stage? No, they're not. They will be way back in the auditorium, tapping their feet lightly... as if listening to Lionel Ritchie!

Then there's the question of whether today's bands are as good as those that went before them. I would argue no, they're not as good – but then, perhaps I'm starting to sound like my dad again. The last album I bought and enjoyed for all the usual rock and roll reasons was Nevermind by Nirvana and, around the same time, Troublegum by Therapy?.

Lastly, there's the lack of any discernible youth culture: teds, mods, rockers, hippies, punks. You only tend to see them at certain rock concerts. Where they go in between I don't know, but they're rarely seen on the streets. If there's no 'yoof' culture what is there to hang the music on?

Equally, who cares? Perhaps it's just a case of those days are gone for good, the festivals are now corporate affairs – in the same way that football matches are no longer about grassroots supporters – and, in short, everything is 'controlled' by the authorities (and Simon Cowell) and any sign of rebellion is beaten down with a stick. If that's the case then rock and roll is dead and probably has been for years and that makes festivals and rock music 'contrived' affairs, like boutique hotels, in the same way that 'cult movies' no longer gain cult status, as in days gone by, but are produced with 'cult status' in mind. Quentin Tarantino springs to mind.

And with that I must fly as the very last Top Gear featuring Clarkson, Hammond and May is about to be screened on BBC2 – yet another example of something good leaving the building, although word has it that once this last episode is out of the way, Clarkson and the team will set to work on a new show...