It’s music to the ears of the festival faithful

News that Victorious could be back on the summer calendar will be music to the ears of many a festival fan deprived of live entertainment. The organisers of Wickham Festival announced this week that their event would go ahead and the huge Reading and Leeds festival followed their lead.

While we await a formal announcement on Victorious (and the Isle of Wight Festival) the omens are good, and confidence is high.

Under the government’s plan, limits on social contact in England could be gone by Midsummer’s Day, June 21, if Covid is under control.

While nothing is certain, the steady stream of cheerful downward green arrows on our daily Covid briefing table shows things are moving in the right direction.

The UK government had previously revealed plans to vaccinate every adult by September, but this target has been changed to July — and as of yesterday evening more than 18m people had received their first jab.

As we know, the vaccine takes a few weeks to build a level of immunity in the system, and, even by August, there may well be the need for precautions and a degree of care to allow a mass gathering like Victorious to go ahead.

After the year we have all endured, it seems hard to believe that good times and the heady days of summer are within touching distance.

Many may still be wary of allowing mass gatherings like Victorious to go ahead, but we must emerge, blinking, into the post-Covid sunlight at some point, and August is still more than four months away.

The audience is there, the logistics are achievable, and the organisers will move heaven and earth to make it happen if they can.

We hope they succeed and that dreams of music, laughter and friendship in the summer will come true.