Low life | 3 August 2017

Five and the Red One are a German covers band. It’s probably the most uninspiring name for a rock band I’ve ever heard. Every July they come to the same French village for a one-off appearance and every year they play exactly the same set of rock classics. Young and old turn out to sing along and groove under the plane trees in the village square.

The village rock concert is Catriona’s social event of the year. She starts looking forward to it around Christmas. Every year, she pushes her way to the front and dances for two hours, and every year the village postman makes a move on her. Apart from the postman’s annual overture — she doesn’t fancy him one bit — it’s the best rock gig she’s ever been to, she says. They played again last week and I went with Catriona for the first time.

In the car on the way there she decided at the last moment that her knickers were going to be far too uncomfortable for the mosh pit, and she wriggled out of them and stuffed them in the door pocket. We arrived early. The stage was erected in front of the former public washhouse and beside it was a beer tent staffed by volunteers wearing commemorative T-shirts. Tots, children, adolescents, parents and grandparents were eating bratwurst and chips off polystyrene trays. That’s what Catriona likes most about the village rock concert, she says: it’s an old-fashioned family event. We ate the same and washed it down with a couple of beers, the latter served by the woman who presides, white-coated and sacerdotal, in the chemist, and who was now surprisingly informal and smoking a fag.

The solo warm-up act, an Irishman with a long beard, black T-shirt and a small, reversed black cap took the stage.