From champagne and tiaras to rock.
The 'season' is now well underway and no doubt invites to summer corporate jollies have been flooding your way.
Or maybe not, in which case you might need to organise some entertainment for yourself – and the web can prove a good resource for finding the best event.
In recent years there has been a blurring of the boundaries between the official ‘season’ and some more alternative events.
It almost became a standing joke that Glastonbury had been taken over by the corporate world, but a couple of mud sodden years nearly put paid to that.
So which of the surviving big events has a suitably impressive web presence?
For the classically minded, Glyndebourne, the opera buff’s Mecca, has already kicked off. Its website (www.glyndebourne.com) is suitably classy, giving you a good feel for the festival, and it has plenty of details about the operas, performers and so on.
If you have any doubt about what you should wear, click on some of the photos and you soon get the picture. The site shows ticket availability, but does not allow online booking.
Once you have your tickets, which are selling fast, the site can help you organise your picnic – de rigeur for such an event.
If opera is not your thing, try looking at the V2001 site. Curiously located by the search engine at www.wembleytv.com/ v2001/index.cfm, the site for the twin music festival in Chelmsford and Stafford has all the information needed, but does it in a relatively unsophisticated way – it doesn’t seem to have been put together with much imagination – and we found an easier way to access the site through www.vfestival.com.
All the other summer music festivals have websites of varying quality, and nearly all have online booking facilities. It is worth going to one of the ticket agencies, such as www.ticketmaster.co.uk, who have links through to all the main festivals.
Moving away from music, one event that is proving very popular is the Goodwood Festival of Speed. The site, www.good wood.co.uk links through to the festival under ‘motorsport’ and turns into a petrol head’s heaven.
It has all the details of who will be showing up to race the short circuit, and includes an onboard video of an Aston DB1.
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The section for entertaining serves up the available options and tickets can be booked online. It’s a good site, let down by being part of a larger site.
The same is true for the BBC Proms site, www.bbc.co.uk/proms – again, very useful but trapped within the corporate style of the BBC’s site.
As such it is good, but you can’t help thinking that such an institution should be allowed to flex its own personality on the web.
Other sites worth a look include www.wimbledon.com, www.ascot-authority.co.uk and www.hrr.co.uk, home for a rather dull Henley Regatta website.
But if all else fails, go to www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk.
Glastonbury may not be happening this year, but the site is promising a ‘virtual’ festival online.
Perhaps it will come complete with virtual mud.
OUR TOP FOUR SITES
www.glyndebourne.com
Dust down your tiaras and dinner suits for a feast of civilised opera in decadent surroundings.
****
www.goodwood.co.uk
Go to ‘motorsport’ for the Festival of Speed, one of the top corporate days out for armchair petrol heads.
****
www.vfestival.com
The most corporate music festival could have done better. Still, they’ve got an impressive line-up.
***
www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk
Gone but not forgotten, the site promises to run its own ‘virtual’ festival online.
****.