Festival No.6 kicks off in Portmeirion

Normally a festival pitches up and brings a whole new temporaryarchitecture to some ploughed field in the middle of nowhere and the tentsand pavilions and sound systems all look terribly exciting. Try to outdoPortmeirion, though, and you'd probably need the inflatable Taj Mahal totop this place.

So whilst Clough Williams Ellis smiles down from somewhere North ofSnowdon, Festival Number Six - probably the world's only festival namedafter an unnamed cult TV character - pitches up. Ironically enough,Patrick McGoohan spent 17 weeks of the Prisoner trying to escape, whereashere they queue up for the park and ride buses to get in.

One couple show me their defence against the weather - two pointyNorwegian hats. In the literary tent, 91 year old Harry Leslie Smith talksabout his experience of grinding poverty to an audience who've paid sixtyfive quid (plus booking fee) to get in. Echoes of music everywhere - Welshfolk, Italian retro funk - the ground vibrating to a heavy bass, twopeople teaching a slightly self-conscious crowd how to Lindy Hop

The man at the churro stand tells me how cut throat a market Mexicanstreet food is: a group of eighty year olds wander past and merge into aload of teenagers who've used Vaseline to cover their faces with glitter.People smile: the headliner's the spectacularly good(ish) weather.

And the quirkiness of an Italian village just east of Porthmadog and acrowd who've paid for quirk suit each other: where else and where bettercould you dance badly, fall slightly in love, or just enjoy a big, bigsky......