You’re not a millennial, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy festivals – follow this advice to ensure your dignity doesn’t desert you in a muddy field.

The great thing about being a man in your thirties or forties today is that, in real terms, you’re actually not that old. Certainly not compared to your dad when he was at the same stage in life. At your age, he was probably already into fusty homespun pursuits like owning a semi-detached house and raising a family, and if you look at photographs of him from this time you will observe that he exhibits the same kind of wise, craggy, weatherbeaten expression you tend to see in National Geographic portraits of tribal elders.

But you? You get to wear sneakers designed by Mr Kanye West and eat street food and have sex with people you met via a smartphone app. You’re able to eke an extra two decades out of your twenties because you moisturise and avoid wearing corduroy and cardigans, unless they happen to be “in”, in which case you do. Yet the longer your extended youth, the greater the risk of hubris: the possibility that, with one false move, you might expose yourself as an ageing try-hard. Nowhere is this risk greater than the summer music festival. It’s an absolute minefield for the discreetly maturing gentleman, so how do you survive without attracting sniggers?

About the queues for beer, or about the lack of shower facilities, or the sound balance at the main stage, or about headliners you’ve never heard of, or about how acts you cherished 20 years ago aren't being afforded the respect they deserve on the festival lineup, or about the litter, or about happy drunk people being happy and drunk, or about how commercial everything has become. Just button it, basically. People don’t go to music festivals to complain. Well, some people do. Old people.

It’s not an easy thing to accept, but the reality is that trying to go toe-to-toe with a bunch of 21-year-old girls at the bar, then on the dance floor, then at the bar, then on the dance floor again, then in a field with 24 cans of strong lager, then on the dance floor again will eventually break you. Young people – genuinely young people – have a capacity for idiocy that is frightening. So just imagine you’re playing after-work five-a-side: let the kids run around like maniacs while you stay calm and composed. You are Mr Andrea Pirlo, OK? No mad rushes of blood. And as you trudge back to your tent after deciding to call it a night, resist the siren song of the DJ tent as you pass by. Don’t just “pop in” to “check it out”. It will break you.

By rights, you probably shouldn't even really be here, so why draw attention to yourself by walking around shirtless or in a stetson or decked out as a slightly balding unicorn? You’ll probably just get photographed by some college kids and end up going viral on a Tumblr called “Creepy Old Men Of Music Festivals” or something. You’re never going to fool anyone into thinking you’re a rock star, but you might be able to convince them you’re a rock star’s manager or something. So it’s jeans. T-shirts. Sunglasses. And maybe a little bottle of hand sanitiser. Contracting norovirus? Not cool.