So you have your ticket that you've blown your monthly rent on. You have your tent that smells like a combination of deodorant, old alcohol and grass. You have your outfits. Your essentials include wellies, dry shampoo, crate of beer/cider, chairs, crisps, toothbrush etc and you are eeeeeeeeking with the excitement of it all. But when you stop and actually think about it, I mean really think about it, are festivals really all they are cracked up to be?
Sorry for making you even question the national debt of a developing world country you spent on your precious three-day festival ticket, but I want you to open your mind to this one. How many other occasions in life would you willingly spend that amount of money to sit in a glorified field in the rain with 80,000 people with mud and queues and overpriced food listening to some questionable music? Lets face it, like most things in life,you have very high expectations of festivals. For the weeks leading up to the festival weekend, the papers, the websites, the news feeds, the Tweets are going spare with updates and changes and stages etc You cross off, mentally or physically, the artists that you want to see, going over in your head how you can see one band, but squeeze in that poetry reading that's happening half an hour before the band end. But this almost never happens, if you, like me and most other people, are into a variety of different things that are happening that weekend, your artists and interests will be spread far and wide. Too far and too wide for you to actually get in on the proper action. For when the first band you want to see are really getting their set going and getting everyone into it, that two man play you read the review about is happening in the forest part behind the portaloo's, and your favourite baked potato place is only open for another hour. The quandary! With that in mind, you've learned your lesson for the following day. Pick and choose a few that are evenly spaced out so that you can get up and properly attired for the day ahead. Packing your bag with your cans or bottles, you head off to the first choice. Only for them to be on at 2pm in the day. Which in fairness, feels a bit wrong to be dancing like you are having a fit in broad daylight. And lets face it, the sound isn't really that amazing. In fact, who the Hell put Sigur Ros on an outdoor festivals's line up anyway? They don't normally sound like this. But then when you are listening to them, its usually at home, in your own cocoon room with the dim light of a candle glowing. Not exactly going to light a fire in the bellies of those standing around in a hilly field on a Saturday afternoon. You had arranged to meet friends after this actually hadn't you?
Oh good luck with that. Unless you had this planned with military precision, there's not a hope in Hell you will actually find them when you go looking. Your mobile phone won't work, and if there is a spark of reception going round, theirs probably won't have any. And your battery is just about to die. And its going to take you half an hour to get to them, which by that time they'll have given up on you and have moseyed on down to the dance arena.
By that late afternoon, you are beginning to lag a bit, and want to eat something, just something simple like a rasher sandwich, or some toast or something. Can you find it? Nope. I can find you fresh guava juice pressed by the soles of virgin monkeys high up in the Tibetan Alps, but no actual white bread. Bad for the soul maaaaaaaaaaaan, why do you insist on eating bread full of bleach that kills children in developing countries! Because damnit it tastes nice, and after the Friday I had of wrecking myself down at the BodyTonic arena, I deserve a white bread sandwich. But you won't find it. You can find thai green curry in a recyclable box with ethically sourced chop sticks, but not a battered sausage. Who goes to a festival to eat properly? Who goes to eat at all! But still, you queue, and you pay over the odds for a, ahem, meal and head back into the mêlée. Thinking its time you had a snooze, you decide to venture back to the camp-site, making your ways past the circle of tools hammering on bongos since Thursday night. Why oh why is there always a circle of tools hammering on bongos at every festival. If you are a bongo player, would you cart yours down to a festival site? Really? Anyway, to Tent City!
Drawing nearer to where your worldly possessions are left basically wrapped in a piece of fabric for almost 100,000 people to quite easily go and steal right under your nose, you get this whiff. Just a tainted smell of something in the wind...its musty, like old boots. And its earthy, like soil in your hands. And the merest hint of eau d'urine. Then it clicks. That's camp site. That's where you live until Monday. Whatever sun you woke up to that morning when you were nursing your twenty-four hour Friday binge is now baking the mud surrounding the tents, giving it that lovely country smell, in otherwise, of shite. Gingerly (or not, depends on your stamina, time of day, and alcohol intake) you step through the tents, inevitably falling over and onto one. Muffled curses come from the crypts and you dole out the apologies. Cans, bottles, cigarette butts, skins, fold up chairs, lonely wellies, crushed tents and bodies block your way. But finally, you see your temporary home and make a beeline for it. 'cept it's not actually your tent. It looks very much like it, but it was the only one on sale at Argos for under twenty quid so it's possible that someone else in the country bought the same one. Swinging your head side to side, you spot at least five more similar ones. You also spot at least five more people in the same meerkat stance looking around vaguely for a tent that they thought they recognised. Once you actually locate your tent, you realise that you are not going to get any sleep, as a) someone has already beaten you to it and is currently KO'd in your place b) someone has weed all over it and you cannot go near it c) someone has stolen it. Delightful. I once saw a tent in the car park of the Electric Picnic making a break for freedom at 8.30am on the Monday morning in a tumbleweed motion down the field. Was anyone bothered or running after it? Nah, twas Monday, saved them packing it away.
Getting up from your peaceless slumber, you're ready to throw yourself back into the party, having properly arranged to meet your friends somewhere. But when you wake up, that nasty rain shower may have passed, but you were on a different planet when throwing yourself into your tent, that you left your shoes outside. They are now damp, squelching and a bit miserable to have to stand about it. By this time you're feeling just a little bit shit, the booze has worn off, your joy at being at a festival has dipped below the enjoyment line, your feet are cold, your tights have snagged, your hair is limp and you have ran out of cigarettes. What is a person to do! Pay a tenner for a souvenir metal box of ten ciggies? No, go and scab them off random other people, unless you have had the foresight to stock up and buy up all the Marlborough lights in your local shop. And as a smoker, you feel bad for scabbing. No one likes a scab, especially at a festival when the delights are hard to come by and are protected by people more fiercely than the treasures of the Sierra Madre.
With the days entertainment officially over, people go en masse back to the campsite, where the after party's are in full swing. How people have the energy to keep the tunes blaring til six am is beyond me, but they do.More technical equipment than the main stage is somehow plugged into a randomers camper van and whether or not you want to, you are invited to the after party of the weekend, the soothing sounds of pounding techno blasting across the site, what fun!
But you somehow get to sleep, in the midst of Jonny Took Too Many Pills yapping away to himself and the trees and the neighbouring tent holding some bongo playing competition and the person across from you getting to grips with a blow up doll, you drift off. Only to be woken at an ungodly hour to face the final hurdle. Emerging from your tent, you don't know what time it is, your phone died along with the other festival goers, no one really knows if they should start drinking now, or leave it til they feel its a respectable hour. Blinking in the morning sun, your eyes adjust themselves and you see things clearly in the campsite. For me, the third and final morning of a festival is what I imagine End of Days will be like. The great unwashed are roaming around with a hunger in their eyes and a fag in their hand, bodies are strewn in the pathways between the tents, tribal beats are emanating from somewhere in the far yonder, a tent is ablaze on the horizon, helicopters fly over head to take the hoi polloi away from this godforsaken place, faces streaked with dirt, people with butts hanging off their cheeks from where they fell asleep in the gazebo, a universal moan is coming from all around as people wake up in various states of come downs and hangovers, and the place reeks. But you rally around, you decide that your new best friend is the guy roaming around with the giant tea urn who might as well be riding around on a white horse saving people from the depths of despair by offering caffeine into their hands for an actual reasonable price. Today will be different, today will be a pure day, you might even get a massage, or a juice, or you might just tear the arse out of it and start as you mean to go on, by drinking that bottle of Buckfast you have managed to sneak in. To Hell with it, Buckfast Avenue is where it's at. You know how the day pans out, so I won't bore you with the details. Come midnight that night, the weekend draws to a close. You lament over your last can of the acts you didn't get to see, of the friends you arranged to meet but never got around to, the food you wanted to eat versus the food you actually ate, the money you spent on nothing, and long drive home, as no one really lives beside a festival site. Times like these, I am glad I don't drive, leaving the hard work to someone else, mu ha ha ha!
In hindsight, best effing weekend EVER! I for one will be there next year, yeah I'll give you a shout, I'll be the one in the Trilby hat with the bottle of Buckfast and the green wellies, meet you in the woods yeah?
Sorry for making you even question the national debt of a developing world country you spent on your precious three-day festival ticket, but I want you to open your mind to this one. How many other occasions in life would you willingly spend that amount of money to sit in a glorified field in the rain with 80,000 people with mud and queues and overpriced food listening to some questionable music? Lets face it, like most things in life,you have very high expectations of festivals. For the weeks leading up to the festival weekend, the papers, the websites, the news feeds, the Tweets are going spare with updates and changes and stages etc You cross off, mentally or physically, the artists that you want to see, going over in your head how you can see one band, but squeeze in that poetry reading that's happening half an hour before the band end. But this almost never happens, if you, like me and most other people, are into a variety of different things that are happening that weekend, your artists and interests will be spread far and wide. Too far and too wide for you to actually get in on the proper action. For when the first band you want to see are really getting their set going and getting everyone into it, that two man play you read the review about is happening in the forest part behind the portaloo's, and your favourite baked potato place is only open for another hour. The quandary! With that in mind, you've learned your lesson for the following day. Pick and choose a few that are evenly spaced out so that you can get up and properly attired for the day ahead. Packing your bag with your cans or bottles, you head off to the first choice. Only for them to be on at 2pm in the day. Which in fairness, feels a bit wrong to be dancing like you are having a fit in broad daylight. And lets face it, the sound isn't really that amazing. In fact, who the Hell put Sigur Ros on an outdoor festivals's line up anyway? They don't normally sound like this. But then when you are listening to them, its usually at home, in your own cocoon room with the dim light of a candle glowing. Not exactly going to light a fire in the bellies of those standing around in a hilly field on a Saturday afternoon. You had arranged to meet friends after this actually hadn't you?
Oh good luck with that. Unless you had this planned with military precision, there's not a hope in Hell you will actually find them when you go looking. Your mobile phone won't work, and if there is a spark of reception going round, theirs probably won't have any. And your battery is just about to die. And its going to take you half an hour to get to them, which by that time they'll have given up on you and have moseyed on down to the dance arena.
By that late afternoon, you are beginning to lag a bit, and want to eat something, just something simple like a rasher sandwich, or some toast or something. Can you find it? Nope. I can find you fresh guava juice pressed by the soles of virgin monkeys high up in the Tibetan Alps, but no actual white bread. Bad for the soul maaaaaaaaaaaan, why do you insist on eating bread full of bleach that kills children in developing countries! Because damnit it tastes nice, and after the Friday I had of wrecking myself down at the BodyTonic arena, I deserve a white bread sandwich. But you won't find it. You can find thai green curry in a recyclable box with ethically sourced chop sticks, but not a battered sausage. Who goes to a festival to eat properly? Who goes to eat at all! But still, you queue, and you pay over the odds for a, ahem, meal and head back into the mêlée. Thinking its time you had a snooze, you decide to venture back to the camp-site, making your ways past the circle of tools hammering on bongos since Thursday night. Why oh why is there always a circle of tools hammering on bongos at every festival. If you are a bongo player, would you cart yours down to a festival site? Really? Anyway, to Tent City!
Drawing nearer to where your worldly possessions are left basically wrapped in a piece of fabric for almost 100,000 people to quite easily go and steal right under your nose, you get this whiff. Just a tainted smell of something in the wind...its musty, like old boots. And its earthy, like soil in your hands. And the merest hint of eau d'urine. Then it clicks. That's camp site. That's where you live until Monday. Whatever sun you woke up to that morning when you were nursing your twenty-four hour Friday binge is now baking the mud surrounding the tents, giving it that lovely country smell, in otherwise, of shite. Gingerly (or not, depends on your stamina, time of day, and alcohol intake) you step through the tents, inevitably falling over and onto one. Muffled curses come from the crypts and you dole out the apologies. Cans, bottles, cigarette butts, skins, fold up chairs, lonely wellies, crushed tents and bodies block your way. But finally, you see your temporary home and make a beeline for it. 'cept it's not actually your tent. It looks very much like it, but it was the only one on sale at Argos for under twenty quid so it's possible that someone else in the country bought the same one. Swinging your head side to side, you spot at least five more similar ones. You also spot at least five more people in the same meerkat stance looking around vaguely for a tent that they thought they recognised. Once you actually locate your tent, you realise that you are not going to get any sleep, as a) someone has already beaten you to it and is currently KO'd in your place b) someone has weed all over it and you cannot go near it c) someone has stolen it. Delightful. I once saw a tent in the car park of the Electric Picnic making a break for freedom at 8.30am on the Monday morning in a tumbleweed motion down the field. Was anyone bothered or running after it? Nah, twas Monday, saved them packing it away.
Getting up from your peaceless slumber, you're ready to throw yourself back into the party, having properly arranged to meet your friends somewhere. But when you wake up, that nasty rain shower may have passed, but you were on a different planet when throwing yourself into your tent, that you left your shoes outside. They are now damp, squelching and a bit miserable to have to stand about it. By this time you're feeling just a little bit shit, the booze has worn off, your joy at being at a festival has dipped below the enjoyment line, your feet are cold, your tights have snagged, your hair is limp and you have ran out of cigarettes. What is a person to do! Pay a tenner for a souvenir metal box of ten ciggies? No, go and scab them off random other people, unless you have had the foresight to stock up and buy up all the Marlborough lights in your local shop. And as a smoker, you feel bad for scabbing. No one likes a scab, especially at a festival when the delights are hard to come by and are protected by people more fiercely than the treasures of the Sierra Madre.
With the days entertainment officially over, people go en masse back to the campsite, where the after party's are in full swing. How people have the energy to keep the tunes blaring til six am is beyond me, but they do.More technical equipment than the main stage is somehow plugged into a randomers camper van and whether or not you want to, you are invited to the after party of the weekend, the soothing sounds of pounding techno blasting across the site, what fun!
But you somehow get to sleep, in the midst of Jonny Took Too Many Pills yapping away to himself and the trees and the neighbouring tent holding some bongo playing competition and the person across from you getting to grips with a blow up doll, you drift off. Only to be woken at an ungodly hour to face the final hurdle. Emerging from your tent, you don't know what time it is, your phone died along with the other festival goers, no one really knows if they should start drinking now, or leave it til they feel its a respectable hour. Blinking in the morning sun, your eyes adjust themselves and you see things clearly in the campsite. For me, the third and final morning of a festival is what I imagine End of Days will be like. The great unwashed are roaming around with a hunger in their eyes and a fag in their hand, bodies are strewn in the pathways between the tents, tribal beats are emanating from somewhere in the far yonder, a tent is ablaze on the horizon, helicopters fly over head to take the hoi polloi away from this godforsaken place, faces streaked with dirt, people with butts hanging off their cheeks from where they fell asleep in the gazebo, a universal moan is coming from all around as people wake up in various states of come downs and hangovers, and the place reeks. But you rally around, you decide that your new best friend is the guy roaming around with the giant tea urn who might as well be riding around on a white horse saving people from the depths of despair by offering caffeine into their hands for an actual reasonable price. Today will be different, today will be a pure day, you might even get a massage, or a juice, or you might just tear the arse out of it and start as you mean to go on, by drinking that bottle of Buckfast you have managed to sneak in. To Hell with it, Buckfast Avenue is where it's at. You know how the day pans out, so I won't bore you with the details. Come midnight that night, the weekend draws to a close. You lament over your last can of the acts you didn't get to see, of the friends you arranged to meet but never got around to, the food you wanted to eat versus the food you actually ate, the money you spent on nothing, and long drive home, as no one really lives beside a festival site. Times like these, I am glad I don't drive, leaving the hard work to someone else, mu ha ha ha!
In hindsight, best effing weekend EVER! I for one will be there next year, yeah I'll give you a shout, I'll be the one in the Trilby hat with the bottle of Buckfast and the green wellies, meet you in the woods yeah?
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