Sorry: long, self-indulgent and pearoasted...
"Gosh" exclaimed Moey, "I couldn't possibly".

"But you must" they chimed harmoniously "you simply must, it just wouldn't be the same without you".

"But, you just don't understand..." Moey tried to protest before cutting himself off. If he couldn't believe his own argument how could he possibly hope they would. He offered it anyway, but he knew it was weak and they knew he was going with them.

And so it was amidst a heady mix of excitement and anticipation that the gang clambered aboard their trusty chariot and waved merrily to the Hertfordshire boundary as they sped past it on route to the South West.

The sun stretched and yawned and raised itself from the previous night's rest, and the first evidence of their destination presented itself to the weary, happy campers. They'd driven through the night, pausing only briefly to fill up their surprisingly swift, but unmistakeably tatty Fiesta, and to top up the caffeine levels of their surprisingly tatty, but unmistakeably swift driver. After what seemed like an eternity, the car finally bounced unhappily through the empty field and each occupant questioned yet again whether the sign at the entrance really had said 'parking: £5'. Surely their collective sleep deprivation hadn't lead to a shared hallucination, and there was the vague memory of presenting a crumpled 'lady' to the crumpled gent on the gate. The sight of the solitary Golf sat in the distant corner soon reassured them and they abandoned the car alongside it and trudged back up to the main road.

"My word" Peter puffed as the tall fence loomed into view.

"Gee whiz" William agreed, "I shouldn't think I'd have the strength to scale that, not in a million years".

"I'm sure we'll find some assistance" hoped James. "There must be some kindly souls here about that could help us".

There were. For £5 a rope was proffered by a kindly Liverpudlian gentleman. They thanked him profusely, but continued their pursuit of an alternate option. One that would cost them less; at least £5 less. As they continued their circumference of the site they encountered numerous groups of terribly helpful and friendly chaps. Largely from Liverpool, each gentleman gestured toward a rope going over, or a hole snaking beneath the perimeter fence, and each one was willing to exchange its use for a small donation. Their persistence paid off, however, as free passage beyond the fence eventually became achievable, and as the last of them blew out a puff of air upon their impact with the soft ground, they felt themselves relax and finally able to take in the rare and unusual beauty that is the Glastonbury Festival.

It was 8 in the morning. The site was at its calmest as almost all the previous night's revellers had finally taken themselves to bed leaving only a few dazed and confused stragglers; lost, frightened souls who wanted nothing less than to have their hangover exposed to the bright morning sun. For our four, however, the absence of sleep was immediately forgotten and they bounced merrily through the haphazard tents, eager to begin properly the adventure they'd spent hours jabbering excitedly about.

[There now follows a montage from the point of view of Moey: the day flashes past in the familiar time-lapse style and the images become progressively blurred as the sun seeks solace behind the pyramid stage. Snippets of music interspersed with garbled speech, spat from increasingly gnarled and distorted grimaces offer a disorientating soundtrack. Eventually the underside of a van is briefly, if a little confusingly recognisable, before blackness descends over the screen and the gentle sound of light rain becomes the only sensory stimulant to remain].

"Where the fuck am I? What's crawled into my head and started punching my brain? And, ugh, what's that big face doing there? It's shouting at me. Now there are hands on me; what the fuck is going on here?" The snarling ape dragged me from my refuge beneath the van and continued making sounds. I didn't understand a word of it. I didn't really know where I was, and I definitely couldn't summon any words, so I just walked off and left him swinging his knuckles about the ground while squawking and bleating at the top of his voice.

The sun had risen, but its effect was dampened by the drizzle that just hung in the air and refused to finish its descent. It was 8 in the morning again and now I was one of those freaks, caught out by the early morning. Nowhere to hide from the brutality of my excesses and forced to stumble through the throngs of zombies, gripped by fear and loathing, my body in turmoil and my head wrecked and broken. I found conditions conducive to rolling a spliff by propping myself up against a wall and cowering beneath a small, plastic baby bath, but the cold air mixed with my soggy clothes and I had to keep moving in order to avoid freezing. I accidentally wandered into the path of my partners in crime and couldn't find the energy to berate them for not waking me (I soon discovered that they had no idea of my whereabouts after I'd staggered away before collapsing under the van) and we immediately decided not to prolong our agony, but to head straight out of the site and toward the shitty old Fiesta we'd arrived in just 24 hours earlier.
( Moey, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:45, Reply)

Some people wonder
Why there aren't more small music festivals around the place in summer. My dad used to help organize one, so I know why.

They are an Unbelievable. Amount. Of. Work.

The festival he used to be involved with was just a small, local affair - held in a local park, 2000 person maximum capacity with headliners who had been reasonably big in 80s. The site was perhaps three acres on a good day.

It cost £60,000 - £70,000 to put on.

There is no way that ticket sales will cover this. So they had to get sponsorship. Major, major sponsorship. Normally around £50,000 worth. When you live in rural Suffolk, this is incredibly hard. It becomes even harder to keep it going year after year.

Then there are the artists to book - you have to work out touring schedules, costs, travel expenses, VIP reception (which, take it from me, is a MASSIVE part of the whole operation. When you're working at full stretch already and Geno Washington turns up with 20 extra people you're not prepared for, you can't afford to piss him off), security fencing, security guards, overnight security guards, helpers, ticket prices and sales, promotion... The whole lot. My dad used to be in charge of sponsorship and ticket sales and he said he did the work of five men.

Then there's the council to get past. The amount of red tape they can throw your way is simply unbelievable. They demanded £2000 for the use of the park for two days (they never have any charge for its use the rest of the year), then they demanded that after the festival we should hire a road roller to flatten out all the bumps they imagined we would leave, and then they demanded another £2000 for the on-site inspection.

Oh yes. The on-site inspection and permit to hold the festival in the first place. Which can only be granted, you've guessed it, on the day of the festival. If there's anything wrong, the festival is delayed (never mind the bands set up on stage and the several hundred punters queuing outside the gates - you have to fix it).

An example of this pedantry comes in the form of the toilet trouble we had one year. The park had some small toilets but not sufficient for 2000 people, so we had to hire portaloos. It turned out, ten minutes before we were due to open at noon, that the inspector wasn't happy with the step up to the loos. It was too far away from the cubicles themselves, and people would have to step over a whole six inches of air to get to them. So we got out the sledgehammers. Turned out the thing was stuck, but fifteen minutes were wasted finding that out. We had to close down that row of portaloos and make the others unisex - something that caused a hell of a lot of trouble later that day when people started getting a few beers inside them.

Then, of course, there are the artists. When you've been big in the 80s, you expect to be treated like you still are. And God help you if you don't give them what they want. As mentioned above, Geno Washington was a particular problem. He once stopped his set and spent twenty minutes arguing with the sound crew (who, of course, always set up their ENORMOUS tent in the most infuriatingly inconvenient place) about why he couldn't have more volume on the foldback speakers - the ones at the front of the stage that let him hear what he sounds like. The answer was that he was a deaf old bugger and the level he wanted was causing horrendous feedback. But, of course, he wouldn't take that. Not that we put it in those words.

Assuming you deal with all the other problems, you've still got to deal with the organising committee itself, no two members of which are on the same wavelength. A case in point was the man in charge of booking the bands: PC.

Normally he did well - we had The Commitments, Showaddywaddy, Osibisa, Edwin Starr, Geno Washington and so on. Showaddywaddy were awful, the Commitments were brilliant - especially from backstage and feet away from the lead singer. But occasionally, PC would go off on a tangent. Like the time he booked King Prawn.

Sleepy little towns in the heart of rural Suffolk do not deal well with a lead singer shouting "This one's for all the kids out there!" (there were none) before launching into a song apparently called "I wanna smoke some shit". That was certainly the chorus. Apparently he'd wanted "to shake people up a bit". Well done PC, well done.

Then there's the clearup afterwards. You never truly appreciate how messy people are until you clean up after a festival. It takes all day if you're lucky.


The festival stopped a few years ago due to lack of sponsorship. I still get people asking me why it stopped. I list everything I've listed above, but it never quite seems to sink in.

It was an enjoyable few years and I miss the festival, but I don't think it'll be back...
( MatJ LOOK, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:35, 10 replies)

I'm quite old now
and the only way my friend got me to agree to go to any kind of festival was by offering to go in this: .

Fuck all that being young shit. we've got cash, and we can afford it. Plus, we're going to charge out the showers and toilets at a fiver a pop.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:34, 6 replies)

Glasto tickets? How much!?!?
During the "bliss" that was supposed to be married life I took £500 of my hard saved money and gave it to the wife with the instruction she pay off her maxxed credit card and close it as we were struggling a bit with money.

Imagine my joy when 2 days later I find out instead she's spent the lot on glastonbury tickets & other crap for herself (for just 4 days later) and expected me to stay home with our daughter while she spent 3 days getting pissed in a field and no doubt cheating on me.

Understandably we're now divorced.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:32, Reply)

Glastonbury '96? 97?
12 of us got in on two tickets, with one two-man tent between us, resulting in a medical need for constant recreational drug use over the three days.

Having discovered we both had the team gear, at one point I remember sitting in a field late at night with my passed out mate. I woke him up for a toke on the joint, then he did the same to me. I think that happened several times, and then I remember random strangers starting to kick us, and apologise ...

It turned out we'd passed out right in front of the main stage, and there was a well-formed mosh pit steadily growing - ever so politely - around us.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:30, Reply)

A match made in heaven
Me and some chums were at Reading, think it was 2003, when Metallica were headlining. It was the second morning and the hangover was setting in nicely and, as you do, we were drinking through it with gusto.

Then came the inevitable rumbles from our collective stomach's. We'd managed to pitch our tents in the middle of no-where and had to save our pennies for beer so buying food was out of the question. We did have enough pot-noodles to feed a small army though so all was well... except we didn't have any water.

Ho hum thinks I, and off I pop to the nearest 'water' dispensing garden hose they'd set up dotted about the place, only to be confronted by a queue at least 100 miles long. Fuck that for a laugh I'll improvise.

Get back to the tent and survey what we have, when the greatest thought of all time hits me...

Pot noodle = nice
Beer = nice

Pot noodle + Beer = Nice nice nice surely!



Oh how wrong I was, took ages trying to control the bubbling mess that resulted in heating beer on a stove, which just served to evaporate all the alco-mohol, leaving hoppy, yeasty water. I managed 2 mouthfulls and had to repress my vom with each one.

Never again
(Is this a good idea? ... Yes this is definitely a good idea, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:25, 2 replies)

Clean licence!
I went to reading festival quite a few years ago. It was a hot day, so we popped into town and bought some super soakers. Back at the festival we had a bloody good water fight, eventually involving random other people who happened to have water pistols.

My shorts got soaked, and so did my wallet. Inside the wallet was my driving licence, which back then was the old paper licence. The licence survived and was perfectly OK. But my 3 points were washed off!

Which was nice.

This was also the year that my friend got hideously drunk and lost his car keys, and we had to get the RAC out to break in and get the car started.

Which was not so nice.

Edit: Those are the best festival stories i have. That i can remember :)
( Lumpbucket tekcubpmuL, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:15, Reply)

Splodgenessabounds
Went to the Butlins Alternative Music Festival in Minehead, my first and only visit to a holiday camp. Not quite sure why it was called that as it featured reformed punk bands: The Damned, 999, UK Subs, Chelsea, Glen Matlock oh and Bad Manners.

Butlins in their wisdom decided that the camp should be open as normal with regular guests: chavs, old dears and families with kids all mingling with the couple of thousand punks. This in itself wasn't a problem only perhaps they should have warned the old dears that there would be no Redcoats singing Frank Sinatra in the main ballroom...

The first band up was Eater. "Fucking 'ell we're playing at Butlins" proclaimed the singer as they opened the set and he continued to ad lib as many "fuck"s and "cunt"s into the microphone as he could between songs, deliberately over-doing it for a laugh. One by one the old dears, the families and their kids filed out of the room tutting and muttering "it's disgusting".

The sound system there is fantastic. It was designed to make Shane Ritchie sound like Elvis so putting a decent band through it sounded incredible. The performances by Bad Manners and The Damned were the best I've ever heard and I've seen 100s of bands. Bad Manners were so good, so tight that the whole floor bounced in time to their music, you couldn't help but dance to it.

"A punk festival at Butlins, that can't pass without incident" I hear you say and you're right, Spoldgenessanounds providing the entertainment. Firstly their set. They decided to repeat the following words over and over whilst playing a Status Quo riff:
"A boring song
A boring song
I'm going to sing you a boring song
A boring song
A boring song
And it goes on and on and on and on and on"
This went on for about 20 minutes until the staff shut the power off. They carried on, just the drummer and the saxophone player so the staff pulled the curtain across the stage. It all went quiet then a big cheer went up as the saxophone player jumped through the curtains and carried on playing on his own until he was dragged from the stage.

Later that evening there was a big commotion on the site, the police and fire brigade had been called, one of the huts was on fire. Turned out Splodgenessabounds had set light to it and then fled from the site.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:12, 4 replies)

I got high and took a girls virginity in a tent.
The next year I went with Keza who I had met in the meantime.

The girl had been searching for me and on the second night found me.

Both Keza and girl were very cross with me.

I still have no idea what I did wrong! No-one was cheated on or lied to!
( Peej, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:11, 2 replies)

Quo
Quo should headline every festival.
( the RAND corporation a.k.a. Kevin Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:08, 1 reply)

La Tomatina
Don't, for the love of God, go to this festival.

The worlds largest food fight...La Tomatina is held in a tiny village called Bunol near Valencia. They defrost thousands and thousands of spanish tomatoes and pour them into the streets of the village using large trucks that barely fit down the narrow roads.

Being young and baulchy, I threw myself into it with youthful vigour. My excitement soon turned to horror as I crammed my way into the body filled streets.

First of all. The locals take pleasure in pouring buckets of water from their balconies onto the unsuspecting masses. Some even have hoses! The first time its quite refreshing (in 40 degree heat) the 20th time, it can get annoying!

Secondly, there are hoardes of burly spanish men who take it upon themselves to rip the shirts of the backs of unsuspecting tourists...male or female. Did I mention, the shirts are wet too. Have you ever had a wet shirt ripped off your back? It fucking hurts!

Then as the truck approaches, you have are forced onto the pavement with thousands of people and as it passes you become knee high in tomato juice and commence throwing. The texture is like stepping into the kebab you ate last night AFTER you have ejected it from you system and added rotting tomato sauce. The smell is similarly unbearable. The activity is dangerous and frantic. Also, some of the tomatoes are not properly defrosted and these particular tomatoes can cause serious injury.

Now half naked, bruised and covered in tomato juice you make your way out of the village only to discover that you have lost a shoe and the other is now unwearable.
Whats more; as the 40 degree sun rays burn tomato juice into your skin you realise that if you added a bit of mozarella, you would infact be a pizza. Only its a sweaty, out of date pizza.

Having said all this I loved it as it really was a once in a life-time experience.
(Eggstrovert isnt patronising you...honest..., Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:05, Reply)

I've never been...
...to a music festival. I'd like to though.

Well, that's as much as I have to add for this week :)
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:05, Reply)

Beautiful Days 2006
The last night of the festival and a bunch of people have already gone home. Not many bands left to play, so we wolf down the remaining hash truffles.

The next few hours are spent either giggling like school girls or bellowing with laughter like Brian Blessed as we sing lines from Shuttupayourface at each other.

Good times, good times.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 15:53, 7 replies)

Only in England
I was at the Leeds Fest riots in 2005. The Foo Fighters had just headlined the mainstage, and we were making our way back to the campsite totally shattered looking forward to a good nights sleep. As we got to the campsite however, it looked like downtown Baghdad. There were huge fires all over the place, with the sound of gas cannisters blowing up every few minutes. People were knocking down telegraph poles, and destroying tents. As I walked back I spotted the biggest looking fire poking up from behind a hill over in orange camp. I decided that would be where the best view would be and where if anything really interesting was to happen, it would happen.

I seated myself at the top of the hill looking down on the most tribal primitive and yet awesome site I had ever seen. There in the clearing were hundreds of people running and dancing around a huge fire made of what was once the cider tent, carling tent and a telegraph pole. One guy was playing the drums using two tent poles and the upturned kettel drum bins while everyone danced around the fire with glowsticks. There were people juggling fire, practising poi, and generally having a really good time. A Carling truck that was nearby had been broken into and was in the process of being relieved of all its goods. It looked like the apocolypse had come.

And yet...there in the middle of all of this chaos, we rioting Brits had formed an orderly queue to pillage the Carling truck. Even in the middle of a riot we had formed a queue as one guy grabbed 24 pack after 24 pack, and offloaded them to the waiting 'soon to be' drunks
( Furness, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 15:45, 10 replies)

Llowlands 2007
Was lovely, great bands, a bit cheaper than the UK festivals, and a bit safer, a 5g soft drugs limit, and most importantly, everyone was really nice.

I think the moment when I realised just how different the attitudes of our Dutch brethren are was when a bunch of English blokes were wandering along, one of them carrying a small section of those skinny tent poles you get. A charming young Dutch lady asked "Ooh, is that a magic wand jahh?", swivelling on his heel, and with a slight sneer, the fella with the tent pole replied "No! It's a hitting stick" and then proceeded to bash his mate in the head with it.
(LickOutTheJamsMotherfuckers!, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 15:21, 3 replies)

The Download '06 "riots"
Guns n Roses are a bit shit.
If you believe otherwise then you are a bit shit as well.

We were right by the road though campsite you had to walk though to get to many of the others.

They played Sunday night, main stage - the band to play out the festival sort of thing. I didn't even bother going, we just decided to sit at the tent and drink more cider.
From out tent we could just about hear the main stage to tell what song was being played, I believed they opened with a famous one (as you do) a short while after the first song a massive group of people walk past us singing some song about GnR being, like I said, a bit shit.

We thought nothing of it, and headed off to our new friends who were camped in the next field and stayed there until about 3am drinking our lives away, when one of my mates and I decided it was time to go to sleep.

As we walking back there was one of the previously singing guys with a group of people rocking an icecream truck to tip it over and there was a large amount of tents in our campsite on fire, with the occasional gas canister explosion going off. People still singing.
As we were outside our non-burning tent a guy came up to the bin next to us took the bag of rubbish out and walked off - we thought it an odd hour to be litter picking so we followed him in a suitably stealthy way, we got to the entrance to our campsite where he emptied the bag onto an already flaming pile of rubbish in the middle of the entrance, which security had blocked off.

Oh joy - Blocked in a burning campsite with hundreds of nutters.
We went back to the tent to sit it out - dodging the people who were in the process of bending all of the lighting posts down so if the police/fire engines/ambulances did manage it though the gate of flaming rubbish they wouldn't be able to drive to other areas.

We sat in the tent for a while attempting to sleep with one eye open to make sure nobody burnt us alive.

6am - Nothing is scarier than being woken up in an unburnt tent in a still-flaming campsite by a man with a thick northern accent shouting "RIOT POLICE!" and shaking your tent.

We got out and saw the armored police all in a line walking slowly towards us - big shields and big sticks hand - in front of the riot van which is driver OVER the lighting poles which had now been bent to the floor by security men in front.

"Oh whats going on over there?" we think stupidly.
Us trotting up to the police - we get to a few meters away and they start walking a little bit quicker towards us shouting stuff
We did the clever thing - turning and running - much to the amusement of spectators who had all done the same thing, who we joined at the roadside to watch many others do the same casual wander up then run-like-fuck in the other direction.
Some people not so clever - walk up to the police - keep walking and get arrested/beaten/bitten by a police dog.



To date, this is still one of the best things in my life even though I slept through "the best 2 hours of it", I'm quite glad I did, I have never been more terrified. One of my favorite memories that!
(ecilA Alice...has nothing to do, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 15:20, Reply)

Somewhere, Somewhere, Leeds United
I've been to Leeds the last three years (2006 for the Sunday, which was a shame as I really REALLY liked all the bands that weekend...but I was only ickle :( and the last two for the whole weekend) and I'm going again this year as a volunteer for Oxfam. Now, the first two years I was sober, which was interesting. There's not much to say about my first time, as it was only for a day and probably not the most exciting of events (though I remember seeing Dead Disco on the Unsigned Stage...that's Victoria Hesketh's, aka Little Boots, old band). Also saw the lead singer of Mystery Jets, though he was quite a way off and we decided it wasn't very nice to run after him (he has spina bifida)

Well. Those familiar with Leeds festival site will know, at least vaguely, the layouts of the campsites. There's Blue, close to the arena, Red, Yellow, Brown (hahahahahahahah) and Orange. Oh Orange. The main thing about Orange is the fact it's UP A FUCKING MASSIVE HILL. Seriously, it's a bloody steep angle, and muddy too. So on the last night of 2007, my (rather chemically altered) friends decided that it would be a good idea to toboggan down Orange Hill.
While pissed.
On an inflatable sofa.

Not the best story, I know, I might spend some time beautifully crafting a story about my Encounter With The Russian, or What I Gave My Best Friend For His Sixteenth Birthday, or maybe even the expanded Edinburgh Fringe Absinthe And Sobranie Saga.

Threadwaste. Sorry >_< But those going to Leeds, I'll tape the Furtive Bear to my head or something, so you know it's me ^_^
( Lampito rise with the moon, go to bed with the sun, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 15:19, 3 replies)

By request: Sarah Cracknell's crack
You don't turn down a freebie to Reading Festival, especially if it involves a backstage pass, allowing you to ignore all sorts of self-important people.

Every now and then, the rich and famous would emerge from their champagne-flavoured cocoon to go and see their mates play on the main stage. This involved negotiating a rather small gate "manned", for the want of a better word, by a pair of extremely hairy bouncers, whose sole mission in life was to ensure that the great unwashed remain outside.

I forget which band was on stage, but a large number of celebrities felt the need to get round the front and frug away like dervishes to the latest big name before they are consigned to the scarpheap of musical history.

Suddenly, the heavens opened and there followed a rainstorm of biblical proportions. These may have been hip young sounds, but the massed celebs weren't going to get soaked if they could help it.

Cue massed scramble for the tiny gate, where the gorillas slowly checked each and every VIP pass to cries of "Don't you know who I am?"

It was at that point that much of the talent had had enough and started to scale the ten foot fence that separated the plebs from the world of celebrity. An unseemly scramble followed as the rain pelted down on muddy VIPs, presenting a scene that would not be out of place on Takeshi's Castle.

Someone pointed out to me what could only be the delightful singer of the popular beat combo Saint Etienne scaling the fence in an energetic fashion, wearing nothing but a mini dress which left absolutely nothing to the imagination. She could have caught her death.

With a final heave, she and her initimate particles disappeared from view to a large cheer from the spectating hundreds.

I saw Sarah Cracknell's crack, and shall go to hell for it.

Superbly, the entire episode appeared as a news item in the following week's NME. I WAS THERE when history was made.

12-inch remix version: HERE
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 15:15, 1 reply)

Punk Rock
I'll be going to Rebellion in Blackpool, I go every year.

It's just like the festivals you kiddies go to with a few differences:

You'll be sleeping in a tent.
I'll be in a hotel.

You'll sleep in a sleeping bag.
I'll sleep in a bed.

You'll carefully hover over the portaloo toilet trying not to touch the mountain of shit sticking up through the seat.
I'll be reading the paper in the en suite.

You'll wash by squirting cold water over yourself with a hose.
I'll have a shower.

You'll eat burgers bought at rip-off prices from a bloke in a van.
I'll be perusing the menu in the restaurant.

You'll be dropping, snorting and smoking various substances.
I'll be drinking 4% strength lager and pacing myself.

You might not sleep all weekend.
I'll go up to bed when the miserable night porter refuses to serve us anymore.

You'll watch a mixture of big names and up and coming "essential" bands.
I'll watch a load of fat, bald, middle aged reformed punk bands.

You might get a shag off a pretty student.
I might have a wank whilst watching countdown.

I'm getting old, I'll be 38 soon you know.
( stopmeandslapme Cometh the hour, cometh your mum, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 15:14, 6 replies)

Repressed memories…
I was only 5 months old…my mum was taking me to town on the bus and I inadvertently unleashed a bowel splintering brown trout in my nappy. As my mum set about the arduous task of cleaning up my semi-explosive effluence she opened up my choc-full pampers to the sniffing public. Then, as the lingering honk began to waft mercilessly through the bus I clearly recall a woman giving me such a foul and angry glare that it instantly and permanently made me live in fear of all mankind from that day forth.

I’ve received a lot of bad stares since…but they were definitely my first-‘evils’…

What? It’s Thursday isn’t it?

Oh…sorry… wrong Thursday
(Mr Twisty Cheeky The worst kept secret in B3ta..., Thu 4 Jun 2009, 15:03, Reply)

download fest '07
Download '07 I lost:

My phone,
My wallet,
And My Digital Camera

and I managed to recover them all.

The Phone which i dropped somewhere infront of main stage I stumbled across half hour later without realising i'd even dropped it. but it was where i'd be laying not that long ago.

My wallet, I had out in front of me while i tried to work out my budget for the last day, and how much food and booze i could buy. one of the guys i was with who i didn't know, picked it up and asked who's it was, i was too busy snogging the girl i was hanging out with but didn't really know (at the time, and retrospectivally wished that hadn't changed)to notice his enquirie so he decided to take it to lost and found, Why he didn't just open the damn thing and look at the drivers licence I dont know! I had to go down to the lost and found and get it back, in the mean time getting seperated from the people i hardly knew and missing some band i didn't really care much about...

my camera I lost after getting extremly drunk and rolling around in the dark outside the tent of the previously mentioned girl. her over protective sister hears something and i have to leg it to avoid being caught. anyway after realising i'd lost my camera and having a lot more to drink i stumble back there and search on my hands and knees through the long grass... find it and cry out in success, only to alert said over protective sister to my presence... my excuse for the noise was "I'm sorry was just getting my camera that i dropped earlier when i was over here with "... she was not best pleased and later on i was woken up my the sound of my tent being disesembled with me in it...

that was at the time the best weekend i'd ever had, download '08 was a blast too, though my friends phone did get stolen out of her tent while she was in it... next week is download '09 and I can't wait.
(That Random Guy, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 15:01, Reply)

2 weeks in 1 answer.
Stumbling around with the late night Glastonbury revellers I was watching faces and doing my best to stay upright. I felt bad. Over-the-top-drink-&-drug-consumption-gone-horribly-wrong, bad and I thought for the world that no one could be feeling worse than I.

Then I saw the face with the uncontrollable jaw shiver. The bare shoulders revealed themselves next and these were quickly followed, as a gap appeared in the downpour of stumblers, by an absolute absence of clothes.

This poor lad had, by some means unbeknown to anyone, most likely including himself, lost every stitch of clothing that I assume, or at least hope, he'd set out with earlier that evening. And he was horribly twisted to boot.

I felt better after that. I may have been ripped beyond the tits on a pointless concoction of drink and drugs. I may have been lost, dazed and very confused, but I was clothed and I was warm and I didn't have everyone else pointing and laughing at my shrivelled beef baton.
( Moey, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 14:55, Reply)

NSDF again
There is always something a little strange about students, and something even stranger about drama students. Stranger still are the technical drama students.

Clad only in the cheapest black's Primark sell, a small workshop jangling on their belts as their steel toe clad feet tramp the corridors of Scarborough's finest educational and entertainment venues, these are the people who build and run the theatres the festival operates in. They arrive two days before any of the actors and leave long after in order to take the stages down and clean up all the residual detritus. Wielding large pieces of metal, shifting files upon piles of deck off one truck and in to venues, they make it all look pretty and sound like harps plucked by angels with only a t-shirt and a couple of venereal diseases as a reward. Oh, and they pay to do this.

So, the tech crew are the strangest of the stranger of the strange.

It's 2am. Everyone sensible is in bed. Not us though. We're in the venue attempting to turn it around. A late finish and problems with the lifting machinery mean we didn't get in to start it until 10. Normally, we can turn around any venue in under an hour providing you have the right team - this wasn't the right team. Tired, hungry and lacking in beer, the night has been full of petty squabbles. Voices have been raised, ajay's have clashed and the less said about where the scaffolding nearly went, the better.

Tea break comes. Along with the usual tea comes a special treat - Jaffa Cakes! Jaffa cakes hold a special reverence with the tech crew. They are the reward for a job well done, a bonding experience as each member shares their own secrets for how to be nibbled away to reveal only the smashing orangey bit. A couple of people toddle off to the toilet, then it's break over and back to work.

Crew is behaving much better, all problems are solved quickly and we finally get the venue set up the way it need's to be. The only thing I have noticed through the night is one of the girls was looking more and more uncomfortable as the night progressed. She had the figurative ants in her pants - constant fiddling, trying to get comfortable.

Everyone is kicked out, a couple of people slip off to the toilets again including aforementioned lady. Doing the final check of the building to make sure everyone is out, I spot an uneaten jaffa cake in the corridor. Bonus! Go to pick it up - ewwww, it's soggy. Some disgusting bastard has licked it and left it for me to find. Quickly throw it in the bin and leave.

Under the streetlights I noticed my fingers were a bit of an odd colour. Gave them a sniff. Slightly orangey, smell a bit of paint and something else... something a bit metallic. Lick fingers. Very metallic. Must be from my tools and the scaff - I've been handling metal poles all day. Then I noticed a small group of girls huddled slightly away, including Ms Uncomfortable, and just caught a snippet of their conversation as I walked by.

"... yeah, thanks for the pad. I don't know why I came on so early. Don't know how I've going to get all the crumbs out of my fanny though."

Look my at fingers. My red fingers. Shiiiiiiit.
(Potty Jag har smör i min rumpspringa, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 14:53, 6 replies)

How 'bout Renaissance Faires?
Ever been to one? They're full of awesomeness. Loads of people dressed up in bizarre outfits, women in low cut bustiers showing impressive cleavage, all manner of hand crafted stuff for sale, tons of food and beer and wine available around every corner, jousting, jugglers, mimes on stilts, comedy acts, music, and general weirdness everywhere.

The one they hold in Crownsville MD is one of the biggest in this country, and every year the Mediaeval Baebes perform on the last weekend. I've made it there for the past four years and had a blast every time. There was only one time I really got a dirty look from everyone in the area...

There was a Live Chess match, in which costumed actors were arranged as chess pieces on a large grid. It was presided over by "Queen Elizabeth" and the Royal Entourage, and featured the players having rather energetic duels when two pieces came together with swords clanging and maces bouncing off of shields and other violence. At the end of the show the victor was declared and the Royal Entourage was leaving, so the shouty guy who made all of the announcements roared out "God save the queen!"

And from the back of the crowd came a lone voice roaring back "We really mean it, maaaaaan!"

My kids stayed well away from me for a while.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 4 Jun 2009, 14:48, 6 replies)

Tie your shoelaces TIGHT!
At Glastonbury '95 I was right at the front for Oasis and I was being crushed to death. At some point my right trainer was yanked off so I rammed my foot down and pushed my foot back in, it didnt feel right but I was more concerned about not dying under a sea of Oasis fans. When it was all over I staggered into the light of a beer tent and looked down. On my left foot I had my black Nike trainer as expected, but on my right foot I had a white adidas trainer, a LEFT white adidas trainer.

Early the next morning I wandered down to the stage to search for my missing trainer. There were dozens of lost shoes lined up at the front of the stage, even some complete pairs. I couldnt find my missing Nike so tried on some other shoes, none fitted as well on my right foot as the left adidas I had acquired. I spent the next 2 days wandering around with 2 left feet keeping an eye out for someone with 2 right feet.

I don't even like Oasis.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 14:44, 4 replies)

You can keep your festivals
I realised something might be wrong with me upon realising that (at 20 years old) a ladies magazine summed up my attitude to festivals. My lady flatmate had a copy of "Red", with a cover sub headline that read:

"What do you mean there are no showers!?"

Anyways, I hate summer. And crowds. And people in general.
( The Vomiting Hitchhiker Mephistopheles is such a mouthful in Manhattan, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 14:37, 2 replies)

Longdrops of DOOOOOM!
Festival toilets. What a beautifully horrific thing they are. Closer to the stages you are safe with a (relatively) shit free portaloo, closer to the camping however one has to face the Longdrops of DOOOOOM!

My first experience at download '06:

My friend tried to prepare me for them, mostly her repeating
Whatever you do, try your hardest not to look"

Walk towards longdrop, can smell them halfway across the campsite due to it being the hottest weekend of the year.
Icecream van parked right next to them. TASTY!
Loo rolls hanging on string before you go in. There is a drunk bloke pissing ON the loo rolls.
Find a free cubicle AAAARRRGGHH! the horror! I've seen some shit filled portaloos before but nothing can prepare you for that huge vat of excrement and the splashing noises you hear are the person next to you goes for a dump.

I saw:
3 Jumpers
1 Pair of trainers (and 3 or 4 odd shoes)
A tent
A bloke's wallet - it had landed on the shit free support holding the loo up, but to retrieve it would mean going in.

What I did not see:
The (probably not real) man dressed as a pirate wearing wellies, trudging around the poo and sticking his head up through the occasional loo seat and shouting "POP UP PIRATE!"
I think my friend may have lied to me about that bit
(ecilA Alice...has nothing to do, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 14:35, 6 replies)

Glastonbury 2005
The storm. The rain. The flooding.

Everything pailed in comparison upon seeing one man wade through waist deep water, find his tent and dissapear, followed by an excalibur-like rise from the deep, a crate of lager upon his head.

After that nothing got me down all weekend.

For those not there...

( useless_rocker twitter.com/phillipteague, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 14:33, 10 replies)