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)