I went to a festival this weekend!  This presented a number of challenges:

1. My sister, her boyfriend, my niece…
2. … camping…
3. … in the same tent…
4. … a terrible weather forecast…
5. … my impending period…
6. … chemical toilets…
7. … recent withdrawal of nicotine…
8. … thousands of people…
9. … all sorts of other unknowns…
10. … my natural tendency to get extremely stressed due to all of the above

The festival started on Friday, taking place about an hour’s drive away in Cheshire.  The rain was due to start at about 8.30am, so I’d suggest we set off before 7am to give us chance to get there and erect the tent before the weather took a turn for the worse.  I got to my sister’s for 7am… we left at 8am, in separate cars.  As the motorway took me into Warrington, the spots of rain started to hit my windscreen.  I pulled my windscreen wiper down a notch, altered the control speed: intermittent slow; intermittent intermediate; intermittent fast; down again to full on.

My mood undampened by the weather, I arrived at the festival buzzing with excitement where I was guided to the furthest possible parking space from the entrance to the festival campsite.  It was pissing it down.  I phoned my sister to see how far away they were.  “We missed the exit from the M56 and now we’ve come to day parking instead of festival camping”.  I hung up and trudged up the hill to pick up my pre-ordered trolley.  By the time I’d unloaded the car and got everything piss-wet through, I saw them arrive.  Dragging the laden trolley uphill, I met them at the festival entrance where we exchanged our tickets for wrist bands (me, with a festival wristband!) and made our way into the camping area to find our pitch.

 

Setting up camp

Whether it was wise or not, I chose a spot directly beneath a tannoy, next to a power generator and only a few yards from the massed banks of the chemical toilets.  We set to work.  Well, I stood around being generally useless while Chris directed us all

But eventually, with me doing very little to help, it was up, and we managed to get our stuff in still relatively dry.

The voice of the Scottish man came over the tannoy: “Oh God.  Oh Jesus CHRIST!” He sounded remarkably like Sergeant Howie. “The crossing points will remain open until 1.15pm. I repeat, the crossing points will remain open until 1.15pm”.   We were, of course at Carfest 2014, which was located at the Oulton Park motor racing circuit.  We had ten minutes to make our wellied-feet over the racing track and into the festival site before the cars started flying around the track for the afternoon session.

Once into the festival ground, my little niece spotted the fairground rides – big wheel, helter skelter, bouncy inflatables.  “Can I have a go on…” name it, she wanted to go on it.  But that was the idea of taking her, to let her have a new experience like none of us had enjoyed when we were little.

 

The throbbing of engines

We made our way around the site.  Drooled over some beautiful new cars on the trade stands; admired the Aston Martins from afar, all the time having one eye and an ear on the race track that surrounded us.  Supercars, Formula 1 cars, ridiculous cars, rally cars, muscle cars and cars from films paraded around the track in their groups as the massed crowds looked on in admiration and bewilderment.  Eyes took to the skies, prompted by the throbbing whir of Royal Navy Blackcat helicopter engines above us, our gazes captured by their skill and the ever blackening skies.

 

Rain

And the rain started again.  We made our way to the Big Top, one of the many tents that provided various types of kids’ activities, but more importantly – SHELTER from the thunderous downpour that was pelting the festival.  Kids’ entertainment.  I was in a living hell.  Surrounded by middle class parents and their offspring, engulfed by noise, in an oversized plastic bag.  I recited my mantra: “I am in my happy place… I am in my idea of fucking hell on earth”

I checked the programme.  What sort of shit were they going to inflict on us?  Dangerous and deadly what?  I sighed to myself.  BRACE BRACE BRACE!  People, busy people, ran onto the stage carrying tupperware boxes of increasing size, the largest one being the size of a small shed.  What the hell is this?  The anticipation of the crowd grew; excitement fell to silence as an enthusiastic man bounded onto the stage: “Hi, I’m NICK!!!!”

And I’m going!  I gazed at the exit, the rain was still falling in torrents outside.  Jesus! Go out and get drowned or stay in and risk murdering hundreds of primary school children… well, their parents.

And then it started.  Nick, took us through a natural history of those critters that have been on this planet for millions of years: millipedes; giant snails; poisonous spiders; massive stick insects… and snakes.  It was pitched perfectly for the children in the audience; they LOVED it.  It provided a taster for the main Bugfest tent where they could go and learn about creepies at their leisure.  And it gave us our first sighting of the famous charity mascot for the event, which was all in aid of the Children in Need charity:

I’ll save The Flying Seagulls for another time.

Once the rain had eased off, it was time for Tina to go and have a look at some of the beautiful cars that members of owners’ clubs were displaying in the paddock area.  I trudged (I was wearing wellies) passed the Monster Truck – want one – and over towards the cars, guided by the smell of exhaust fumes.  It was at this point that heavens opened.

Fuck me, after all the dry weekends we’d had, this had to happen the weekend that I’d organised to go fucking camping, with a period, at a fucking festival.  FOR FUCK’S SAKE!

This was real rain:

But it stopped after a few minutes and what followed was a long dry spell, and this was the pattern of weather for the Friday and the Saturday of the trip.  More importantly, the evenings were dry and bright and this meant that we could enjoy what I’d been looking forward to the most:  the music!

 

Music for dead people

Carfest is ideal for those of my age, it caters to our many interests and panders to the cultural references that were formed when we were growing up, so there was headline music from bands from our formative years (Erasure, Simple Minds, Texas, 10cc, Jools Holland), tribute acts to middle-aged dad favourites (Coldpla[ce], [One night of} Queen, Kings [ov] Leon) as well as some established BBC Radio 2 favourite Seasick Steve (simply awesome), along with younger artists like Scouting for Girls (MUCH better than anybody could imagine, brilliant in fact), Eliza Doolittle, Tom Odell, Jack Savoretti and the like.

I never thought I’d enjoy the festival atmosphere, but once I’d managed to negotiate the oldies at the periphery who were sitting in their camping chairs, and made it to the main crowd in front of the main stage, I was absorbed by the enthusiasm of the crowd and the loudness of the music. It was BRILLIANT.

My niece, I think was a little overwhelmed by the crowds and the noise, until of course, she did that thing to which all young girls seemed to grow accustomed: she sat on our shoulders.

 

From  this vantage point, she soon got into the swing of Queen’s Radio Gaga hand clap salute, along with Simple Minds’ “Hey, Hey, Hey, HEY!” fist pump.  She even managed to blag a shoulder mount from a very lovely and enthusiastic man when all our backs had given out.  She’ll do well when she’s attending V, Parkfest, “Glasto” and whatever other social gatherings of that ilk take her fancy when she’s older.  Start ’em young.

 

The Blitz spirit

Back at the campsite, things had taken a turn for the worse.  I was drunk, and decided to have just one more glass from the box of Aussie red that I’d taken with me.  Added to this, my airbed had deflated completely.  I reckoned that if I reinflated it before I went to bed, I’d fall asleep and not notice that it had gone down until morning.  Needless to say, I woke up in agony, hungover and in need of a pee, water and nurofen at 4am.  In addition, the cramps in my lower abdomen were telling me that it was here!  Joy!

I deployed my secret weapon – no, not a Tampax, a one of these:

And crawled my way to the nearby bank of chemical toilets.  It was using these things that I dreaded most about the whole experience, but they’re actually fine so long as they’re maintained properly and these were great.  It got to the stage where I found the pumping of the disinfectant release handle and associated squirting noise rather therapeutic, although not at 4am when my head was pounding and I was still half drunk.

One thing that did happen quite a bit was women not locking the doors – green sign = vacant = open the door = oops!  Thick bitches.  One vision that scarred me was one poor cow puking up in one.  Must’ve been a dodgy sausage.  Or the fact that the water kept going off so we couldn’t wash our hands or brush our teeth.  And those Syrians think they’ve got it bad!  They want to try living through what I went through, what we all went through and we laughed about it.  Because we are British, and that’s the British way.

 

The Lamb National

One final thing that absolutely thrilled me about my weekend was The Lamb National.  Yes, that’s right, racing hardwick sheep, over jumps.  The funniest thing ever.

So, that was a very long summary of my first ever festival weekend and camping weekend.  After scoffing at festival types for many years, I can admit that I now see what the fuss is about, I can also maintain my assertions that you have to be prepared for third world living conditions and permanent back injuries, but so long as you know the adversities that you might face, then you can prepare for them.

Lessons:

• Take salt, oil, washing up liquid
• When somebody says “take tea bags” they mean it
• Waterproofs make for a happier life
• Wellies are instruments of torture
• No matter how much people might mock your Crocs, take the fuckers
• Spare air bed
• Spare air bed
• Spare air bed
• Spare air bed