It is safe to say that festival life has changed for me. I have fond memories of losing shoes in mud pits, drowning in urine splash back, watching other – ballsier people – sneaking vodka in the gates with water bottles, but above all generally spending my days mildly uncomfortable, irritated and needing to go to the toilet. I would justify them as an ‘experience,’ something that made my life richer and worth the pain to see whoever it was sing that one song that I loved for four and a half minutes.
As a grown up festival attender, I’ve bought into layers, sensible sneakers, backpacks, snacks, hats and sunscreen. At the last one, I even bought a raffia fan. Gone are the days when I arrived in nothing but a t-shirt, cash in a paperclip and my phone in a snap lock bag. After this last festival, I’m not sure I will ever be able to festival that way again. Something happened this trip. Something amazing. Something so grown up and civilised that the way we used to festival feels like nothing but a bad dream with some really good bits. It seems, finally, that I have enjoyed the perks of being a grown up.
Splendour in the Grass has a reputation to rival all festivals. The camping pit is traditionally nothing but wall to wall tents of young people who can’t handle their booze with a smattering of music fans unfortunate enough to be left with the spaces in between. The sawdust toilets are never clean for more than the first hour on the Thursday and the rest is survival of the fittest. I was scared. We had paid for tents that someone else had put up and the price was not insignificant. I was petrified that the ‘youths’ next door to us would be weeing on my tent at 3am, I was concerned that the vomit on the toilet seats would stain my jeans, I was mildly preoccupied at the thought that the vagina displayed from denim short shorts would cause me to become prudish and ‘aged’ before my time. It turns out my worries were unfounded. (Except for the last one. It is clear that I am ‘ageing’ as my disapproval of such tiny shorts has become vocal.) Paying for a tent was by far one of the best decisions I didn’t really make in my entire life.
I spent the mornings languishing in large, laid back deck chairs, playing table tennis with friends, sipping coffee made by handsomely tattooed hipsters and soaking in the sun to well selected tunes that could have come from my own iPod play list. I laughed with unseeing care as I selected fresh white towels from the shelves of hundreds before I walked into hot showers at midnight and in the morning. I scowled in judgement at other sun loungers who headed to the massage tent or the powder room to use the line up of GHDs and scented moisturisers applied by the stylist. I poured glasses of chilled, mint flavoured water after I returned from the festival parched and dry, I napped in the midday sun on the generously thread counted linen that covered my normal sized bed and marvelled at housekeeping who had been while I was out and swept the floor. Life was nothing like I live it, let alone how I festival it and I sat smug and content as the dirty ‘others’ filed past the fairy lighted gates of Flash Camp.
Inside the festival life still hits hard. Consumed by the colour and cross dressing youngsters it was there that I truly realised the extent I have fallen into grown upedness. I have a onesie, but I don’t wear it out of bed. It is also not in the shape of an animal and has a purposeful three button flap like the lumber jack archetype of old. (I’m still hunting for my own lumber jack to put in it if anyone knows one) I never thought of sneaking in vodka in baby food squeeze packets. I don’t wear muscle shirts with sleeves so low that my bra is fully visible from the side. I don’t make appointments to get my hair done mid festival and I don’t wear Doc Martens that are shiny and freshly purchased from a shipping container. I don’t plan my locations at bands based on where the cutest boy is (although maybe I should) and I don’t need to sneak my friends into bars or sneak booze out to them. I had to come up with a new plan. If I no longer did any of these things at festivals, then what do I do?
It turns out that a festival of grownups is a land I am more than happy to stay in. We chose bands we liked, not bands that others said we should, we were happy to sit, have beer and enjoy the music we chose to listen to. We had afternoon champagne in a tent devoted to Moet and Chandon complete with chandeliers and anitpasta. We visited teepees and discussed the lives we lead in line with the music we loved. I corrected bad grammar on graffiti boards, sang loudly and out of tune, drank warm wine and even worse beer, laughed at spectacled and misguided affections in others, danced with random strangers and made friends in beer queues a mile long. I spent time with an old friend and made some new ones and I did it with a glass of Moet. Festival life can’t really get much better than that and if someone says to you, “Do you want to pay an exorbitant amount of money to sleep in a tent?” The answer should always be yes.
life in big frilly knickers 