Worstival
Bestival. Or Worstival. Only after two weeks of therapy can I now reveal the true horror of that fateful and eldritch weekend. Rain. Never seen rain like it - great hulking gobbets of the stuff; monsoon conditions for over 24 hours. I suppose the severe weather warning should've sent alarm bells ringing, but I optimistically assumed that, by "severe weather warning" the Met Office actually meant "occasional light showers". So I packed walking boots and jeans, instead of waders and oilskins. My mate Tash at least had waterproof trousers. Anyway, my tent sprung a series of leaks during the first night as it was unable to cope with the volume of water cascading onto it. When I woke up everything inside was sodden.
Mid afternoon Friday the rain stopped and everyone emerged from their tents like meercats. The sun came out briefly. We walked up to the main arena - which was like Passchendaele, only with a big top in the middle. Mud up to the knees; trenchfoot; miserable husks of human beings huddling around cigarettes for warmth. The way forward was clear - to survive the day we'd have to drink obscene quantities of cider. First band was The Wedding Present, which was a treat. Caught a bit of the Idjut Boys and Layo & Bushwacka - very good. By nightfall we'd stopped caring about the beastly oomska. Foals were impressive; MBV were astounding. We retired to our tents and slept like mud-caked babies.
Next day, after my morning pissing-in-a-bottle, I realised someone had come into my tent in the middle of the night and emptied my wallet of £250 in cash. And had done the same to Tash. And a whole bunch of other people on the site. The ruffians had kindly left the flysheet open, so everything in the tent was muddier and wetter than before. With our last £5 we went to get some breakfast. Came back and I'd been robbed again - the urchins had ripped the tent zipper and escaped with a jacket - which happened to contain the return ferry tickets. By this point we'd had enough. So we forfeited the joys of Winehouse et al and trudged up to the car. Miraculously, it coped with the mud bath / car park admirably and got us onto the main road. At East Cowes the nice woman at the ticket office took pity on us and booked us onto the 11.30am ferry to Southampton. We arrived back in York five hours later and went straight out for curry and beers. Hoorah! Lessons learned: pay attention to weather forecasts. Sleep with your wallet in your sleeping bag. Don't. Go To. A. Festival. Ever. Again. Probably.
Posted by monoman at 06:41 PM on September 18, 2008
