At the Indie Disco

I went to one day of a music festival 2 weeks ago. The weather was awful; a wet, cold miserable December's day slammed into the June bank holiday weekend. I'm bad with changeable weather, and  it takes me 3 or 4 days to adapt to the changes. For the first few days of a heat wave, I'll still be wearing 4 layers of jumpers and gloves. I once wore a Hawaiian shirt and shorts in a snow storm, because i got dressed before I looked out the window. I'm always being caught unawares by the weather. i didn't even bring a hoodie to the festival, just a long sleeved tee. I wore Converse in contrast to everyone else's wellingtons. Within ten minutes of arriving, I stepped in three separate puddles. I was praying for my feet to go numb, because at least then i wouldn't feel the cold and pain anymore. The beer was watery piss, and they don't even give you a full pint, the robbing bastards, it’s about four fifths of one in those crappy plastic cups that you can’t hold without squeezing and causing a spill, but I still bought my pints two at a time, because you don't want to be sober, do you, not at a festival, and I'll be damned if I'm spending any more time in the hell scrum of queue than i have to. The cold of the beer chills my hands so they start to feel (or fail to feel) like my feet. Has anyone ever gotten frost bite at a festival? That'd make an interesting story for the grandchildren, how Grandad lost his toe because he wanted to drink in a field listening to music, and wouldn't wear suitable shoes. Everyone wants to go on the chair-o-planes, but i don't trust Carnie folk, not since the carousel in Leisure Land in ‘91. My knee still when it’s cold. My knee aches now.  And anyway, I've just had a hotdog, and already feel ill without being spun through the air with the greatest of ease on a wonderful whirligig death trap. I don't really know many of these bands; they're all a little more ravey than my usual fare. No Neil Hannon here. No whimsical irony masking the soul of a true romantic. Just bleep-ity-bloop-bop. Someone hands me a pill. It's green. I swallow it. You don't want to be not off your tits, do you? Not at a festival! I won't even describe the toilets. I'm not even sure you should be allowed to call those toilets. Surely the UN or the EU or someone has basic standards that must be met before a literal shit hole can be promoted to toilet status. I honestly don't understand how they can be so totally medieval, and yet made entirely of plastic. New Order are the last band. I like New Order, but i wouldn't really describe their music as happy. The green though, the green means I can't stop smiling. And jumping up and down. And hugging people. Smiley jumpy hugs for everyone. People must hate me.  A tiny party of my brain is disgusted at my antics, and wants to feel sad about Blue Monday, but the rest of it is lost in the green. I'm wearing sunglasses, even though it's gone dark, and the sun never broke through the clouds all day. When it's all over, it takes forty five minutes to get out the single gate, and I'm surprised nobody's been crushed it trampled to death, and the security keep shouting at people, as if we're all being a huge crowd just to spite them. I keep losing friends and finding other friends and then losing then and finding the first friends again. It might be a metaphor for life, or it might be the last gasp of the green. The day of misery is over. I even get to sleep in a bed in a house like a human being, instead in a tent, like a less civilised human being. What do cows sleep in? Cowsheds? I bet they’re better than a tent. Music festivals are a grim affair. And yet I'm nigh on compelled to spend money I truly can't afford to go to another festival next week. This one is a camping affair, which means   uncomfortable tents, and bruises from trying to sleep on rocks like daggers. I'll probably go. I'll be sore and cold and wet and constipated from the junk food, and probably catch pneumonia. And I'll fucking love it. I always do.