FESTIVAL
Written by James Ward
I’ve just got back from three days at the Secret Garden Party festival.
It was my first time camping at a festival. The festival experience was one which I had always suspected wouldn’t really suit me and so I never embraced it as a teenager. However, a couple of months ago, Julian from The Lost Lectures asked if I wanted to do my talk on why I like boring things, and I thought that maybe it would be a fun adventure, and so I said yes.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Secret Garden Party, but suspected it might be a bit like this:
As I sat on the train from King’s Cross, the two girls opposite me seemed to reinforce this idea. “Shall I text Jemima and ask if she’s packed an iPhone charger?” one of them asked. Later on, Jemima texted back. It turned out that although Jemima didn’t have her iPhone charger, fortunately Julia had packed hers. To make things worse, as we got off the train at Huntingdon, I saw that the girl who had asked about Jemima’s iPhone charger had a hula-hoop with her. These are not my people I realised.
Just as I was beginning to regret ever agreeing to all this, a group of three people in front of me asked if I wanted to share a cab with them. That was nice of them, I thought. We chatted during the short cab ride. One of them even offered me a Maynards Wine Gum, although she had opened the packet the wrong way up and that always bothers me so I declined (I didn’t tell her that was the reason). We arrived on site, and they went off to meet their friends or maybe just talk to someone who wasn’t me and so I went and queued for my wristband. The queue was slow-moving, but jolly, and the rain didn’t seem to put people off. It started to get a bit muddy though, so I changed my shoes:
It carried on raining as I got to the campsite. It rained as I put up my tent. It rained as I went to get some food. It rained as I watched Literary Death Match. It rained as I watched Robin Ince. It rained as I watched David O’Doherty. It carried on raining throughout the night. “Never mind, this is a fun adventure!” I kept telling myself.
I think it was around half past five the next morning – as I lay in my tent; unable to sleep because of the sound of music, the sound of people and the sound of the rain – that it stopped being a “fun adventure” and instead became one of the most miserable experiences of my life.
Here is that moment captured on film:
By the morning, everything was covered in mud:
If ever there were an environment seemingly designed to break me as a person, this was it. I’d been there less than twenty-four hours and I was desperate to leave. In my notebook, I started a tally chart; marking off each hour as it passed until eventually I could return to the civilised world.
Why had I done this to myself, I wondered? My talk wasn’t until Saturday evening. I could have got the train early on Saturday afternoon, stayed for a few hours and come home the same evening. But no, here I was. Stuck in a fucking swamp for another two days. I began to hate myself. I trudged around, trying to find somewhere warm and dry to sit. At one point, I even sat and watched a performance poet do a piece about Hugh Grant giving evidence at the Leveson inquiry, because the only other option was to get up and go somewhere else.
I went to the “Revolution Bunker”. Here you could see how hippyish notions of personal liberation and meditation slide so easily into conspiracism:
By Saturday, the rain had stopped and now the mud began to thicken. Each step became a challenge, the viscous mud weighing down each foot. But as the sun started to shine, you got the feeling that if weren’t for the mud, the place must look like a beautiful ramshackle village – all fairtrade coffee and vegan food stalls. But, watching people stagger around in the thick mud, the place seemed like some sort of post-apocalyptic disaster zone; a glimpse of what life would be like after a nuclear holocaust where only the middle-classes survived.
I know this all sounds incredibly ungrateful. Lots of people paid lots of money to go to Secret Garden Party and I get in for free and just complain about it. I’m sorry about that. It was really nice of Julian to invite me and there were moments I enjoyed and it was probably good for me as a person to have had this experience, even if just so that I know it’s something I don’t ever want to do again. And it’s always nice to see something really big get set on fire in the middle of a lake:
In fact, the Saturday and the Sunday were nice, and as I watched the enormous firework display at about one in the morning – surrounded by all sorts of people all sharing this moment, all sharing the same childlike grin which fireworks generate – I could absolutely understand why people come to festivals. But then I remember that moment at half past five on the Friday morning in the tent and how miserable I felt.
There’s a bit in the talk I did where I quote Georges Perec:
What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms.
To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us.
At the very least, three nights in a tent has made me realise how much I appreciate bricks, concrete and glass.
JAMES WARD: I LIKE BORING THINGS 
I’m so sorry you had a rotten time, James. If it helps, reading this has reminded me why turning down a paid DJ gig at a camping festival this summer was a good thing. Tents are not for everyone.
It wasn’t all bad. There were moments I really enjoyed, but not enough to offset the intense misery of the rest of it.
I have never been to a festival because I know I would hate them. However, people question how I can judge something I have never experienced. In future I will direct them to this blog and rest my case.
If I can save just one person from having to go through all that, then it would have been worth it.
I would like to do some conscious squatting. You didn’t happen to pick up the handout, did you?
I actually sat through part of that talk. It was awful. It was some woman who runs a squat in east London where some of the “leading revolutionaries” in the country live. She spent ages saying why people should live in squats and exist outside of the system of conventional rent/mortgages etc, then mentioned that she’s able to financially support the people in her squat because she owns a house which she rents out to someone else. She was about 25.
Ah…I thought the squatting was of the ‘bend down to get closer to the ground’ variety. I had a vision of a bunch of hippies bending down really slowly to ensure they receive the full cosmic vibrations from the universe. I’ll set up a tent next year and be a cosmic squatter expert. There’s money to be made in this malarky.
I often end up feeling like a stick in the (festival) mud when my friends invite me to such events and I invariably turn them down. Thank you for reminding me that I am right and my friends are idiots.
I’m not saying that people who enjoy festivals are wrong, just that they’re not for me.
Hallo James. Fittingly, I sneezed while reading this.
What the hell is WordPress playing at eithvthat username? You know who t
I am that’s what matters.
Ahhh
I’m not sure what happened there. The email notification worked OK, and included your email address so I knew it was you. WordPress is an idiot.
I had a similar experience at Glastonbury in 2008, which was the first and last time I camped at a festival. Once I reached the point where ever item I had brought with me was covered in mud (which coincided with running out of Jack Daniels, the crutch that had made the entire weekend almost bearable) I actually reached breaking point and left everything for the use of the people around me and went home on the Saturday. I have camped hiking through Peru and other such expeditions, nothing quite compares to the lack of sanitary conditions and humour that accompanies festival camping. I now happily ignore the jests from my friends that I am missing out on the ‘best’ part of the festival as a trot off to my hotel in the evenings for a warm bed, hot shower and a night cap in the bar. Something about sleep uninterrupted by filthy youths drunkenly passing by my tent/ falling into it makes the jeers of ‘bus wanker’ inaudible. I have found my festival balance and I am not going back!
I actually came close to leaving my tent and all my belongings behind and going home, but I’d agreed to do the talk on the Saturday night and I thought it would be a bit of a shitty thing to do. If I didn’t have that obligation, I would have just left.
Living in a tent. *shudders* A caravan is bad enough….
I’m so glad I’ve never been to a festival. I always suspected it would be like this.
I am of the fixed opinion that the only acceptable form of camping is in the desert, in a tent big enough to stand up in, with nice local men cooking gorgeous local food.
Never, EVER camp in the UK.
Reminds me of my last visit to Glastonbury 5(?) years ago. It rained non stop from our arrival on Wednesday evening until we left on Monday morning. Watching The Who while the rain came across the field horizontally was a particular high point. When they sang Won’t Get Fooled Again, I made up my mind that this was probably my last Glasto. By the last day, they (no, not The Who, they had long gone back to a comfy limo or helicopter) were handing out space blankets to protect against hypothermia. On the Monday morning of departure, we abandoned our tents at the tent charity collection point. Our wellies we left in the car park – no way were those disgusting objects getting into my car. They had served their purpose. Mostly. Apart from when the mud was so deep it came in over the tops. Happy days!
I’ve been to Glastonbury, Secret Garden Party, V Festival and Sziget and I have to say, five things make a huge difference as to whether the festival is enjoyable or not:
1. The Weather
If it’s nice and sunny, and there’s no mud, then that makes a huge difference. If it rains before/during Glastonbury, the whole place becomes a 1ft deep mud pool. Thick mud is exhausting to walk in. It requires a certain mindset to turn the absurdity of it into something amusing rather than something awful.
2. The company
Who you’re with makes a huge difference. I would never go alone, and camping with someone sane in a 2 man tent makes a big difference. Going as a small group (3 to 5) seems best, and it helps if they’re nice people.
I went to Sziget with a friend, which is a week long festival, which is way too long. I was fortunate that my friend was someone I got on with quite well, but a week at a festival sharing a tent with someone is enough to drive anyone mad. I was counting the days until it ended. Had I gone with a small group I think it would have been a lot more enjoyable. Had it been just 3 days, it would have been a lot more enjoyable.
3. The music
It helps if there are some bands where you’re going to see that you’re really into. At Glastonbury I got to see Caribou and Crystal Castles, which were one after one another at one of the tents, and I got to the front with some friends, and had an amazing time – it was the highlight of the festival. Chemical Brothers were also absolutely fucking amazing.
Sziget however had no acts that I was really excited about, and that didn’t help.
Secret Garden Party on the other hand had no music of note, but that in no way ruined the experience and I really enjoyed it. I went with some good friends and we spent time exploring the place, chilling out, eating food and having a good time. We just happened to be in a nice setting. See number 2 above.
4. The facilities
Sziget was the most organised of the lot – they had huge numbers of toilets, which were kept spotless, and there was a 50% chance of the toilet you went into having toilet paper, which for a festival is astonishing. Sziget also had a cashless rfid card payment system for everything (“PayPass”) which was brilliant – no worrying about carrying money around.
Sziget however had quite bad foot stalls. Secret Garden Party and Glastonbury had the best food.
V Festival was shit shit shit – overflowing toilets, awful food.
5. The people who attend
Who attends a particular festival makes a huge difference. Secret Garden Party and Glastonbury had the most “people like us” – laid back normal middle class educated twenty/thirty somethings, plus plenty of kids and elders too.
Sziget had a large number of quite young people, teens and early twenty somethings, and they seemed to be overexcited by everything and far too happy just to be at a festival, which I found oddly annoying.
V Festival on the other hand was absolutely awful – chav central. I would never ever go again. Nothing like a bunch of thugs throwing their pints into the crowd, bashing into you as you watch music, standing on your feet and generally being obnoxious and aggressive.
So overall quite a few things have to “line up” in order to have a really good time. All it takes is one of the above to turn it into a horrible time. But one things always suck about music festivals though, and that’s being banged into when watching music, and tall people standing in the way.