TAKING YOUR MOM TO A FESTIVAL: A GUIDE
“I fancy going to one of them.” My mum’s talking about the advertisement on telly that features Mumford and Sons singing to a festival crowd on a sunny day. Immediately I flash back to be being out of my head on a rainy night at Glastonbury: covered in mud, staring at the lasers in the sky, trying to phone the police and hand myself in because I was ‘too wasted.’ Missing what apparently was a storming set by the Chemical Brothers. That and a thousand other, unprintable, stories come to mind.
“Probably best you don’t really,” I say to my mum.
“That’s a shame,” she says, “I like camping.”
But then I think back to the last few festivals I’ve been to – a far cry from the chemical and mud jamborees of a decade ago. I think about the creature comforts I take and wouldn’t be without, like brushing my teeth with bottled water. The last time I ate cold greasy noodles out of a polystyrene tray for five pounds a pop. Then I realise, it’s not so ridiculous to take your mum to a festival – hell, I’ve become my mum going to a festival.
So here is how to do it properly. You don’t have to come back from a festival malnourished with frostbite or sunburn like a Shackleton explorer and only remembering a man in a suit made of lights playing a gig on broken toys for five minutes between blank spots.
PICK YOUR FESTIVAL
If you fancy being herded from one crowd to another while the world’s biggest artists play truncated sets in the distance by all means go for one of the bigger festivals. But also be sure you enjoy watching thirty or so men contribute to a river of wee, or a scallywag snort suspicious white powder off the back of his hand before starting an argument with a group of drunk nurses wearing angel wings. Big festivals are dead, they just don’t know it yet. Lumbering zombies kept animate by the money of the next generation wanting to say they were there. Smaller festivals are cropping up all over, so forego the long cues, overloaded facilities, and sets by over rated ‘legends’.
DRIVE
Drive, or convince one of your mates to drive. Hitch-hiking isn’t as dangerous as legend would have you believe, but sitting next to a balding salesman called Darren, listening to him recount stories of his ‘wild’ youth is a hassle. Sitting in the toilets dodging the fare is smelly hassle. The uncomfortable amount of waiting, walking, and getting lost is more hassle than you deserve. If you’re the driver, not enjoying a travel beer is mildly inconvenient, as is waiting on Sunday until you’re under the limit to set off again, but setting your own schedule and taking the extra quilt is worth it.
TAKING THE RIGHT GEAR
Leave the expensive tent at home, really, even the friendliest festival will have a fat hippy just waiting to trip on your guy rope and elbow drop your £550 Stormforce Megaplex tent into a broken hang glider. But that doesn’t stop you turning your rubbish petrol shop tent into a cuddle nest of comfort. Take an air bed: not only is blowing the thing up worth the effort, but the resulting head rush is the equivalent of having two open bottles of poppers sellotaped under your nose. Quilts are a little hassle to carry, but when you’re sleeping you’ll be the one laughing. Take a cool box with food: sandwiches, packets of processed ham, pack monster munch for all I care. Having food not only makes you able to handle your intoxicant intake better, but it’ll work out cheaper than being caught short and starving on the Saturday blowing the last of your cash on something you’ll probably be ejecting into the bushes later.
Other useful things: Sun cream, ear plugs, bottled water.
HANDLE YOURSELF
Being a grown up doesn’t mean never having fun again, It’s refining your tastes to the point you know what is actually fun and not just mediated expectations from ad companies or baseless peer pressure that advocates oblivion. Eating is not ‘cheating’, drinking to the point where you become everybody else’s problem isn’t the point here. Enjoy whatever chemical lubricant you can, but handle yourself. Remember the event you’ve paid money to get into? Actually see the bands, enjoy the company of others. Find your limit and tread that. Drunk enough to dance all night, laugh, and not spend two days recovering. Go to bed when you’re tired. True hedonism, is doing what makes you most happy at any point even if it is crawling into your snuggle den.
Tips: Drink water, eat food, find a nice level of wasted and try and maintain that, talk to people, dance.
SEE THE BANDS
When you arrive make a list of the bands you want to see, keep it flexible and factor in exploring time. Your phone will not last all weekend so knowing and arranging meeting points with your mates makes sense. As much as it’s easy to miss the good stuff it’s as likely you’ll discover something new and interesting. The point is when you lose focus from the music and try to get lost in the seductive ideal of ‘the experience’, this is actually when you watch yet another transsexual sword swallower doing poetry at four in the morning instead of catching the performance of the summer.
Tips: Grab a programme early, arrange meeting points and times, stay flexible, see stuff you wouldn’t normally but see the bands you like.
So I’ve become my mum. This isn’t a bad thing, I’ve earned it. By going out and making the mistakes, by searching for the ‘authentic’ festival experience, by going out and having the maddest, wildest time a young hedonist can wring from mud, stages, and thousands of strangers I’ve come to learn that mum was right all along.
Words: Danny Smith
Image: Pooneh Ghana
