Monday 12 July 2010

We English have a tendency to believe that when the temperature sores above, say, 20 degrees, we should all take up eating, sleeping and shitting al fresco. Festivals pop up every weekend between the end of June and the penultimate days of September: when the real keeno's are hopefully gripping their fold up bbq's praying for the dithering sun to allow just one weekend of tepid outdoor debauchery. It is also at this window of British summertime when the super duper keenos (now I'm talking tipi tents, eco friendly cardboard toilets, and 300 quid "self inflating roll mats") hold their own camping parties. This weekend I attend one such party. Oh, and FYI I am not a super duper keeno: I had to buy a tent for the occasion; but I am a keeno, and i do often subject myself to weekends of polystyrene burgers, uncalled for public nudity, and rum drunk lovingly and hastily out of 2litre Evian bottles.
Having mastered the art of festival going (...almost, I still can't quite manage to get the weather to match my wardrobe) i thought that this private shindig would be no problem at all. And of course, there would have been no problem had there not been an unlimited supply of Stella. I have come to recognise that all that saves me from getting facial piercings, joining the Hare Krishna movement, and dip dyeing the lower half of my body at most festivals is that the beer is so ridiculously expensive.
Having had allowed myself to have a reasonable, some would say sizable, amount of alcohol, I decided that the urge to pee had become to much and I'd have to climb my way to the brow of the hill where the posh portaloos had been placed. This would have all gone really well had i not decided that a torch was a useless accessory when it came to camping. "Oh dad, really I'll be fine. It is just up the gravel path I'll just stick to the gravel nothing will go wrong." What I hadn't banked on was the fact that those 4 bottles of Stella had had a small impact on my ability to walk in a straight line. If you hold your arm out vertically in front of you, and now turn it down so it lies like a shelf across your chest you'll have a visual idea of what my version of a straight line up the hill had become. Essentially, I walked off the side of the hill. Off the side and into the bramble bushes that lay, waiting, below. I now look a tad like a sadist; most of the visible aspects of my body have gone unscathed, the lower parts of my back have not fared so well . Clearly as i plummeted to the ground my trousers did that attractive thing where they allow the top of your bum to stick out because i have scratches everywhere around that area.... hot. So a sadist, or someone who has a strange, and possibly illegal relationship with their cat.
Not having a torch also impacted my ability to recognise that i had put my new shoes in the melted brie that had just come off the camp fire, and later as i made it to my tent, my ability to see the difference between Dazzle Dust (a bright gold powder) and lip balm in my make up bag. The former ended up everywhere and i now look like one of those strange people who still believe its cool to have glitter on EVERYTHING they own: jeans, bags, tents, feet, etc.
Scratched, cheesed, and glittered I have learnt my lesson. Next weekend, at WOMAD festival, I will have a torch on my person at all time, I might even attach one to my belt regardless of how much of a super duper keeno i look!