I mean, what is it about Ponchos? And ponytails? Are they innately and cosmically linked with music festivals? Is it a camping essential to wear a blanket with a hole cut out for the head? There are bands of them, all striped like woolly toothpaste with wide cowboy hats on their ponytailed heads, but, sorry, they just can’t pull it off the way Brad Pitt did in The Mexican. Especially in the rain. I'm wondering if there is a special shop out there like Blacks and Millets that sells Festival Survival Gear basics like felted hats that look like sperm and trousers made of old curtains. You know - primus stove, North Face Anorak, sock bells, his n' hers lime green elasticised capri pants and caftans... What exactly do those noble and dignified Ghanain musicians make of playing to a load of middle aged men shaking like they've got St Vitus dance in jumble sale outfits dressed as Hobbits?
I need answers.
And I’m not even going to get into why women over fifty wear tutus and fairy wings. The kids and the teenagers I understand, but the matrons? What’s wrong with my festival gear: two pairs of trousers, a waterproof coat, a Barbour, two t-shirts, a hoodie and flip flops?
It’s better for the rain than a woollen blanket, and believe me, I have personal experience of that.
Turns out that music festivals, even hippy peace and love music festivals, really are all about the rain. The lashing rain. The howling wind and the lashing rain. The clammy tent with condensation on the inside of the shell, the clammy sleeping bag with condensation on the inside of the lining, the clammy wellies that you slip your feet into in the middle of the night to stumble through the tent city, fall over guy ropes and eventually arrive at the beacon of light, the portaloos, and then discover you’ve forgotten the clammy toilet paper, howling wind and lashing rain.
There were times, notably listening to a 12 piece gypsy band from Romania who may, or may not, have been playing 12 seemingly different tunes very fast because they were hurrying up to get to another music festival in Cheltenham (though some were in more of a hurry than others) when the rain was coming down in sheets and pooling behind me on the chair, and running down my legs that I wondered how on earth I was going to survive.
And then Tom, camping expert, lit a camp fire and Nel opened the vodka and suddenly, it all seemed worth it.
This is how they endure the Russian winters, and it will certainly do me on a wet summer night in Dorset.
Actually, moaning set aside, just for a minute, on the tea plate of life, it was really really great fun. Not only did I endure but I went native. I didn't wash for three days, slept in all my clothes and by the end had my hair in bunches and wore a gold dress over several layers of clothing and green wellies two sizes too big. Then we fried bacon, ate vegetarian carbohydrates by the bucketful, drank boxes of wine - as perfected by one of our group - a very tall, handsome Brand consultant who had arrived at my house for the trip in a Puffa Jacket carrying a Bill Amberg holdall and a corporate golf umberella, then walked about with his wine box under his arm, just dispensing vino like one of those Syrian tea sellers (and used the rose to put the fire out). He was also wearing a powder pink shirt and overheard one of the gnome-men say to his gnome friend, that's a really gay shirt - this from a man with glitter on his face! We sat round our fire and listened to the cute Australian guitarist at the tent next to us practice as we ate chilli stuffed olives and Pringles, and laughed. And though some of the music was just sub wedding stuff in a different language (singing it in Croation guys doesn't make it world music, it just makes it Eurovison song contest) some of it was truly wonderful.
So I'm no longer a camping virgin. Nor a festival virgin. However, as I predicted, there was absolutely no need to take along any kind of protective outerwear unless it had toggles and a hood. Well unless you have a particular fetish for middle aged men dressed up as woodland elves, in which case you have bigger problems than birth control, trust me. But - it's true you certainly don’t want to add to the world population of such creatures.
And now I'm back. Feeling dirty.
But not in a good way.
