Just came across this article. It appears Tiny and I got off lightly.
Festival Victims
Fun and Fires July 15, 2008
As a festival novice day one of Oxegen instilled a kind of dread in me as the stories of fights, filthy toilets and on or within tent urination were to be heard around every corner. The result? I packed enough food to last a month, toilet paper for every person in attendance and of course the ever-essential kitchen sink.
Arrived mid afternoon to a throng of tents and dedicated festival goers (wouldn’t camp a day longer than needed if my life depended on it and by the look of the crowd on Sunday night my life preferred that I made a swift exit after Rage Against the Machine made theirs.) Ok so our tent was going to have to become pretty friendly with the tent next to it but hey after the stewards had requested I move it for the fourth time I think Tiny was finally content.
Tent. Check. Sleeping bag. Check. Food. Check. Drink. Check. Uncomfortable fold out chair from Dunnes Boutique. Check. First sighting of on-tent urination. Check.
As the weekend progressed I quickly became comfortable with camping in a dustbin as my legs tired of trips to and from the bin with the rubbish our lovely neighbours so kindly placed on our doorstep. As I sipped my martini (shaken not stirred-forgot a spoon) from a plastic water bottle and looked across at the portaloos, replaying the events of Friday and Saturday I thought I would actually consider coming back to this hole again next year, I’m having a ball.
Each band I went to see had something to offer (bar Counting Crows who should be ashamed of their performance on Saturday). From the Ting Tings to Seasick Steve,
The Manic Street Preachers and REM I sang my heart out and danced until my left leg decided it had had enough and went on strike for the remainder of the weekend. However, the highlight of the weekend for me was without doubt Band of Horses. Their performance was incredible and while I wowed the crowd with bubbles and bouncing the vast majority of them might as well have been attending a funeral. This may have a lot to do with the fact that the band played a number of songs from their upcoming album which very few people knew causing the attention deficit festies to lose interest and in some cases leave. Hearing new material is what festivals are all about isn’t it? I won’t deny I’m quite fond of a good sing along but you can’t beat a balance between old and new, it mixes things up a little, you should be at home listening to the CD if you want to control what they play.
Anyway rant aside, another highlight of the weekend was the mini twister/hurricane/tornado thingy that swept through the red camp. (I tried to google what exactly it was but couldn’t find it anywhere.) What I do know is that it managed to snatch up a couple of tents and a hell of a lot of other debris and carry it all a few hundred feet above R5. Now if one of the tents had been Tiny I would not be laughing but it wasn’t so we chuckled our heads off taking in the scene. To be quite honest I was a little awe struck by the whole thing. If Band of Horses had been playing at the same time I would have keeled over with excitement.
On the final night after watching groups of people falling from a human pyramid and repeatedly getting back up we headed back to Tiny to see how she was getting on. Many of her friends had been murdered over the course of the weekend and she was a little nervous about breaking a limb. As we gathered our stuff together in order to avoid another night camping in the waste disposal unit that is Punchestown, and return to the cloud like sensations of my clean bed, our neighbours (those with the intelligence a stuffed dog) in the tent right next to ours (the same ones who had been leaving the gifts outside our doorstep all weekend) discovered lynx+flame=fire (they are very smart people after all). According to the stuffed dogs lynx+flame+tent=even bigger fire. Now thankfully Tiny survived, a little shaken up but no physical damage. In fact the bigger fire wasn’t all that big (they couldn’t even get that right), nothing a few stomps of a welly couldn’t handle. It did unfortunately end the weekend on a bad note as a quick scan of the campsite confirmed it was in our best interests to squeeze Tiny into a ball and make for the car. (It just didn’t look as good sober).
And we all lived happily ever after.
What I’ve learned from this weekend:
It’s only three days.
I can’t eat 24 hot dogs in one weekend.
I won’t disintegrate if I don’t shower every day.
Sobriety is not advised.
Don’t be a doubting Thomas. If you only believed you may well have seen Amy Winehouse’s performance. There may not be another opportunity but hey at least I didn’t place a bet with Paddy on it because I would be bickering about money lost as well.
And most importantly:
Rent a camper van (Tiny’s nerves wouldn’t survive a re-run).
