Wednesday 1st September 2004: Music Festival People
Greetings, fellow reader. I'm Chris - the FullyRamblomatic.com guest writer who wasn't fired for being generally shit. Today I'm going to educate you about the types of people one might hope to meet at a rock festival. Why, you ask? Well, because your average festival is a fascinating microcosm of society, and I owe it to you people to share my nerdish interest. That and I get to indirectly show off the fact that I got to attend two of these festivals in as many weekends, which makes me awesome. More so than you, anyways.
So person types then. Here they be, in the order in which you're likely to meet them:
Guards - Once upon a time, these were honest stoners hired off the nearest street with as much interest in guarding as your average piece of chalk has in emmenthal. Unfortunately, festival organisers have come to realise that guards who fleeced you for drugs then supplied those unfortunates who had lost theirs on the train from their own stash did not a brilliant public image make, and so now these guys are hired from Rent-o-Bastard, and entertain themselves by dispatching innocent folks and forcing them to strain their arms climbing the nearest fencing. That and arranging their daft day-glo jackets so as to lure in light aircraft and confuse the wildlife.
Picnickers - As far as I can tell, these people shell out £110 a time to spend three days eating cheese rolls and guzzling warm-ish tea out of a malfunctioning Thermos whilst looking in a vaguely disinterested way at a band they probably couldn't name and pretending to enjoy themselves. I have a theory that these people lead double lives, and become the Cider Kids on the last night of the festival whilst maintaining double-lives as lower-middle class roll munchers for the rest of the year. But we'll get to those later.
Retailers - These come in two varieties: the soulless scum who rip you off and laugh about it, and the soulless scum who rip you off and lie about it. The former mostly run the food vans that pervade the site, selling horse genitals au bol for £5 per Insufficiency (the portion, presumably 55% antimatter horse-penis, which actually makes you more hungry). The latter operate the other half of the on-site stores and sell "legal," "herbal" or "natural" drugs - namely, caffeine and vodka. Now whilst I admit that a sufficient quantity of the latter would produce effects very similar to injecting oneself with half a can of Lipton Ice Tea, it spoils the fun when you know you've been cheated into attempting to copulate with picnic benches and holding deep conversations on the Big Telephone.
Die-hard fans - You'll know these people when they impact simultaneously on your face and bollocks, leaving you crawling on the floor and asking St Peter about some sort of an early-bird deal. Where they come from… nobody knows. Where they go afterwards… well nobody knows that either. But they're easy to recognise by their uncontrollable bouncing and complete lack of shame in the face of 3,000 people looking bored and very pointedly not bouncing. Either they're the tragic victims of the above caffeine snacks, or else they're the bastard children of Pete Doherty and Dipsy.
Couples - In this enlightened day and age, actually imprisoning your current belle or attaching her to some sort of a retracting lead is frowned upon, so these guys come up with the next best solution - essentially, forming the roller-coaster restraint (you know the one - it's inescapable grip is only slightly less deathlike than no grip at all) from their arms and eyeing surrounding males suspiciously, as if preparing to dismember some serious corpse. Facial expressions are a sign of weakness in this harsh godless society, and so they make do without - as, it seems, is enjoying your day, as they tend to treat the band members in much the same way as they do street performers, only without the actual giving of money.
Oompa Loompas - Trust me, the roadies are actually two of these little guys in a trenchcoat. Shout something about everlasting gobstoppers if you don't believe me.
Cider Kids - I woke up at 2am on the last night of Leeds festival to the following: "Mebbe we should burn it." [clonk] [clonk] [clonk] [clonk] [clonk] "Comeon I got some burning" [clonk] [clonk] [clonk] "Wooohoooo! Look at that sucker burn!" [clonk] [clonk] [clonk] [clonk] "Arrrhghghg my arms my arms my-" [clonk] Checking around the surrounding area in the morning, I found a discarded burned T-shirt, a pair of discarded table-legs (mildly charred) and a slightly blackened, dented dustbin. I can only assume the bin won.