The bus back home was crowded with people, but somehow it was quite cool onboard, whilst outside the sun was literally attacking everything it could. The heat over the weekend had been bordering on unbearable and I’d spent most of the time stuck directly under its powerful rays, which inevitably lead to t-shirts wet with sweat, bad feet, and a layer of festival dirt on my whole body which made me feel all crusty. I hoped no-one on the bus would notice, or mention, my terrible smell. That had happened once, at the Dublin ferry port. The obese redneck woman behind me in the queue declared “someone smells of B.O.”, and I knew she meant me, but I didn’t honour her with a reply, I just made sure I sat near her once we got on the boat.
Less than an hour before I was in the middle of a few thousand people at a festival, but now here I was, surrounded by old couples and a scattering of young kids going into town for the afternoon. Less than twelve hours ago I had been drunkenly stumbling around the picturesque grounds of the festival, watching the different funny hand shadows we had been making in front of the random projectors. Unfortunately there comes a point when you have to return to reality and face the fact that you can’t get stoned in a field, make believe peace and love, watch bands endlessly, laugh so hard your face hurts, drink free ice cold beer intended for the press and climb sculptures and trees whenever you want and do whatever the hell you want to.
It’s a sad moment when you leave a festival knowing there will be plenty going on while you go back to whatever it is that you do. You look over your shoulder, out the back of the car window, and watch as the tents, the luminous security jackets, and stages diminish farther and farther into the distance, ending up as plain green fields. They said the festival was a secret, and they were right; from half a mile out of the gates you couldn’t see any trace of a festival at all. It really was a complete secret from any road nearby.
We’d turned up to the festival late on Thursday night, having had a gig earlier that evening. We knew between which two villages it was located but would have had trouble finding it if it had not been night by that point. Because it was dark we could see all the multi-coloured lights; the reds, purples, greens and blues illuminating the sky, and we used them as our guide. We all stood up in the van to get a better view as we drew closer and closer. Everyone was genuinely excited, however tired and stoned we were, to be arriving at a festival in the middle of the night. It was the realisation, mainly, that we were free for the weekend to get as drunk as we wanted and wander until our feet were numb, but also the fact that we were all stiff and rusty from a long drive crammed into the back of an old minibus. I must have been most sore because I had spent the last three hours sandwiched between a pile of tent bags, two chairs, three people and a rusty old tool box.
Once we were parked up we unloaded all our crap and picked out a nice enough camping spot. Everyone threw up their tents, except for the one I was staying in, which took three people almost an hour to figure out in the dark. We started walking off to explore the site. I was struck firstly by how small the festival was; you could walk from one end to the other in five minutes, tops. Having a site so small really had its perks because you didn’t have to worry about missing much of any band if you wanted to run back to the tents. Reading Festival had nothing on this, nothing at all. At Reading you have to think in terms of a ten minute walk almost everywhere, whereas here it was three, if that. The small size made you feel at home somehow, and after a day I began to recognise the same faces walking past me.
The camping field lead straight into the festival itself, there were no fences and little security as you walked around. Anyone could sleep wherever they wanted; they could walk, shout, eat and drink anywhere. A real happy hippie / family type affair. On top of a pyramid of hay bales we found a guy fast asleep, uninterrupted by the people all over the place who were warming up for the weekend’s proceedings. I lowered myself down into the gap in the middle of the hay, until just my head was sticking up out of the top, then someone said ‘manure’ and I clambered out as quickly as possible. My jeans smelt terrible after that, but I don’t think there was any manure in the middle at all, just sweaty rotting hay.
Things were placed around the festival to keep it exciting. Some hammocks strung between trees with people asleep inside, right next to a stage which was hidden away in bushes and shrubbery. I think someone said the stage was named after some children’s TV show but I’d never seen it. All around us were low hanging trees with different things suspended from each one; a load of eerie looking puppets, paper lanterns, a collection of assorted odd shoes, and one wrapped in layers of coloured wools! There was even a lake which separated two of the stages, the mud wrestling arena, twenty or so stalls, a couple of little bars and chill out tents from even more little tents, the scrap dragon building area, the crèche, a few sculptures, and even more food stalls. To get between the two areas of the site a walkway had been constructed straight across a lake and was illuminated by thousands of tiny strip lights. A lot of thought had gone into making the festival a bit different from others, and it certainly did stand out from the crowd. The crowd I had previously known.
I can’t stress enough the amount of random different things going on, even at 2am. I had known very little about the festival before I got there, but a festival is a festival after all, you’re always bound to have tons of fun, but I really wasn’t expecting this! So many things had been constructed just to marvel at, or to climb, that it had a solid vibe, which wasn’t even directly music-related. The whole event had been planned to keep people interested, to keep people alert, on their toes, and to allow people to let their eccentricities come right to the surface, even if it was only for the weekend.
It was during the next day that I managed to acquire a little something which allowed me almost the highest of privileges; free beer. None of our camp had much money at all, which meant we were all lacking in beer, smoke and enthusiasm, which seemed to put a bit of a dampener on the possibilities the weekend could provide. I mean I’m not a drunk, but I’m a drinker, and beer and festivals seem to go pretty much hand in hand. It’s quite strange how a whole weekend frying under the sun could be made a lot more interesting with a few cans and some good company.
We staggered up to the press tent and someone who knew the guys in charge managed to blag passes for our whole camp! When these passes were flashed at the security guards it pretty much meant ‘free roam’ and we could access wherever the hell we wanted to; including the fridge in the press tent which was full of ice cold cans. But that’s not all, it was full of ice cold cans of my favourite beer! Could it get much better than this? Now we could grab a couple of cans, go a-wandering and drinking, come back, grab more beer, and repeat the same process all weekend, during the day or night.
However, the press passes brought some pain as well as joy. Sitting with Mick from X Magazine in the press tent made me even more sure that I was on the right path and he, a complete slave to corporate reporting and huge glossy magazines, was on the wrong one. It was warmer inside the tent than it was in the sun and my brain started feeling kind of fried after a minute or so of talking to him, but for some reason I felt the need to speak to him still, it was like I was glued down to my seat. I realise now that that glue was astonishing bullshit.
“I’m Dave from such-and-such Magazine. I’m the youngest writer the magazines ever had, everyone else is over thirty, and I’m twenty-four. I run the front section of the magazine”. And as soon as he said that I let him know where my favourite section of that magazine was; “right at the back, where they recommend records”. That didn’t phase him though.
He talked and talked, on and on, blah blah blah, and all of it was so unbelievably boring. Self-loathing and self-promotion was all he seemed to care about, but he had the ability to blag, which is obviously needed in his line of work. Whether he was convincing or not didn’t seem to phase him at all, he just talked about Juliana Hatfield and showed us his K Records tattoo. It seemed like music was all new to him, like he had to tell us all these band names, whereas almost everyone I know sees music as an absolute staple of the very being. Meanwhile, lurking around in the background, was a young and beautiful Canadian photographer who was busy listening in, taking notes, and trying to understand how so much shit can come from one person. I can’t remember her name but she took a photo of Nic and me on the sofa in there, after a lot of heat and beer, and I looked like I’d just been woken from the dead!
The last straw came when he started to question a couple of us as to why we live in Northampton. He asked us questions which seemed to degrade our choices of inhabitancy, something which can be a sore spot when probed in the wrong manner, as he did. “Why do you live there? What does it do for you? Does anything good happen there? What about moving to the city?” How can you answer those sorts of questions? And to the city! Huh. And when you’re asked them by an idiot with a loud voice? He seemed to ask all the questions I would never ask someone, questions way too personal. Questions which offended, questions which seemed to question why you make the choices you make, which you make for good or ill, personal decision.
There and then he reaffirmed my faith in independent press by coming from a mainstream magazine approach and sucking the life out of music which is full of life. At least we have the ability to do it ourselves, without that there may be more of these kind of drones around.
At some point on the second day I met the head gardener, or the guy in charge of the whole festival. He owned the land and oversaw the whole event. He was making good use of the free beer and seemed to be totally comfortable surrounded by festival-goers, and blending in with the crowd effortlessly. Not that I expected the boss to wear a suit or anything, but I was immediately struck by how relaxed he was at having eight thousand people reeking havoc on his land for the weekend.
We only exchanged a few words but the legend of the man, his festival and his land spread quickly amongst us. Jamie relayed the pretty fascinating story to me. In 1066 William The Conqueror invaded England, leading the Normans in a string of victories over the Anglo-Saxons. England didn’t fall easily at first, the Northerners putting up a particularly strong resistance, but most of the country was under Norman rule by 1087. He divided up the land between his followers, including a certain plot near Huntingdon which all dips down into a lake in the centre, this plot being the very heart of today’s festival.
And the same family has owned the plot ever since. Whereas the land is timeless, the festival roots can easily be traced back. Only four years old, it was originally a very big party for friends and family of the head gardener and since then it has got out of hand really. Today the festival feels small and friendly, and still manages to maintain some intimacy, unlike a lot of other festivals, but relies heavily on its beautiful picturesque surroundings.
For me the highlight of the weekend was my final day at the festival. Mostly I wandered around looking for food and scouting stuff out, nipping back and forth to the press tent for beer every now and then. A couple of us tried to watch some ex-MI5 lady dish the dirt but the tent was so packed we couldn’t even get in so we kept walking around in circles. As it got dark, the festival became more interesting. People seemed to hide a bit during the day, in their tents or in the shade, but when it got cooler and night fell everyone let themselves go. I mean, really let themselves go. Evidently, the drugs and the booze began to take hold by the final day and it wasn’t uncommon to see a guy riding a piano with wheels - and playing at the same time, or to spot large groups using catapults to shoot water balloons at the pirate ship in the middle of the lake. Everyone was in on it; even I pushed Rob around in a wheelchair which looked like some horrible art sculpture for a while, before we crashed down some steps.
All of a sudden the sky started to become illuminated with these strange white shapes floating up and up. I had to be told that they were half paper lanterns, half hot air balloons. Hundreds of them were set off once it was dark. I couldn’t make out where they were coming from; it seemed to be all around the whole site. They sure looked cool though and captured everyone, looking skyward with open mouths. You could almost hear the whole festival ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’.
You’d never see hundreds of paper lanterns getting set off and rising into the sky at any big festival, they wouldn’t bother spending their precious money on doing anything interesting. That’s what sets small, independent festivals apart from major festivals; they want to keep their attendees interested in the festival, and talk about it once it’s over. With a festival like Reading the organisers just wanna get the money, get the bands on in huge tents, get the festival-goers in, get them sedated with booze and get them out when it’s all finished. There’s no heart to it. There’s no soul. There’s no celebration of the people actually attending the festival, which means the emphasis is not on the crowd who actually make the festival. Whereas at the Secret Garden they seemed to be trying to involve everyone, trying to get everyone attentions and to celebrate each and every persons own eccentricities. It seems like that is impossible, to celebrate everyone attending, but they managed to pull it off pretty well.
The absolute high point of the weekend, for me at least, came on the same night. We’d walked around pretty much all day. We’d made hand shadows with a projector. We’d looked at all the sculptures. Then we decided to go and build something in the recycled rubbish tent, but we were sidetracked on the way to the tent by these people singing on top of a weird box. Now, I’ve tried to explain the events which followed to a few people but never manage to convey the sheer amazement I felt over those few minutes, which is why I’m probably going to end up writing a lot about it.
Imagine a box about 15ft wide, deep and high, which on the outside looks like wooden panelling, plonked right in the middle of a festival field. On the flat roof are a few people singing rowdily, and you can just see a piano peeking over the very top. Walking around the box it appears that there is no way in, but there is, and it’s a tiny little walkway. Once inside the box you manage to see how the whole thing is held together: scaffolding. Tons of pipes go every which way, all of which have random multicoloured decorations dangling down like the insides of party poppers. Looking up through this crazy little world, you can just see an opening at the top which leads onto the roof, where the people are singing. In our interest at that very moment we started climbing up, pulling ourselves up on the scaffolding, and taking a tiny little ladder for the last few feet onto the roof.
On the top there were about twenty people all sorta standing around talking and drinking. A guy was sat down at the piano, with another big cockney geezer leaning on it. These two were the key. Almost immediately they started playing in a choppy sorta honky-tonk piano style, we all started bobbing along, then the big guy started singing in a thick cockney accent: “How many special people change? How many lives are living strange? Where were you while we were getting high?” People picked up the song and started to join in. I ripped a shaker off the wall and started shaking-along, a huge grin stretching across my face. We all sang along (badly). The song ended and they asked if there were any requests. “Play some Beatles!” I shouted, but they said they’d come back to The Beatles stuff. Then the piano started again in that choppy style. No-one knew what song they would be singing next until the first line came in. We all waited anxiously. “She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge, she studied sculpture at St Martins College, that’s where I, caught her eye.” Everyone picked it up and started singing along, all rowdy. We caused a good racket, enough to gain more and more peoples interest, during only this one song.
For the three minutes on top of that box we were in a world where that song mattered more than it did at Glastonbury ’95. Twenty ragged folks on top of a huge box were more important than Pulp right there, and the lyrics seemed to mean much more than when Cocker first wrote them. Or maybe it was just me? It could be that I was the only one completely floored by those brief few minutes. It seems hard to convey the feeling I felt right there at that time. Then again, it’s always difficult to explain what makes someone feel that certain way, that way they’ve only ever felt once.
