D AY O N E
Friday morning and day one of Bestival dawned. It’s still raining after a week of foul weather. However, on the first day of a festival rain rarely dampens the spirit and we all adopted the gung-ho attitude that does us British proud! My good lady had been furiously researching the weather every half an hour on a daily basis in the weeks preceding so we were kitted out with waterproof garments to (hopefully) prevent our high spirits (and bodies) from being saturated. We set off, rucksacks jam packed with all those festival essentials; sleeping bag, 4 litres of festival strength cider, Tuxedo, lace umbrella, golf umbrella, an Iceberg lettuce, one litre of dark rum, toilet roll, tutu, 7 hats, Team Rave T-Shirts and a ball of string. On entering the site what had previously been a beautiful grassy country park now resembled a war-torn battlefield. However on any normal battlefield the soldiers would not be dressed as prawns, octopuses, giant squid, sea monkeys or a very odd looking man wearing a horse’s head a pair of boxers and a dubious looking pair of ankle socks. The mud was already ankle-thickness and the consistency of porridge. To take refuge from the unrelenting rain we all entered the Big Top to watch amazing back to back sets from Santogold, Ebony Bones and Ladyhawke. Now we had a problem. Our cider had run out. So when someone suggested moving off to the bar for more ‘Brothers’ we jumped at the chance! Upon leaving the sweaty warmth of the Big Top we stepped out into the boggy mire and in the few hours that we’d been inside the place had gone a bit mental! Maybe it was the never ending rain, the copious amounts of Cider or the huge quantities of drugs people had been scoffing but this place was lively! A woman approached me instructing me to ‘Go Fucking Mental!’. Grown men were frolicking in the mud like Infants and people from all walks of life were dancing and jumping in the rain soaked air like it was a beautiful summer’s day.
whos-jack.co.uk // 69
L O S T: W a l l e t , U m b r e l l a , F r i e n d x 1 F O U N D : G l o S t i c k , W a l l e t , R a i n S h o w e r s , C i d e r Te n t