the walk of death
Adventures on Bison
luke ryan
Stephen wall
T
I
he anticipation of going to a music festival is always quite special. You know you’ll see some of your favourite bands over the weekend. You’re praying for good weather. You get to hang out with your friends for three days and nights in a field somewhere. The week before, you’re scouring your house/shed/ garage for wellies, fold-away chairs, torches and lurid floral shirts. It is an exciting time. E-mails are flashing back and forth with the infamous line-ups for each stage, until somebody manages to get hold of the official artist’s handbook and we know we have the official running order. You hope and pray that the showery spells predicted on the Met Éireann website just about miss the little village of Stradbally. Exciting times. Even the car journey down, tunes pumping out, on the open road, half a breakfast roll scattered around your feet, the arse end of the overloaded car sparking off the tarmac. And then suddenly, bang. You hit the car park. Much further away from the entrance than planned. And your mates are in the red campsite all the way over the other side. And through the
You dare not stop the momentum lest the unwieldy load you are carrying consumes you and buries you in the soft and well-trodden path forest you have to carry your tent, your chair, clothes, sleeping bag and wellies (all poorly strapped to your rucksack) and most importantly a slab of beer and you feel you are being crippled with every step. Your shoulders ache like an Emily Bronté novel and you dearly crave a rest, but you dare not stop the momentum you have built up lest the unwieldy load you are carrying consumes you and buries you in the soft and well-trodden path to the camp site. It is the walk of death and I hate it. Even when you reach the campsite, you still have a tent to put up. And then you wish you had bothered to air it out a few days ago because it hasn’t been looked at since last year, and there’s even a lone sock crusting away inside. But then, after all that, the drive down, the staring at the clouds willing them to fuck right off, trudging the awful walk of death, untangling all the fly ropes and guidelines and desperately blagging spare tent pegs off your neighbours, it’s worth it! Because you can unfold your chair, reach for a can of beer, let the warm air and the wonderful and varied sounds it carries wash over you, sit back, relax in the knowledge that its at least 65 hours and three hangovers until you have to pack up again!
n my excited preparations for my first Picnic, I wondered what volume and manner of alcohol to bring along. Having received some advice from festival pros, including Al’s invaluable and authoritative checklist, I decided to go for some beer for the hazy days and some vodka for the crazy nights. I bumped into my old schoolmate Conor at the off-licence who was there on exactly the same mission. He recommended a new vodka fresh to the Irish market called Bison, from Poland. Sounded good, had a green tint to it and included a blade of grass in the bottle – sufficient for me to take his advice and make the purchase. So next day I’m just heading out the door when a sudden terror of running short of alcohol gripped me. I hastily poured most of a bottle of Bombay Sapphire into a plastic bottle and legged it… Saturday night arrived after a marvellous day of music and cans. It was time to get this thing energetic. I reached deep inside my tent and grabbed the vodka. Mixing it up with a little OJ, I took a swig and thought “this doesn’t taste like normal vodka–that Bison stuff has a funny flavour.” So off I popped and laced into the vodka bottle with gay abandon. Now vodka has always been a good friend of mine – having been with me for some of my best nights, it seldom gives me a hangover. But this time was different, it was almost like getting drunk for the first time, completely novel. I was wandering around in a merry stupor that was new and lots of fun. Stumbling into the Erasure gig I met Brian and Al, who were later to describe my demeanour as “euphoric”! Erasure was the highlight of the festival, due in no small part to my state of absolute and ridiculous inebriation! The night progressed and I found myself in various environments with random people. The film tent appeared, then I was disco dancing like crazy in the saloon tent – great tunes! Eventually I realise I’m at Chemical Brothers with my mate Sara. Despite forlornly hoping for a couple of tracks that never came, the show and the lights were enough to inspire me to turn to Sara and say “You know Sara, our lives are marginally improved by the existence of the Chemical Brothers!” Some pure oxygen followed the gig and then a long queue for pizza, during which Sara and I heroically jumped a few places by taking the ready Margarita that no one wanted! I thought we were heroes, and the night faded out with Bowie going through my head singing… We can be heroes… just for one day!! Next morning I asked Sara what the hell happened last night. “Ah Steve, I had a feeling you might have been absolutely twisted!” Two days later I’m at home unpacking. As I go to pour the contents of the gin bottle back I realise the gin is gone and the vodka is untouched! I’ve always been afraid to have more than a few gins in a row–looks like my fears were unfounded! I got trashed on a bottle of gin at Electric Picnic by mistake!!
4