Download Diary Part one
And thus does the prodigal one return to you after wallowing through the degradation trip that was the Download festival (bonus points for the reference there, get it right and I’ll give you a cookie).
I suppose for the purpose of this I should perhaps walk in the footsteps of one Samuel Pepys, the noted diarist who chronicled the great fire of London, which is apt in it’s own slightly amusing and massively inflated fashion, but that’s a story for a little later on in this telling, and not something to be squandered at this point.
I digress, as I often tend to, and will now steer this discursive dinghy effortlessly back on track…
But that'll happen behind my lj cut.
Day one;
The morning of the Thursday began in typical enough fashion, with me falling out of bed at around 6-15AM, and then briefly wondering what the hell I was doing up at such an ungodly hour, and contemplating passing out for a little while longer. Then the hayfever hit, and rendered any such actions impossible. I can sleep though virtually anything, but sleeping and sneezing at the same time? It’s madness I tells ye!
So that dragged my coarse out of bed and towards the morning ablutions, before I plodded downstairs to talk to Pam about the coming weekend, promise to restock the fridge, not go into the bushes with strange men offering me sweet, sweet candy, and for me too of course return with a vague remembrance of what had actually occurred and not lose three days in a coma of drunkenness.
Well, that was what I read between the lines…
Anyway once Pam was sent on her way I did a few chores, hit the supermarket and then tripped to the post office to pick up the parcel that the cretins at Parcel Force had been mind numbingly unhelpful with.
Bastards.
Then it was time to return and pack… Something that alerted me to the fact that I had perhaps left it a little late to sort this out was that a brief telephonic conversation with a Mister P.G Daniel confirmed that he too was packing then. Which would be fine, but he only had to get to Hatton Cross from somewhere else in London, I on the other hand was forced to trek my muscly (sic) ass there from Swindon.
So one very rapid peg-legging towards and then through the train station later, and I found myself rattling towards London, sleeping bag, chair and bag full of the normal festival/camping stuff. Sadly though I had actually burned a few cds but, in a moment of tragically all too common forgetfulness I’d left them sitting on the PC…
Bugger…
Still in due course I rocked up to Hatton Cross and received a voicemail telling me exactly where my presence was needed. Typically at the vital moment where he actually gave me the directions a frigging plane flew over the top of me, leaving me to wander blindly for a fem moments, before tracking down Alexis’ Lexus and cramming my stuff inside and then setting off.
Three hours of music conversation, twisted jokes and random comments followed, and I decided that Alexis met the ‘JCR’ standard of acceptability and thus I wouldn’t have rohypnolise him and dump him elsewhere, which worked out for the best all around as I’d promised the rho-hyp to Paul to aid his quest in ‘borrowing’ a lonely emo-girl.
Tragically it later turned out that I’d been ripped off on the rho-hypo deal. I knew I shouldn’t have accepted that drink…
Finally we rocked up to the service station, where we took full advantage of the Marks and Spencers food store there, and of course of the final toilets we’d actually be able to flush till Tuesday. Paul and Alexis also spied a pair of very… Decorative camping chairs, before we finally made it to the festival site.
One utterly BRUTAL walk later and we finally reached the camping site to start pitching our tents… Which is a euphemism that certainly ranks up there with my very favourites, and was used with unsurprising regularity over the course of the weekend.
The people immediately around us were;
Luke, the huge affable Aussie.
Connor and the woman with no bra, whose name entirely escapes me.
And skeezy stonerman.
Our first sight of the skeezy one was when he had his weed taken away by onsite security within seconds of his turning up… I really had to work hard not to laugh at his pitiful grovelling towards the security people over their ‘theft’, and also at his seeming lack of understanding that he should have been searched at the gates and had it been discovered there it would have been taken away from him earlier, so all he’d really earned was a stay of execution.
It should be pointed out that later on I felt a little sorry for the guy, but first impressions weren’t exactly good.
Eventually, aided by Scout-Master Shirtliff we all managed to get our tents up, get the portable bbq a burnin’ and feed of the bounty provided by Alexis. After that there was drinking, eating and introducing, before a stranger trooped into our midst, a lost soul by the name of Lucy, (that I have just rememebered was also the name of Connor’s braless other half…) apparently wondering around after visiting the toilet and failing to find her tent.
A comely lass she was, and I being the married gent that I am and ever aware of the blaggards and brigands, several of whom I was sharing my campsite with, decreed that I would walk her back to her tent rather than leave her to wonder lonely as a cloud.
It took about two hours of dodging guy ropes and watching her pull the back of her trousers up again and again before we finally found her tent, and I was showered with praise and gratitude as well as offers of a sexual nature. Sadly for the strapping young fellow who made the offer, my own drinking had ensured that by this time I needed to take a wicked yes, and headed for the toilets.
They were utterly foul, but with the deed done I returned to my campsite, like a noble knight returning after a job well done…
What I got was a round condemnation, and deep suspicion over my motives for returning her to her rightful place, and for her age, which she claimed to be twenty one, and they all estimated to be low enough to put her somewhere between sixteen and seventeen.
Still, that age apparently wouldn’t have put out our stoner at all, who expressed disgust that I hadn’t actually tried anything, and boldly stated ‘you should have let me take her back, I’d have fucked her.’
Let me take this opportunity now to say;
Riiiiiiight.
Let me also take this opportunity now to say that, Lucy, if you’re somehow reading this, then you should know you really need to buy another belt so your trousers don’t keep falling down, it’s very distracting indeed.
Anyway the crisis of the nubile girl over with, and more drinking and jabbering done we all retired to our tents, getting some sleep in ready for the first day of the actual festival….
I suppose for the purpose of this I should perhaps walk in the footsteps of one Samuel Pepys, the noted diarist who chronicled the great fire of London, which is apt in it’s own slightly amusing and massively inflated fashion, but that’s a story for a little later on in this telling, and not something to be squandered at this point.
I digress, as I often tend to, and will now steer this discursive dinghy effortlessly back on track…
But that'll happen behind my lj cut.
Day one;
The morning of the Thursday began in typical enough fashion, with me falling out of bed at around 6-15AM, and then briefly wondering what the hell I was doing up at such an ungodly hour, and contemplating passing out for a little while longer. Then the hayfever hit, and rendered any such actions impossible. I can sleep though virtually anything, but sleeping and sneezing at the same time? It’s madness I tells ye!
So that dragged my coarse out of bed and towards the morning ablutions, before I plodded downstairs to talk to Pam about the coming weekend, promise to restock the fridge, not go into the bushes with strange men offering me sweet, sweet candy, and for me too of course return with a vague remembrance of what had actually occurred and not lose three days in a coma of drunkenness.
Well, that was what I read between the lines…
Anyway once Pam was sent on her way I did a few chores, hit the supermarket and then tripped to the post office to pick up the parcel that the cretins at Parcel Force had been mind numbingly unhelpful with.
Bastards.
Then it was time to return and pack… Something that alerted me to the fact that I had perhaps left it a little late to sort this out was that a brief telephonic conversation with a Mister P.G Daniel confirmed that he too was packing then. Which would be fine, but he only had to get to Hatton Cross from somewhere else in London, I on the other hand was forced to trek my muscly (sic) ass there from Swindon.
So one very rapid peg-legging towards and then through the train station later, and I found myself rattling towards London, sleeping bag, chair and bag full of the normal festival/camping stuff. Sadly though I had actually burned a few cds but, in a moment of tragically all too common forgetfulness I’d left them sitting on the PC…
Bugger…
Still in due course I rocked up to Hatton Cross and received a voicemail telling me exactly where my presence was needed. Typically at the vital moment where he actually gave me the directions a frigging plane flew over the top of me, leaving me to wander blindly for a fem moments, before tracking down Alexis’ Lexus and cramming my stuff inside and then setting off.
Three hours of music conversation, twisted jokes and random comments followed, and I decided that Alexis met the ‘JCR’ standard of acceptability and thus I wouldn’t have rohypnolise him and dump him elsewhere, which worked out for the best all around as I’d promised the rho-hyp to Paul to aid his quest in ‘borrowing’ a lonely emo-girl.
Tragically it later turned out that I’d been ripped off on the rho-hypo deal. I knew I shouldn’t have accepted that drink…
Finally we rocked up to the service station, where we took full advantage of the Marks and Spencers food store there, and of course of the final toilets we’d actually be able to flush till Tuesday. Paul and Alexis also spied a pair of very… Decorative camping chairs, before we finally made it to the festival site.
One utterly BRUTAL walk later and we finally reached the camping site to start pitching our tents… Which is a euphemism that certainly ranks up there with my very favourites, and was used with unsurprising regularity over the course of the weekend.
The people immediately around us were;
Luke, the huge affable Aussie.
Connor and the woman with no bra, whose name entirely escapes me.
And skeezy stonerman.
Our first sight of the skeezy one was when he had his weed taken away by onsite security within seconds of his turning up… I really had to work hard not to laugh at his pitiful grovelling towards the security people over their ‘theft’, and also at his seeming lack of understanding that he should have been searched at the gates and had it been discovered there it would have been taken away from him earlier, so all he’d really earned was a stay of execution.
It should be pointed out that later on I felt a little sorry for the guy, but first impressions weren’t exactly good.
Eventually, aided by Scout-Master Shirtliff we all managed to get our tents up, get the portable bbq a burnin’ and feed of the bounty provided by Alexis. After that there was drinking, eating and introducing, before a stranger trooped into our midst, a lost soul by the name of Lucy, (that I have just rememebered was also the name of Connor’s braless other half…) apparently wondering around after visiting the toilet and failing to find her tent.
A comely lass she was, and I being the married gent that I am and ever aware of the blaggards and brigands, several of whom I was sharing my campsite with, decreed that I would walk her back to her tent rather than leave her to wonder lonely as a cloud.
It took about two hours of dodging guy ropes and watching her pull the back of her trousers up again and again before we finally found her tent, and I was showered with praise and gratitude as well as offers of a sexual nature. Sadly for the strapping young fellow who made the offer, my own drinking had ensured that by this time I needed to take a wicked yes, and headed for the toilets.
They were utterly foul, but with the deed done I returned to my campsite, like a noble knight returning after a job well done…
What I got was a round condemnation, and deep suspicion over my motives for returning her to her rightful place, and for her age, which she claimed to be twenty one, and they all estimated to be low enough to put her somewhere between sixteen and seventeen.
Still, that age apparently wouldn’t have put out our stoner at all, who expressed disgust that I hadn’t actually tried anything, and boldly stated ‘you should have let me take her back, I’d have fucked her.’
Let me take this opportunity now to say;
Riiiiiiight.
Let me also take this opportunity now to say that, Lucy, if you’re somehow reading this, then you should know you really need to buy another belt so your trousers don’t keep falling down, it’s very distracting indeed.
Anyway the crisis of the nubile girl over with, and more drinking and jabbering done we all retired to our tents, getting some sleep in ready for the first day of the actual festival….