Sonisphere @ Knebworth 2010
Right! So my cunning plan is to try and work through this in a similar fashion to last year, so hold onto your hats, kiddiwinks, because there's about to be a whole lot of tl;dr and picspam.
My story starts, as most do, with a journey. I had Thursday-Monday off work (lol overtime owed) so on Thursday morning I trained my way over to my parents' house, partly to deposit the Fitch-cat with them for the weekend, and partly since I'd not seen them (bar my Mum, just post the hospital trip of fail a month ago) for a while. I was expecting a nice, quiet kind of evening, puntuated by a few drinks at the local pub. These were duly achieved, and I was just thinking about food (i.e. the yummy Chinese takeaway next door to the pub) when Mukm informed me that their cul-de-sac was having a leaving barbeque for one of the residents, and I'd also been invited.
Okay, I thought. I could go for ritualistically charred meat. Except that the actual party turned out to be happening in the back garden of one of the other residents, the male half of which was So Very Proud of the new summer house he'd just built, and of the fully functional bar he'd had fitted in it.
There was a lot of cider. And Pimm's No. 1 (complete with faily!ratios courtesy of assorted people) and I basically ended up fairly well battered by about 10pm. I fell into bed in the early hours of the morning.
At about 8.30am, I was prodded into conciousness by my mother ("you look rough, dear") and managed to pour myself into a shower, and then check that my bag definitely contained all of what I'd need in order to live in a field for four days. My load was lightened slightly this year as I was sharing a tent with V (my little two one-point-two man tent versus her four man tent? No contest) but it was only slightly as I had pretty much the equivalent weight of my tent in drinks-in-a-can (things what now come in can: vodka orange, vodka and cranberry, PIMM'S AND LEMONADE OMG, Gordon's G&T, pretty much every bourbon to exist and coke, ditto for rums). Because I am the classiest.
I set out to catch the 10.36am train from the local station, fully expecting to be the Sole Weirdo Doing An Alternative Snail Impression until I was at least making an interchange to the Tube. Not so much. The carriage I got on contained five other people who also had unfeasibly large backpacks and ridiculous anticipatory expressions. We shared polite cross-train silent flailing.
Once in London, the Tube journey and arrival at King's Cross mainline were kind of epic and hilarious. The Business Suits looked vastly offended at the invasion of the Backpack People, roughly 50% of the tourists looked confused, and the other 50% wanted their pictures taken with whoever had the largest backpack. Although there weren't reserved Festival trains, National Rail/First Connect/North Eastern had sensibly decided that all trains that called at Stevenage (the designated mainline station for Sonisphere) were going to run from two adjacent platforms, and that everyone who even vaguely looked as if they had an inclinations towards titting around in a tent was going to be gently but firmly herded onto said platforms.
The 20 minute high speed from King's Cross to Stevenage was very cheerful and noisy. Stevenage train station had been divided so that half of it was for normal people, and half of it was for Backpack People. Just outside the station was the shuttle bus pick up point, where I set up shop and waited for V to arrive in her car.
Once V arrived (and we somehow managed to fit my things and me into her car), we made for the grounds of Knebworth House, site of the festival.
We ended up camping at the front end of Red 2, and tent set-up and subsequent traditional cracking open of the first drink and lighting of the barbeque for burgers was achieved with minimal fuss. A few hours later, S and D arrived and pitched tents about 30 yards down Red 2 from us.
Full tent achieved, we took a collective meander down into the arena itself. Bohemia (the outdoor market/food court/fun fair/tent stage/generalised weirdness bit) was larger and laid out slightly differently, which caused some confusion. We found the beer tent relatively quickly, though.
Music-wise, we parked up at Saturn stage to catch the last of Europe's set ("It's the final countdooooown!"), and then stayed to watch Gary Numan and Alice Cooper.
Gary Numan, truefax, appears to have actually stopped ageing about 15 years ago. By which I mean rrrrowrrr! Live, his voice is kind of brain-meltingly hypnotic, and he sang Cars and Are Friends Electric? :D
Alice Cooper is once again doing his Theatre of Death thing, and he was kind of vastly entertaining whilst doing it. Alice Cooper did not stop ageing 15 years ago. Alice Cooper, in fact, may be ageing for both himself and Gary Numan (also, his voice does not make me go guh, so I didn't take pictures).
After Alice finished playing around with guillotines and life-size replicas of himself, we skittered over to Bohemia stage for Terrorvision. Who were bouncy and fun and loud and incited the whole crowd to dance dance dance, yay!
Dancing feet broken in, we hit up a beer tent again, and then went to investigate the fun fair. Under the influence of alcohol, D, S and I decided that we wanted to ride on the Booster, which was basically the illicit love-child of a trebuchet and a centrifuge, covered in neon lights. Well, look, here it is during the day. what you can't see is that there's a counterpart to the top pod, which is currently on the ground.
V, who has both vertigo and an actual sense of self presevation, flatly refused and sat herself down on the ground with the other sane people whilst she waited for us to be silly. The thing about me on stupid rides is this: I giggle. A lot. It turns out that S and D also giggle/cackle. And so we did. For the whole duration of the ride. V, apparently, had a conversation with a dude who asked her whether her friends were the screaming-with-fear side of the ride, or the insanely cackling side. V admitted that she knew the cackling idiots. hur hur hur.
Slightly dizzy, we stumbled off back to the campsite to hit our respective sleeping bags, ready for the day full of music that was fast approaching.
My story starts, as most do, with a journey. I had Thursday-Monday off work (lol overtime owed) so on Thursday morning I trained my way over to my parents' house, partly to deposit the Fitch-cat with them for the weekend, and partly since I'd not seen them (bar my Mum, just post the hospital trip of fail a month ago) for a while. I was expecting a nice, quiet kind of evening, puntuated by a few drinks at the local pub. These were duly achieved, and I was just thinking about food (i.e. the yummy Chinese takeaway next door to the pub) when Mukm informed me that their cul-de-sac was having a leaving barbeque for one of the residents, and I'd also been invited.
Okay, I thought. I could go for ritualistically charred meat. Except that the actual party turned out to be happening in the back garden of one of the other residents, the male half of which was So Very Proud of the new summer house he'd just built, and of the fully functional bar he'd had fitted in it.
There was a lot of cider. And Pimm's No. 1 (complete with faily!ratios courtesy of assorted people) and I basically ended up fairly well battered by about 10pm. I fell into bed in the early hours of the morning.
At about 8.30am, I was prodded into conciousness by my mother ("you look rough, dear") and managed to pour myself into a shower, and then check that my bag definitely contained all of what I'd need in order to live in a field for four days. My load was lightened slightly this year as I was sharing a tent with V (my little two one-point-two man tent versus her four man tent? No contest) but it was only slightly as I had pretty much the equivalent weight of my tent in drinks-in-a-can (things what now come in can: vodka orange, vodka and cranberry, PIMM'S AND LEMONADE OMG, Gordon's G&T, pretty much every bourbon to exist and coke, ditto for rums). Because I am the classiest.
I set out to catch the 10.36am train from the local station, fully expecting to be the Sole Weirdo Doing An Alternative Snail Impression until I was at least making an interchange to the Tube. Not so much. The carriage I got on contained five other people who also had unfeasibly large backpacks and ridiculous anticipatory expressions. We shared polite cross-train silent flailing.
Once in London, the Tube journey and arrival at King's Cross mainline were kind of epic and hilarious. The Business Suits looked vastly offended at the invasion of the Backpack People, roughly 50% of the tourists looked confused, and the other 50% wanted their pictures taken with whoever had the largest backpack. Although there weren't reserved Festival trains, National Rail/First Connect/North Eastern had sensibly decided that all trains that called at Stevenage (the designated mainline station for Sonisphere) were going to run from two adjacent platforms, and that everyone who even vaguely looked as if they had an inclinations towards titting around in a tent was going to be gently but firmly herded onto said platforms.
The 20 minute high speed from King's Cross to Stevenage was very cheerful and noisy. Stevenage train station had been divided so that half of it was for normal people, and half of it was for Backpack People. Just outside the station was the shuttle bus pick up point, where I set up shop and waited for V to arrive in her car.
Once V arrived (and we somehow managed to fit my things and me into her car), we made for the grounds of Knebworth House, site of the festival.
We ended up camping at the front end of Red 2, and tent set-up and subsequent traditional cracking open of the first drink and lighting of the barbeque for burgers was achieved with minimal fuss. A few hours later, S and D arrived and pitched tents about 30 yards down Red 2 from us.
Full tent achieved, we took a collective meander down into the arena itself. Bohemia (the outdoor market/food court/fun fair/tent stage/generalised weirdness bit) was larger and laid out slightly differently, which caused some confusion. We found the beer tent relatively quickly, though.
Music-wise, we parked up at Saturn stage to catch the last of Europe's set ("It's the final countdooooown!"), and then stayed to watch Gary Numan and Alice Cooper.
Gary Numan, truefax, appears to have actually stopped ageing about 15 years ago. By which I mean rrrrowrrr! Live, his voice is kind of brain-meltingly hypnotic, and he sang Cars and Are Friends Electric? :D
Alice Cooper is once again doing his Theatre of Death thing, and he was kind of vastly entertaining whilst doing it. Alice Cooper did not stop ageing 15 years ago. Alice Cooper, in fact, may be ageing for both himself and Gary Numan (also, his voice does not make me go guh, so I didn't take pictures).
After Alice finished playing around with guillotines and life-size replicas of himself, we skittered over to Bohemia stage for Terrorvision. Who were bouncy and fun and loud and incited the whole crowd to dance dance dance, yay!
Dancing feet broken in, we hit up a beer tent again, and then went to investigate the fun fair. Under the influence of alcohol, D, S and I decided that we wanted to ride on the Booster, which was basically the illicit love-child of a trebuchet and a centrifuge, covered in neon lights. Well, look, here it is during the day. what you can't see is that there's a counterpart to the top pod, which is currently on the ground.
V, who has both vertigo and an actual sense of self presevation, flatly refused and sat herself down on the ground with the other sane people whilst she waited for us to be silly. The thing about me on stupid rides is this: I giggle. A lot. It turns out that S and D also giggle/cackle. And so we did. For the whole duration of the ride. V, apparently, had a conversation with a dude who asked her whether her friends were the screaming-with-fear side of the ride, or the insanely cackling side. V admitted that she knew the cackling idiots. hur hur hur.
Slightly dizzy, we stumbled off back to the campsite to hit our respective sleeping bags, ready for the day full of music that was fast approaching.