Many years ago I realised that there was a great, yawning gap between the vision of the person I wanted to be and the stark, sobering reality of the person I actually was.
As a teenager, I revered the 1960s, had an idealised view of it and wished I’d been around then. I loved the music, the fashions, the people and I wanted to be a hippy. I duly donned some love beads, had my nose pierced, bathed in patchouli oil and bought shares in henna as I fruitlessly attempted to turn my jet black hair, pillarbox red. I chucked around phrases like ‘I’m a free spirit’ and ‘go with the flow’and fantasised about having a string of Bohemian love affairs and living on narrow boats. I thought that I wanted to travel extensively and rough it along the way; sleeping under the stars, preferably accompanied by a man with long hair and a beard.
Who was I kidding? I hate ‘roughing it’. It’s not that I want to surround myself with expensive things or anything like that; it’s just that I’m a neurotic, germ-hating fusspot. I want to sleep in a structure which has four solid walls and a proper roof and I want to sit on something comfortable. I don’t even like putting my bag down on the floor of a public toilet so (if you have any experience of toilets at music festivals) you can imagine how I feel about using them.
My first experience of camping brought me to earth with a bump. My boyfriend and I had got the train and ferry to Amsterdam, massive backpacks strapped to our spines like Teenage Mutant turtles. It was a blazing hot day in May so we pitched our tent under a tree for the shade. That night there was a massive thunderstorm and I spent most of the night worrying that we were going to get struck by lightning, this was in between was trying to avoid rolling over onto my mud-caked Doctor Martens. Which brings me to one of the crappiest things about camping - having to have all your chattels piled up around your ears - backpack, baby wipes, toothbrush, sopping wet towel - the whole crappy lot!
My wannabe Bohemian spirit deserted me - I wanted to sit on a proper sofa and sleep in a comfortable bed, at a reasonable distance away from my muddy boots.
My first (and last) music festival was a similarly sobering experience: although the music was amazing - I very much enjoyed the magical experience of watching Bjork sing with fireworks going off in time to the music - ditto, sitting at the back of a field, listening to Neil Young, surrounded by mini bonfires, the toilets were like something out of a horror movie! Plastic boxes with a bucket full of crap and some bloody tampons perched upon the poo (sorry to be crude but this is what they were like!). People left those cubicles looking as traumatised as I felt.
“The trick is,” My boyfriend said. “to go into them just after they've been emptied.”
But I don't think that I ever quite mastered that trick.
I have to say that the experience put me off festivals for life (although I’ve been camping since and to day festivals, where I could go home to my comfy bed and my own, somewhat cleaner toilet, at the end of the day.) and I’ve never really felt that I was missing out. The thing is, I’ve made my peace with the fact that I am not a chilled out, festival-loving, laid back hippy. I don’t like dirt and germs and I’m not particularly keen on crowds.
So why, you ask, dear, sweet reader, am I writing about this now? I’ll tell you why - my other half has booked us all to go to a two night, yes, a two night festival! And when I say us, I don’t mean just me and him, I mean me, him and our two children - aged 5 and 3 respectively, one of whom is still in nappies! So I won’t even be able to get so wasted that I don’t care about the state of the toilets. I think the whole thing will be a make or break experience, in that if I make it out in one piece, I won’t break his nose!
No comments:
Post a Comment