The Glory Of A Low Budget Festival

On the Sunday just gone, I had arranged to go for a ride with my brother Dan and his girlfriend Aimee. The weather was slightly overcast which as Tom Jones would say, is not unusual. But we didn't let that stop us and we made plans of where to go. My bro suggested a festival that was happening relatively nearby, where we could go watch some bands and have a few drinks. A couple of years back my brothers band had played the same festival and at the time he said it was really good, so it seemed like a good idea. Here's a little map of our route, it starts from the local train station not far from my brothers house (I obviously don't want to give away his address). Unfortunately when it came time to set off, Aimee wasn't feeling to great, so she decided to stay at home leaving my bro and me to brave the harsh beast that was a local music festival.

The festival itself was in and around the grounds of a pub called The Roaches Lock. The Roaches is right on the side of a canal so the tents and stages were spread out along the banks. They had a stage in the car park (a topic of great interest) as well as a tent with a makeshift bar. Just slightly further on they had a few burger vans where some hippies had seen it as a perfect place to set up some tents selling spiced tea. I thought this was an interesting image, the people in the tents were probably no more than 25, only a few years older than me, and by their standards in seemed, they were living the hippie lifestyle. Maybe I'm stereotyping, but if you saw them you wouldn't believe they were proper hippies for a second. I wanted to walk up to them and quiz them on hippie-history. I bet if you asked one of them when the summer of love was, they'd probably say "Last year when I went to Magaluf". Just because you wear dirty, shaggy clothing and bandannas of various colours of the spectrum doesn't qualify you to sell spiced tea and give advice on all the "far out" comings and goings of the world. I'm also going to assume that a handful of them were Vegetarian, only because of stereotyping of course. Now don't get me wrong, if you enjoy eating animals that's fine, a lot of people do, but IF you do, don't put your tent, directly next to a f***in burger van. Baffling.

Even further on that there was a dance tent (Weird) with what looked like two 8 year olds pilled off their heads, raving their backs out to some mental trance. Just next to that was a makeshift stage in a white marquee where the 15 strong crowd stood at the entrance to it, instead of actually inside it, I bet that was a confidence booster for the band. The last was an acoustic tent, this seemed to have drawn the biggest crowd, I think that's because half the people there knew each other and only came to see one band play.

What really made me laugh though, was their so called "Main Stage". As I said earlier its a topic of great interest, bearing in mind that the phrase "Main Stage" itself brings up thoughts of huge festivals, like Glastonbury or The Carling Leeds/Reading Festivals that are famous for having enormous stages. Hundreds of thousands of people stood with their eyes fixed on the same ginormous structure, cheering and screaming for one band. Mozfest... It wasn't quite like that, here's a picture of the main stage at Mozfest...



Get your tickets for next year, judging by the crowds for the "Main Stage", they will be selling like hot cakes.

Thanks always for reading

Take it EZ

LW