I was served alcohol (surprisingly) and let loose in the temporary neon town i now called home. It was a weird city, something reminiscent of the town from "spirited away" with trendy people dotted around in top hats and face paint, a weird bias where the clothes were cheap but the food cost a firstborn child (sorry Sam ... we sold you for a cider when i ran out of kidneys to sell.) I was also fortunate to have wellies as it was essentially a bog town.
My first ever concert was Bastille, a band featuring cool bloke in criminally skinny jeans that lead a chant well and claimed to be unable to dance despite evidently doing so very well. I chatted to people including drunk women who thought i was south African and a cute girl hanging with a cluster of her teen friends. It was fun for the first few songs until i realised i had ran out of Bastille songs i knew the lyrics too with the exception of the very last one (Pompeii - that song's still so good!)
The next morning i scoffed a waffle that gave me the best kind of sugar kick and explored the settings, finding out the hard way that nothing started til 12. I found the timetable after an embarrassing amount of time and planned my day, unfortunately the first 3 activities were either shit or cancelled, the irony being that the talk i stumbled into when exploring (shout out to medival history guy) was excellent. I've seen actual bands/comedians less fun than him.
After narrowly missing a few workshops i found the comedy tent, with Nish Kumar performing. Coincidentally i had seen him a few nights before on TV. The woman who introduced him was great fun with her perfect peppiness and the gift of getting into sincere conversations with the audience before reeling off genius anecdotes.
The acts that night varied from the best smaller comedians (the local girl who killed it, the host - see above ... I want to be her friend so bad, and Nish Kumar who made me want to be the coldplay drummer and surprised me by not using his TV material) to the worst (hyperactive gits in costume with annoying voices making very left wing jokes.) Finally it finished on Johnny Vegas, who made me leave more concerned about his wellbeing than feeling the funny so to speak.
One thought did keep reoccurring during my stay, which was that my younger, hat obsessed self would have been in heaven. There was everything from fancy ass feathery headgear to bowler hats including a millinery themed pub with hat cocktails.
Finally the thing i loved most about the festival was how friendly everyone was this year. I spent most of my time hopping from stranger to stranger, varying from the Volvo sponsored sailor girl, to the Scottish women in the queue to the comedy tent and the hat guy with the glitter on his face. This of course was ideal for me as I love the potential to talk to anyone and everyone at the event without disrupting their lives, conversation is just expected here, and it was beautiful!
Thanks number 6, see you next year!