Merida, postmen, cowboys, and australian DILFS, - the green man experience

To be honest I was dreading green man festival, I’d just adapted to sleeping on real beds and I was not willing to live in a cold wet field in the Brecon beacons. it was meant to be "the quiet festival", the slow wind down to normal life from such an extreme situation. Obviously this is not how the night ended up. Something about sleep deprivation means that everything that occurred there was either the best or the worst. credit to the Green Man team though they treat their volunteer staff really well with a very reasonable expectation of hours, lively characters to keep morale up, and cheap food available to keep the cranky hungriness away. 

However it was the people that made that festival particularly memorable. Starting with my main companion for the weekend, a girl with fiery hair that can only be explained through a secret love child between River Song from doctor who and Merida from brave. She was distinctly well travelled and definitely not sheltered, yet had a quite cockney London speech pattern, complete with the unironic use of words like “geezer.” Most importantly she was on my wavelength in a way that I was worried I wasn’t going to find at green man.

The other people involved included a young Jewish guy named Dan (wearing a star of david and quipping about his religion every few seconds) who had an odd combo of nerdiness and confidence that quietly floated him through the festival, and a chef with massive poodle-rock hair (still can’t decide if it was styled like that or if his hair just afros like that) and a nerdy shrine of arm tattoos that he apparently drew himself. His accent was a cloudy, gentle, welsh lilt, and that paired with his cartoonish facial expressions and actions lead me to believe he was destined to be a stall merchant in a video game, or perhaps a pokemon gym leader. Either way I wanted to keep him around. 

On the other hand there was also a gentleman who introduced himself as "love", he was covered in eyeliner geometric cult symbols and spoke with a cadence to his voice that never seemed to arrive anywhere. he was full androgynous hippie, the kind of person who would have been charming if he gave you straight answers instead of trailing off on vaguely hippie-ish enigmatic wankery. he didn't seem to have much direction, and although his aesthetic was fascinating in a post apocalypse grunge homemade way, there was too much of an absence to him. like he was barely in the room even when he was sat in front of you. it also didn't help that one of the first things he explained to me was asking if I wanted to learn how to make a soy bottle into an ash tray and that he was collecting recycling bits for a craft project "as an artist."

On the first volunteer shift I was left with Dan, with whom I traded bad puns regarding basically everything in the area. I talked to one of the live events, a dynamic duo of sisters dressed in shorts and a caricature postman’s uniform. There was a service where people could leave messages for strangers or friends based on descriptions varying from “pink hair girl, elephant leggings” to a match.com style shopping list of traits. One of the posties even took a fondness towards me, adopting me as an honorary younger brother for the weekend due to a slight similarity to her own brother. This was incredibly useful due to the amount of hugs I’d need to keep morale at an acceptable level. 

She tried to set me up on a blind date, but I passed because I’d already found someone for that. I began viewing the posties as like the volunteer fire department in lemony snicket, a cult of inherently trustworthy strangers.

I went to compliment a stranger’s hair – a pink undercut – but lost them before I managed to tell them how cool they were. Luckily for me I found them again as Jodie, the redhead, went to visit something else. A tall figure, dressed in a leather vest with a cowboy hat and glasses, who I shortly got to know as “Mattie.” More commonly thought of by me as “the polyamorous, the 6 foot 6, pink haired cowboy” or simply just “the cowboy.” Despite this incredibly distinctive description he was incredibly hard to find.

He warmed up to me quickly and I guess we became amorous for the evening, everything above the belt but still incredibly good company. He clicked his fingers like he was at a poetry night when he was impressed and had a way of making you feel special for a moment before continuing without you. I found myself wandering around with part of my brain fixated on his whereabouts, not infatuation but fascination. The second time I met him had at least twice the amount of leather. I hope I left a good impression.

Event highlights included Emer Maguire singing science songs about animal sex, the temple of the tattie selling us into an Irish potatoe cult, the burning of the green man, and the mysterious caravan inhabited by vintage dressed people in animal masks, who would gesture to you and draw you if you visited, like an alice in wonderland booth. A raven woman typewritered me and Jodie a poem, and there was a simple sketch in sharpie marker to remember the weekend by.

I also missed a shift of mine and flurried back to the steward tent realising what I’d done. I pleaded for a replacement shift to get an older gentleman with a tan and Australian dark hair and maturely designed tattoos look me in the eyes knowingly. Despite knowing his name I refer to this gentleman purely as “the australian DILF” for ease. He smiled and said “I can see your stressing, go to bed and make sure you don’t miss the next one.” I followed his advice to see him the next morning grinning. “how was the night shift? Good wasn’t it!” he asked hinting. I followed suite and promised him I’d do a shift or buy him a drink or something. I never got to buy him that apology/thank-you-for-being-my-alibi drink in the end.

I did however suffer through my night shift, six hours in wet wellies at the pitch blackness that left a bad taste in my mouth. i was bitter and cold. be warned. volunteering leads you into deep bitter coldness.

Camp Bestival, urban myths and Mr Tumble

Camp Bestival gave me festival whiplash. I’d had exactly 2 nights to recover and could barely shuffle to the venue. The death glares on the train as I hustled gracelessly with my camel-hump backpack through rush hour and taking up far too much space cut me like paper. I hadn’t clocked the demographic of camp Bestival when I applied … younger than I anticipated. Like “Mr Tumble as a headline” levels of younger. That also meant that the people I was working with were getting paid because there weren’t enough volunteers to tide over the job. Most of the guests were that breed of “trendy start up mum/dad” where parents refuse to let their age catch up with them by maintaining a modern job in a tech start up or a gentrified street food business specialising in avacados and dyeing their hair a crazy colour in order to forget the fact they are in their late 30s/early 40s in an office half their time.

I was dropped off by the staff buggy and saw a flash of a Swansea hoodie. There was a kneejerk grin, a fellow Welshman! I later explained that I wasn’t a psychopath for grinning the moment I saw her, and our conversations trailed from wales to genuine friendship. Somewhere along the line I met Eilish (pronounced like Billie Eyelish), a woman who somehow managed to fry her accent worse than mine. She was short and pale with borderline Scandinavian blonde hair. Our jokes managed to evolve into in-jokes, the most prominent involving Mr Tumble as a sexual icon, Mr Tumble as a dominatrix (mistress tumble), the Venga-boys, and a horrific merging of Mr Blobby (the 90s children’s show character) and the Slender man, (a photoshopped urban myth from the internet era.)

During my ticketing shift I explored with my customers what qualifies an adult ticket (aside from age), mostly suggesting that it was getting excited by Ikea cookware or enjoying scotch or something. Understanding a tax form perhaps? I’m surprised my teammate didn’t hit me after the 6^th hour of the same joke over and over.

I found cheesy chips spicy when they were laughably tame, I was lead on a wild goose chase by an online dating stranger who was not actually in the venue they claimed to be, and I saw a circus performance. There were a few overlapping people going from festival to festival, including a young French lad who was learning English through travelling Britain, and a manbunned festival enthusiast who was telling me in detail about how he’s attended smaller versions of burning man. Maybe one day I’ll go to the Spanish burn (was it called nowhere?) because it sounds really awesome.

I’m harsh about this festival but its also the

festival that brought me “Elvana”, a nirvana cover band lead by an Elvis impersonator with long dip-dyed red and black hair. He had a stage persona and kept the accent inflections that the original Elvis would have sang throughout his weird vintage mashup, with two vintage cheerleaders with beatnik bobs singing back-in music. It was a combination that I never expected but am glad exists out there in the world somewhere, goodluck Elvana wherever you are. Furthermore Mr Tumble had more of a stage presence than most of the acts I saw that month, including Lana Del Rey and Jess Glynne.

Latitude, a tale of hair dye and bottle theft

So I’ve survived festival season, each weekend sending me collapsing into a bath/solid bed and cursing that I would “never work a festival again” (spoilers, I usually do.) so I thought I’d write about them. lets start from the beginning.

Latitude started with a stumble. I’d joked to some girls on the train about how middle class the deal was, dragging my backpack to the cubbyhole and shoving it to the side. They went uncomfortably quiet and I knew my line about being worried Latitude was a “gap yaaah” (gap year but obnoxious) type of venue. The train ride dragged on and I eventually, after wrestling with my tent and marching through the crusty dry hay I had set up a base camp. In a stumble at friendship I offered my service to a blue haired stranger in a sleeveless tee shirt – we later debated if it was a vest or not. He said he was fine, but upon seeing my put my stuff away offered, no … insisted, he fix up my shambling tent. The dad instinct had kicked in.

I mingled with their neighbours and met a butch biker chick, an androgynous punk guy with tie-dye clothes and a pink/purple fringe who despite his heavily city kid energy was also surprisingly outdoorsy, and an English lit student who shared my deep seated love of Belinda Blinked. We were taught the radio call signs from the scrappy crew of hotbox officials and smirked at how bluntly on the nose the radio co

des were. After the official meeting we slinked off to see the empty festival ring. Glowing signs and projections on the bridge, as well as trails into the woods that showed us sneaky bars. Obviously as a Welshman I couldn’t help but make all the cheap double-en-tandras near the sheep. These were also the cluster of people I spent me evenings with.

The second/third day and I dowsed myself with glitter. Glitter beards, golden face paint, the works. I was fully following my dreams of being both a legend of Zelda forest spirit living by the river and guiding kind people to where they need to be, whilst also being a moustachioed man from the 1920’s/40s that twirls his facial hair and hosts the finest secret speak-easy parties in all the land. It was the gold face paint shoot that won me a runner-up prize for directions hair dye. My shifts were spent my time trying to crack the fella working with me, and it took me 4 hours but I did manage to make him go from deadpan with polite chuckles to an occasional sincere laugh.

On my birthday night I entered the speakeasy, expecting it to be a jazz bar. This was a mistake. It was spoken word poetry. I slinked away to an oxygen bar (literally inhaling squash, not my thing) and began my mission, trading a rubber duck - like that guy who traded a red paperclip - for something more exciting. The flavoured oxygen bar place was more than willing to help and beamed at me about the proposition. There were drunken photos and when they had found out about it being my birthday insisted I did a coffee shot before trading the duck in for a tambourine. They were truly lovely, both extremely Irish and incredibly kind. I want to hang out with them again.

at a point in the evening someone caught my eye, a tall man in what i can only describe at "slutty peter pan" garb doing circus acts for fun. I went to investigate. He introduced himself as "Dandelion Chalice" and explained that he was a pagan, an ex-circus-performer, and a lush employee. He also tried to sell me some rave gear after I complemented his look, to this day I don't know if I'm impressed by him or slightly concerned, there's only so much enigmatic wankery i can handle.

Finally on one of my shifts there was an older woman named Veronica. she was in her 70s and i was paired with her for part of my shift. however, she turned out to be the adventurous type, telling me about all her travelling plans and how she'd even visited North Korea. in the family camping area there were a pair of bottles left out under a gazebo, and although alcohol was completely legal at the festival the glass bottles were to be confiscated. with the severity of a policeman she whipped out a notepad and scribbled a message to the owners of the alcohol before looking for a sensible cup.

when she couldn't find one she placed two deliberate cereal bowls on the table, flicked the lids off the spirit bottles with a flourish, and decanted the spirits with a theatrical flourish. it was alarming that this 70 year old was more mischievous than i was. "we're called OWLs, Older White Ladies. means i can get away with so much more because people just see sweet grannies." she justified, the bitter irony being that I'd been talking with the deadpan guy before she tagged in about airport security and how hes always made to clean his beard beforehand. this also earned her the nickname "Veronica the Bottle thief" and god i wish she had a blog.

Its just a shame that I was too bitter and sleep deprived to fully enjoy George Ezra properly and that Marina overlapped with one of my shifts, plus hotbox camping tended to be tight with the treatment of the festival guests, not providing the perks I'd grown accustom to such as a comfy seating and cheaper staff food. However I did add a few new artists to my repertoire.

Chester pride 2019, finally a pride i felt comfortable in

So Chester pride was postponed due to weather issues, which to many was seen as a problem. However the hosts of Chester pride don’t realise they have accidentally done me a favour. For you see I usually find the pride event itself, or at least at other events, a little out of my area of expertise. Much like Christmas there is too much pressure on the event, with some believing it’s a party and others thinking it’s a protest, catering to both groups makes it, in my eyes, a sensory overload.

However with the event postponed and the side parties still occurring to satisfy all those with what I can only describe as “pride blue balls” I was left with a mystery cabaret that poured young queers into town with enough excitement to fill an entire day. So I text my nearest and queerest to find two sets of friends at the party, one of which had been drinking since 10am (yikes) who I tag along for a while. The only problem is that these people are anxious wallflowers and my restlessness, my hunger for adventure was kicking in, so when they went to retire in the leader – Finn – ‘s home I sloped off to the cabaret night and within seconds of entering the bar was confronted by a middle aged man in sequin shorts and a black leather harness, which set the tone for the night.

The next thing I bumped into was an old friend of mine and his brood. I hustled through the crowd of eccentrically dressed strangers to the front of the stage to see the tail end of some strip tease from a stranger. I took a breather outside for a second and was welcomed by the well rested couple from the hippie wedding. The bride mentioning in passing one simple sentence that completely changed my interpretation of the entire wedding. “Rumour has it you had an interesting time too” she smirked. I had sincerely thought my discrepancies had gone under the radar due to a surplus of drugs hard enough to topple a hardened 1960s Woodstock hippie to the ground. We bantered with the couple and their friends over pancakes.

When I returned to the Liverpool arms things started getting spicy, starting with a burlesque performer dressed as miss piggy – including the stout and ears - who

began strip teasing to a miss-piggy-fied version of the macarena. She even had nipple tassles … and an ass tassle of Kermit. It was an incredible sight to behold. That paired with my confused resting face made it look like I’d walked entirely into the wrong bar, but alas I regrouped with a tribe. Acts came and went including a 6 foot candyfloss figure with a face that seemed far too familiar. I looked closer, but it was only when this quite shocking statue in front of me gave me a glance and a wave that I realised, it was a sales clerk from boots in town. You see everyone in Chester knows one another by faint description, even if you don’t remember one another you could still match the face to the job. I just never joined the dots that the boots make up guy who helped me with a Halloween costume that one time would be a freAKING DRAG QUEEN.

After a few photos she was shortly joined by a couple of figures in nun robes and heels. One with an alarming crimson beard and the other with regal cat eye glasses. I’d heard about the sisters of perpetual indulgence before, but never seen them up close. Drag nuns from Manchester with the main goal being to leave the world better than they found it and offer hugs etc to those who needed them.

There were just two of them at this venue, and I don’t know how but the kindly old lady vibe seemed to bleed through to these stubbly men in their 20s/30s. I was expecting more of a party spirit, but if anything they had a calming effect. You just felt compelled to trust them. “I’ve got a few sins to confess sisters” my friend joked. One of them, sister Mona Key smiled gently and chuckled “don’t do that, as long as they aren’t hurting people at least, do more of them. In the sisterhood we don’t call it confession we call it bragging” she purred. It was that line paired with the warmth they generated that sold me on the concept, which was ironic considering their ghostly white make up and the vaguely horror movie black nun robes.

After they graced us and the bar with their presence they tottled into town to explore the city. I saw them again in passing at a vintage tea place drinking from dainty china cups and sharing a cake like genuine old ladies. I didn’t want them to go, but alas my night continued. I like to think they went off to help those who needed it, or at least they went to have a nice time. Swap the tea for something more exciting.

Fast forward to me venue hopping between the three bars actually making the effort to celebrate pride and darting through empty streets to follow the music. Without expecting it I ran into Kenny, the tall black guy in the flowy robes from liverpool that was almost always mistaken for a jedi or a wizard. He whisked his way through the cobblestones, shooting me a toothy grin and stopping to say hi. I compared notes with him regarding my evening plans and a hug later was on my way. I grabbed a kebab and was warned by a stranger outside the bars that the mayonnaise globules dripping down my chin were beginning to look a tad suspect. I also took part ring of fire, the drinking game. One particular rule made it so I had to drink whenever one of the group talked, famously I’d been tormenting her and she was also very talkative to begin with. My drink was finished very quickly.

As I finished it I received a text from my landlord asking for cash to sort some kind of problem, with a slight snark. It took the wind out of my sail, a number a tad higher than I was expecting. I took a breather in the storyhouse and shake off the drain in the back of my mind. Why does spending money hurt so much? My quiet sulking was punctured by a text from an old friend I hadn’t seen for a while. Kendall. I told him where I was and we arranged to meet. He was taller than I remembered, and he introduced me to his friends with a warm welcome. We head to a bar for drinks and a dance (he danced well), it was fun. Was. Until I kissed a friend of his, and he got twitchy. I didn’t catch it at first but then I kissed his other friend in that kind of a flirty haze. He snaps. His friends, drunkenly check on him. I’m left on the side-line scrambling for the logic.

I scurry sideways to talk to one of his friends and find out what the hell just happened. He liked me, yes, but we hadn’t hung out in months. His friends were on the market, so I didn’t see the issues. We left him to have a breather after his main friend lectured him on how he’d “never let anything get between them as friends” etc. He explained to me after clearing air with his friends that he is monogamous, which would make complete sense if myself or anyone I made out with was dating him. The shame was that if he hadn’t had this outburst I would have considered it, we’d be in wildly different places in life … but he was charming. I held onto this discussion, “yeah your friends might be fine with this but I’m not. We haven’t hung out in months dude, I should be able to kiss who I want” I justified, perhaps a tad high on adrenaline. “that fine, I’ll just never hang out with you” he brushed off slinking down an alleyway somewhere. “we’ll meet you back later perhaps” his friends hinted, that was my cue to go.

I ended the night heading to the nightclub to meet the friends from the bar, brushing past exes and feeling a spark of joy when I hear my name shouted from the smokers perch opposite. I excused myself for a second from the bar friends and surfed over to one of the couples from the hippie wedding. There was a hug and a grin, I’d gone full circle. Normality at last. And a breathe of fresh air.

the hippie wedding

So I arrive at the station in a makeshift floral shirt and shorts combo, and book my ticket. It was Brighton pride in the city which to others meant a party, but to me meant fighting through glitter clad strangers. It was then I saw them, a couple in smart clothing lugging freshly purchased camping gear and walking away from the party. They had the vibe of “how I met your mother” characters, so I did what I do. I talked. Turns out the couple were going to the wedding too, my theory was right. So I tag along with them, the redhead and the scotsman. She was a tattoo artist and enriched the journey with stories about the matching couple tattoos of the couple and the brides infamously bad reaction to pain.

When the cab from the station arrived I collapsed with my bags to find a couple of friends, one of which was in a wide brimmed almost witchhunter-y hat, enjoying a drink at the café. It was them, along with the people I was yet to meet that really made the wedding. After a bit of hugging and handshaking with new guests and a tent setting up moment with a gold clad cartoonish friend of the groom’s that was torn straight from a carry on film, the 20-

somethings huddled together as a tribe to avoid the adults. We drank and one by one, branched out to the adults one by one starting with the father of the bride. He was a tall gentleman in a thick green coat and an ‘alice in wonderland’ top hat adorned with a bird skull and a beetle stuck in a crystal. Despite the mad hatter appearance he almost definitely played the role of the white rabbit, fussing about time and leading his party through hedges and fields.

The sermon was hosted by a short, facepainted older woman named River. She encouraged us to welcome the elements into the relationships and had a family member represent each element (complete with props) and ask questions related to each element – lines about keeping sparks in the relationship and letting the love flow etc. eventually we were given a ribbon and told to tie it to a giant master ribbon before tying the couple up (I didn’t get it either) and scurrying to the processco table.

It was then that I really got to meet people, including a blue haired older lady with what I can only describe as lesbian water-spirit vibes. Short choppy white and blue hair and a set of mermaid scale legging shorts. She was lovely and apparently one of at least four old paramours of the brides mum. It was almost a queer version of Mama Mia mixed with a look stolen out of the legend of Zelda. I wonder if I’d unlock some kind of achievement if I met them all. Most iconic adding to this vibe was the main couple.

The bride wore a guacamole green that seemed slightly ethereal and the groom’s look was very much “if willy Wonka was a gameshow host”, complete with a bold purple jacket and enough glitter on the eyes to satisfy the groom’s deep craving to become a disco ball in human form. The venue was cosy, a small beer-garden style park area, a river of ducks and pondlife, and a cute little barn with a bar on site that served drinks at prices only available with a faustian bargain.

I went to check on the others in the tent field, only to find a gaggle of others by the borderline sacrificial fire pit – no really it looked like it was stolen from the set of buffy – and a few minutes later a tiny Italian with a dramatic head scar, and the gold lipsticked pantomime man nose deep in a powder spread across a copy of catcher in the rye … officially the most Brighton thing I’d find that trip, earning their tent the nickname “the pharmacy”. Later someone asked the Italian about his scar and he told us of a brutal parkour accident, even going as far as to show us the giant spinal scar on his back and the spider tattoo he had spindling down it to make the scar a spiderweb.

My friends from Chester discovered that gold lipstick was massage trained and proceeded to collapse into the panto man’s lap, making moans and reactions like that of a porno made in the 80s. she gushed to her boyfriend as the golden stranger quizzed them about Chester life, getting the review of her declaring that her boyfriend “needs to learn to do this”, before the golden stranger carried on to the remainder of his guests.

Later that evening I met the bride and the groom again, who were in a fake sobriety that I was completely convinced by until the bride offered me drugs. Not how I’d do a wedding but each to their own. I also witnessed the bride’s dad in low-cut rave clothing and the gold lipstick guy in a kimono that gave him the aura of a hedonistic Greek emperor – his 3^rd change of clothing that day. There was a silent disco with neon headphones that changed colour depending on the radio channel, and a DJ set hosted by a pair of middle aged women in classic 50s housewife pin up gear laughing and dancing along with a feather duster to classic 80s hits. The fire burned into the night and I crashed into my tent.

The morning after, I was tasked with getting to the station before a hellish journey home. luckily the Italian and the now goldless masseuse had room in their car. I bundled my stuff in the boot and was warned that I was a walking crime scene of evidence for my sins the night before. In order to be subtle I snuck into the barn to retrieve my charging phone, except on the way back down to the round floor I missed my footing and animal instincts kicked in. I found my arm deadlocked in an anchoring position around a banister until I found my footing. The station was a sweaty battlefield of forgetting baggage and bumbling through a London station connection, but I arrived alive and steeled myself for the grand university move waiting for me in the wings.