Saturday, April 24, 2010

A Tale from Two Thousand and Six

On the Friday Eve of the two day music festival known as Oxegen, Jimlad and Curly Dee were fashionably prepared: 2 tinned rice puddings, 2 tinned scotch broths, 2 tinned stews, 3 tinned beans, 2 tinned curries, lots of parboiled rice, 1 jar coffee (fair-trade), camping pots, 2 plastic mugs, 2 plastic plates, 4 packets of crisps, 3.5 large packets of peanuts, 1 large packet of cashew nuts, 1 packet of pistachio nuts, 6 small packets of popcorn, 1 large packet of marshmallows, 2 packets of biscuits, 1 jar chocolate spread, 1 jar peanut butter, sleeping bags, airbed, torch with siren and flashy lights in case of emergency, torch, mini torch, 12 plastic bottles of cheap beer (no glass allowed), 6 cans of beer, 8 cans of stout, a little water, a bag of light clothes, coats for the rain, toiletry, tent already set up by Curly Dee’s brother, tickets 4 miles down the road, all done by 00:30. Perfect. Except, ah yes, 0 camping stoves, 0 bread and obviously, 0 cop-on. So we drove and got the tickets and drove to Punchestown with most of our food rendered almost useless, hoping that we could survive on peanuts and beer. If not, cold tinned Lidl stew would taste good to a pair of starved cadavers. Anything would taste good when you were starved, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t? Eugh. Thankfully it didn’t get to that, but I’ll never be able to look a peanut in the face again. Mind you, I could never look them in the face before, since obviously they don’t have a face for me to look them in. I did bring myself to eat some of the food they sold at the event, and survived. €7.50 was only a small part of the price I paid for daring to try that tiny pasty tray of “pasta carbonara” they sold at one of the stalls. I won’t do that again.

We got to our destination at 3:00am in the morning to be told that actually, we couldn’t get in without the car parking permit that they sold at the Ticketmasters stall, which was shut, so we would have to go home and come back tomorrow morning. But the guard on duty let us in anyway, being an understanding sort of man. As soon as we parked the car we knew it was going to be a weekend to remember. The loud conversation of passers by appeared to be an attempt to say the stupidest things that came to “mind”. I have observed this sociological behaviour before, but on a much smaller scale. It was amazing to watch this time. You see, there were so many drunk people that everyone had a chance to realise, subconsciously, that the drunk people seemed to do stupid things and get laughed at, and then PRAISED for bringing happiness to so many, and then everyone would say of the very drunkest, who always seems to be called Cooney, “Cooney’s a legend” and everyone decides, “Cooney’s a Hero”. And deep down, everybody wants to be a hero, so even in the improbable event that one isn’t drunk one does exactly the sort of stupid thing Cooney only does because he’s too drunk to do anything else. But one can’t quite measure up to Cooney’s actions so maybe a little more drink will help, and soon everybody is drunk except for the snobbish aloof observers, and me and Curly Dee. Does anyone know, is Cooney a second name or just a nickname that people give to some guy from some place of whom the only predictable thing is that they will consume large amounts of alcohol? Is there a Cooney family somewhere that carefully breeds these legends?

The first thing that happened when I got out of the car was a young fellow (Not Cooney. HE was fighting someone with his jumper somewhere in one of the campsites over a personal dispute. The dispute was personal only to Cooney. The other guy didn’t have a clue why he was being attacked other than that it was Cooney. What a Hero. There were probably more Cooneys out there. Maybe they knew the reason.) who detached himself from the crowd and, drawn to my philosophical aura couldn’t help but ask me that ageless question, “Have you got any boppers”. Of course the answer changes with context but in this universe the answer happened to be, “No.” at that time. Curly Dee then entered into the mood of things with another question,
“Do you know where campsite A is?”
This provoked a thoughtful pause, and Curly Dee offered a little more information,
“I think it’s near the main stage”.
There followed a few hesitant starts to sentences until the proper form of words was found, and then,
“I don’t know, but I’D imagine that the main stage is the one with the most lights, so if you head towards the place with the most lights you should find your way. And, I don’t know about you, but I’d say…” the finger wandered vaguely for a few seconds before resting decisively on one brightly lit area (which later turned out to be exactly where the main stage was, proving the cognitive ability of our newfound companion) “it’s over there”.


Having successfully answered our question, it was our companion’s turn. “Where are my f***ing friends gone? Have you seen my friends?” We hadn’t seen them and couldn’t answer the former question, but since he had asked two in a row the game of philosophy was ruined. Had we lost? Should we continue? Besides, he hadn’t answered our true question. Where was our campsite? But where were his friends? Seeing that we were useless to each other, we parted company.

Eventually we discovered that the campsite was half an hour away and headed there with some of our beer and popcorn. We walked through the mass of tents to reach our own, almost missing it because of its easily overlooked nature. We then discovered that Curly Dee’s brother had spilled beer inside our tent, which looked a little bet down, but we fixed it up and put our airbed inside. Unfortunately it turned out that the airbed had two holes and only one stopper so it became a mat. That was ok. The main thing is that we could fit the bed into the tent, as it was easily overlooked in nature. Here is a picture to demonstrate this fact. See the tent on the left? That’s someone else’s. Our tent is the one with the red curly haired girl “in” it, laughing.



She’s laughing at this,



followed by this,




(just checking he's still alive)

Nobody seems to know this man. He was just walking through our area when he fell down, possibly on account of not being able to see. It had been noticed that his pupils were the size of pin-holes which would surely have made seeing a little difficult. Eventually some security guards came and took him away, having been alerted by some genuine humans (probably girls). We never saw him again. But anyway, the tent was supposed to be a two man tent but it turned out that three people fit in it. Curly Dee’s brother came in during the night for some reason, asking could he sleep in it. As I was asleep myself, (we had decided to come down on Friday to make the most of the weekend but since we arrived at our tent at about 4:00am after having about 4 hours sleep the night before (party) we were too tired for fun) my instinctive sarcasm rose up before my brain could tune in and said, “Sure, why not just cuddle up between me and Curly Dee (my wife) here”. So he did, being drunk of course. My sarcasm always gets me into trouble with drunk people. At least we knew him, unlike the people in his own tent who thought that they were sleeping beside him until daylight revealed someone else, a complete stranger who simply wandered off again in the morning to get lost in the vast crowd of tents.

Having had such a wonderful night’s sleep we just had to have more in the morning, and we missed all of the less interesting/unknown bands. The sky was like this:



And this is Curly Dee smiling to show how much FUN we are having:



But we plucked up the courage to brace the weather for the big bands. I was looking forward to taking these next photos. I remember reaching into my pocket in the satisfactory anticipation of getting a chance to use my latest toy, the digital camera, for something a little more momentous than worthless photos like those above. I knew these next photos would have value because I didn’t need to pay through the nose to see stupid people, but musical superstars were another story, a better story. My hand groped greedily for the shot I could show off to my friends, groped desperately. Changed pockets. Patted my coat, my trousers. Sent a signal up to my mind, waited. Waited. Waited, received a signal, check the car. The car, of course. Out of reach. Need legs. Tell mind we need legs. Mind sends a messenger down to legs. Legs turn body. Eyes! A message from eyes. It says: Can’t see stage. Mind calls a meeting between hands and eyes. A compromise is reached. We will get the camera tomorrow. Hands will produce an alternative for today’s concert, worth exactly what we have lost. A picture is worth exactly one thousand words so here you go. One thousand words each for every picture I wanted to show you.

Very good.

To be continued...

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home