Glaston-Wary?

Sweary

What a shitty time poor Farah Fawcett had yesterday! To be interrupted in your induction into Heaven’s heavenly regiments by bawls of…

“Holy Jesus, is that Michael fucking Jackson?”

“O.M.GEEEE I think it is! Out of the way, hairy lady!”

… must rather suck a bunch. But that’s the wonderful world of music for you – it’s a lot more catchy than memorising reams of dialogue from The Cannonball Run.

And music is perilously tied into summer, isn’t it? I mean, now that the sun has cast a tolerable squintiness over our fair and freckled land, sure what’s upon us but the perils of that moderately mind-bending summer squash we call a “Music Festival”!

A mess of hits for masochists it very well may be, but that’s no excuse for coming home with the underpants of twelve strangers woven into your hair extensions, and an artist’s interpretation of Nina Simone’s minge tattooed on your left arse cheek. No. This is the age of information – would you Adam and Eve it? – and forearmed is foreskinned, or whatever, and … well, I’ve trudged the mud. I’ve smoked through the folk. I’ve been mugged by Pete Doherty round the back of the First Aid tent. I feel a smug sense of duty towards you lot just testing the waters of 48-hour hippiedom. Whether it’s Electric Sputnik or Oxygel you kids are heading to this year, hold my hand and I’ll get you through it. Sure what else would you be doing? There ain’t no Michael Jackson comeback tour this year, after all.

Wrap up warmly. I’m serious. Many’s the time I’ve spotted an underage missypoo in hotpants and a boob tube ricocheting her toned thighs through the appreciative masses, only to meet her again at 4am, pregnant and wrapped in a foil blanket in the boot of someone’s car. The only proper attire for a summer music festival is some sort of duffel coat. This prevents hypothermia and all them pockets stops you having to hide your drugs up your arse. Plus you can sit on it for fornicative purposes (your duffel coat, not your arse).
Bring your own drugs. Buying them once inside isn’t any kind of alternative – you don’t know whose arse they’ve been wedged into or what said arse generally gets up to of an evening. And going drug-free is an inadvisable and rocky road to traipse; you need something to deaden that appetite, because cow hoof burgers don’t taste too fabulous gushing back up past your tonsils (this still applies to people who don’t have tonsils). On top of that, there’s no fucking way you can listen to Lily Allen’s dribblings without first having had your senses mushed into an unholy porridge.
Bring lots of toilet roll and sunscreen. This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you’ve paid attention to point two, you’ll have last seen your brain in a floral armchair in a B&B in Athy. You cannot have enough toilet roll; getting your drugs out of your arse is no picnic without it. Sunscreen must be liberally applied to shoulders, as manoeuvring yourself to get your unused drugs back up your arse will smart like Carol Vordermann if you don’t. Ain’t never been no award-winning contortionist with scalded shoulders.
All that flailing about horsing dope up and down Shit Creek will make you more tired than the Michelin Man, but it’s difficult to catch some zzz’s when Beth Ditto’s lowing in the next field. Combat this by practising sleeping in the weeks before the event – in the office, at Mass, during sex, during sex at Mass. Work your way up to the point where you would happily snooze through a performance troupe jackhammering a homage to Michael Jackson’s ever-changing visage on the concrete floor of an underpass. Only then can you be confident that your yawnsome ways will save you from the lofty bullshit seeping from Lady Gaga and her tellytubby-lite fans.
Wellies. Wellies are important – take it from a Galwegian whose runners fell apart at Homelands. Take it as gospel. And none of your Kate fucking Moss wellies neither; you want heavy-duty farmyard shite-stompers, not delicate, figure-hugging leg-condoms with kittens printed on. Fuck that. A good wide welly saves space up your bum; no security guard is going to sidle his fingers down a John-Deere stoker without rubber gloves and lashings of pure Domestos.
And lastly, never underestimate the value of a flame-proof tent. Should you be staying on site, somewhere, somewhere in a field in Hampshire, you can be sure your fabric castle will be doused in alcohol and adapted as a beacon for someone, someone’s lost girlfriend at some stage during the festivities. Avoid this by arriving the week beforehand and constructing your temporary dwelling out of wattle and daub, blocks of ice, or Nicole Kidman’s reputation. This should ensure that an un-barbequed time will be had by all who sail in you.

I trust that that gives you a decent head-start for surviving this summer’s musical mayhem. If I were a better blogger, I’d give you some tips for surviving the onslaught of post-Jacko candle-in-the-wind-isms. But let’s face it; you’d never have seen Jacko at a music festival, rummaging in his pants for his MDMA powder. I submit to you that I make a better, more benevolent, more generously insightful … er… king of pop. Survive your Oxegen, your Glastonbury, your Tubbercurry Arts Festival! Survive and come back to me!

(More from Sweary at www.coddlepot.com)