I originally didn't really feel up to going to Bearded Theory. I'm notoriously lazy (I prefer laidback!) and have a nasty habit of deciding at the last minute that I can't be bothered with the hassle of whatever I've to do. This very nearly happened, but in the end I came to the conclusion that I'd already bought my ticket and my girlfriend Clare had asked me almost a year ago if I wanted to go, so it would've been crazy unfair for me to back out just because I couldn't be arsed travelling. Maybe the fact that I see Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame when I hear 'festival' had something to do with it. I wasn't going somewhere full of French people where they throw tomatoes at ugly people.
On Wednesday, it was my late father's birthday and me and some of his friends had agreed to scatter his ashes on the shore. So that's what we did. The weather was typically Scottish which I actually thought was most fitting - it was never sunny before, why should today be any different? We scattered him to the sea and had a nice meal together before I headed to Clare's, since we had an early rise and a huge day ahead of us. We spent some time chatting with her dad over a drink or two and then watched some Children of Men before drifting off.
We woke at 5am having had very little sleep. As is the norm with travelling as you'll well know, rushing around desperately making sure nothing is being left behind is par for the course. We were off about five mins early and were at the station before we knew it. Once we got off the train, we jumped to Sainsbury's to get Irn Bru and fruit. As we stood at the bus station, an old colleague appeared. Now, two days before this, I'd sent an email round my whole work building inviting everyone out for a send-off drink, managing to refer to myself as a 'twat' in the same email and getting myself sacked. So it goes. Anyway, Chris appeared and was getting on the same bus, which I found to be a kind of freaky coincidence, but a welcome one. We chatted for a bit as we waited for Clare's sister Eileen to materialise, which of course she eventually did. After waiting an extra half hour or so to board the bus, we were off!
We managed to get two pairs of seats with a table in the middle of the Megabus, so we were chuffed. We each drifted in and out of consciousness and amused ourselves in our own ways, mines were to read an especially terrible free issue of NME and rediscover the amazing Massive Attack on my iPod. There was an old(er) woman on the bus who kept snoring herself awake, an Indian guy seriously named Abu who kept saying the F word over the phone and a blonde, possibly Swedish guy who looked like the bad guy from Blade Runner reading Franz Kefka who actually got up from his chair at one point on the road to pick up a single Rizla skin Clare had dropped off of the wet bus floor. Hello. We made one stop at somewhere or other, had a smoke, and were back on the road to Manchestuhhhhh.
When we got there, we hauled our bags around, looking for the car hire place. The heat was already pretty crazy. There were some crazy shops we saw on our way which I mentally noted to visit on the way back. We found the place I'd reserved the car from. A young blonde Manc girl called Chloe helped us. Turned out I needed two forms of ID...and I only had one. Fuck. I asked if she'd accept my festival ticket as a second form of ID. Nope. She said I could get a statement from my bank and asked if I knew Manchester. I said I didn't, beginning to feel pretty defeated and like I'd let the side down. Just then, Chloe whispered, "Let's see that ticket". She took it, looked around quickly, and said "I think I can accept this, but shhh". She had the choice of making or breaking our weekend right there and she went with making it. What a saint! Turned out she's a festival regular, so I think that worked to our advantage. After messing up literally right out of the gate, we were on the road again.
This was absolutely terrifying for me. I hate having to drive any car I don't have at least two weeks' practice with and this was a hire car, a diesel hire car! I made a fair few boo-boos on the way out of the city centre but once we got onto the country roads, we were all good in the hood. Trouble was we had no real idea where we were going, so we were using two phones and a sat nav to see us through. The sat nav died as we reached a weirdly-named little town called Cheadle. Uh oh. These problems are better solved after buying some alcohol and food, so that's what we did. We got back on the road and used Eileen's phone as our sat nav, which was actually better than the actual sat nav somehow. We kept having to phone the people we were meeting to get directions. Eventually we arrived in a sunny, grassy field with lots of trees, cars and people with dreadlocks. One particular hippie guided us into what was to be our spot, we got out and had a smoke to celebrate.
We lounged about for about 15 mins before we made our way to this pink flag thing that was to be our meeting point. The weather was absolutely stunning, not a cloud in the sky...could hardly breathe! Soon, I could see two figures in the distance, waving and dancing as they got closer. I remember thinking "I'm going to like these people", a sentiment I later told them to their faces. These were Nikki and Sarah, Eileen's friends. They were immediately very warm and welcoming, handshakes and hugs were being given out like they were going out of fashion. We got our wrist bands and walked all of 30 seconds to our campsite. Nikki and Sarah had already set everything up for us! We sat in these blow-up lounger things, drinking beer, smoking away and getting to know one another. Our 'neighbour' Christie (Chrissie?) approached, sat with us and chatted for a while. She was from Scotland too but had shed her accent almost completely. By this point we were all feeling fired up and ready to go, so off we went!
We walked down lanes of tents, chairs, mats and hippies. There were a lot of kids around as it's a family-friendly festival, which put me at ease a little. Silly me. As we approached the 'arena', I looked up and all of a sudden some chav prick was a foot from my face. I stopped and dodged and he walked past. This was to be the closest we came to an incident the entire weekend. Eileen hadn't seen this happen, something we all later concurred was a good thing. We walked around stalls. Stalls with sunglasses, homemade rugs, shirts, hoodies, masks, wigs, toys and other assorted knick knacks soaked in tye dye. There were rides, food stalls, drink stalls, branch sculptures of Star Wars characters, face painting tents, tarot card readings, an 'earth' area (with two very suggestive giant mushrooms either side of the sign), a gypsy caravan, busk stops where you can rest and listen to a busker, or have a wee jam yourself. It went on and on. I remember asking one ten year old stall runner if a onesie I was convinced was Stimpy was indeed Stimpy. He turned slowly, looked at the onesie, returned to me with a face of absolute disdain and uttered the immortal words with as much dryness as he could muster: "I think that's supposed to be a dragon". Oh. Ok then.
We eventually stopped outside the main stage bar. At this point Nikki and Sarah asked how I was enjoying myself. I was pretty blitzed by this point so I was full of love and hopes for the future. They reciprocated actually, seemed up for going again next year - I'd only been there about 2 hours! Someone mentioned the number seventeen, which lead to all five of us bursting into an impromptu version of I Saw Her Standing There, which others joined in with. At these festivals they have nowadays, you tend to either create your own moments or just go with whatever moments manifest themselves and it's fucking amazing! When we were in the bar, Eileen tricked me into asking for a Slowpoke. "Slowpoke? That's a type of Pokémon," said the barman. Fucking yes!
It began to get dark, so we went for another walk towards the woodlands. We wound up parking our arses outside a set of portaloos and a gypsy caravan which we guessed would offer palm readings or whatever. Nikki later told us that it didn't, but she didn't elaborate much further. We sat with two hip flasks full of Jagermeister and Sarah came up with the idea of picking one person each who we thought deserved a shot of Jager, then calling them over. This lead to a guy named Josh sitting between Sarah and I in our little circle - I remember having a long discussion with him about The Derby Ram. Another guy with two luminescent hula hoops joined us for a bit too, he said each of his hula hoops cost him £60. Aye, ok. We walked to the woodlands and quickly decided it wasn't for us, so we went back. Which is a shame as we probably missed Turin Brakes as a result. As we wandered around the food stalls, Clare and Sarah got on this giant slingshot thing that cost £12.50 each to ride...god damn. They did this drunk too. Nutters.
I decided I wanted something to eat, so I wandered off for a munch after promising not to speak to any strange stoners. I don't know how it happened but I ended up going into the hall of mirrors? Was as underwhelming as I expected and some lady kept mirroring (ha ha) what I was doing, so I got out of there. I spent about half an hour trying to find salt for the chips I bought. As we walked back exploring some more, I decided I wasn't waiting in no bloody queue for a piss, so I hopped it over the fence. Trouble was I didn't see the massive hole on the other side of the fence because of the darkness. I folded like an accordion, landing in nettles, thorns and Christ knows what else. Nikki and Clare stood in hysterics as a steward looked at me like the naughty but thick kid at school. I sheepishly said sorry and did a walk of shame. Clare and I somehow ended up getting separated from the others, so we drunkenly stumbled through the darkness on the way back to our tent. By some miracle, we found it and fell asleep on the canvas (so pretty much on the grass).
We were woken by the sound of the others in the morning. They'd slept between two and four hours...As we gathered ourselves, our neighbours were sat soaking up the sun and the weed. Christie's husband (I think?) was called Matthew and in his own words, looked like his mum had been knocked up by a Portuguese milkman. He offered us some stuff then said our answer for us immediately after: 'too early'. The heat was absolutely unbareable and the tents had as much oxygen as the centre of a doughnut (it was this way for the whole festival), so I grabbed a bag of melted ice and gave myself a bath. This drew some looks. Nikki made us all some breakfast of bacon, sausages, mushrooms, rolls etc. We put some makeup and glitter on to add a bit of pizazz to our faces. I remember lounging back hardcore enough to see a giant, black cloud slither across the clear blue sky. I sat, captivated, hoping it wouldn't rain. It didn't. This happened again the next day. Clare, Nikki and I all felt a bit dodgy at this point. After some chill/nap time, we headed back into the frenzy feeling refreshed and ready for action.
The people at the festival were unlike any other group of people I knew. None of them could care less what anyone thought of them, they went with what they felt and did what they pleased, but never to the detriment of others. We felt like we fitted right in with our makeup and sunglasses, which also served to hide our undoubtedly bloodshot eyes. Clare and I split from the others as we had a wander around the stalls. We saw all kinds of stuff, including the freakiest mask I think I've ever seen. In some kind of twisted genius sort of way, I combined the mask with an equally mental wig that just made me look like the ultimate psychopath. I also finally got a decent pair of sunnies and an enormous pair. When Clare took the giant pair to the stall owner, he said they were the most tried-on pair and he knew it would take someone very special to eventually buy them. Clare tried to say this was me since she was buying them for me, but no, I think she gets that credit. The shop owner was absolutely off his face, but very nice and still somehow intelligible. We made our way back to the main stage and sat together, some burly lads sat with us for a while too. Everyone was so chill. I remember thinking "If you wanted, you could come here with a sign saying 'Free Love' and I guarantee you'd get it, whatever 'it' happens to be" and I stand by that. Be safe kids. Clare and I decided to go back to the tent, for my jacket possibly? Not sure. I did take that off whenever we were sat down, by the way.
We sauntered back and decided that since we'd walked all that way, we could at least sit and have a smoke before rejoining with the others. So that's what we did. Clare had a lie down while I sat with the neighbours, chatting and puffing away. Christie decided that I looked like Jarvis Cocker because of my sunglasses, leather jacket and whatever else, so from that point on our neighbours called me Jarvis. I wasn't huge on the nickname, but I've had worse ('Mr Bond' not being one of them) so I let them have it. At some point, an older guy wearing an Indian headress appeared with a very hippie-looking lady. This was Chief and Shirley. Shirley talked about her name a lot, saying she'd had many nicknames like Curley Wurley Shirley (because she's a hairdresser) and said she almost married a man called Mr. Burley, but said that would've been basically social suicide. Just imagine a thick Manchester accent, stoned, drawling, constantly repeating different variations of Curley Wurley Shirley Burley. I was fucking wetting myself. Matthew owned a mug with Mr Grumpy on it, which he kept the sugar for his tea in. At one point Christie asked "Where's Mr Grumpy?". I could see it behind Matthew, so I pointed and said "Mr Grumpy's right there". There was an awkward moment of silence. "What was that?" said Matthew, not aggressively but clearly primed for action. I said it again, he looked behind him, saw the mug and fell into a fit of laughter, which I joined in on. That was a near one! Chief eventually broke out some stuff. I won't say what it was, but it was nothing too crazy - Clare and I partook and began making our way back to the woodlands to meet up with the others.
The journey back was certainly interesting. We both commented that we could feel our teeth, like our actual teeth had developed nerve endings or something. When we found the others in the woods, Eileen was not happy with us for taking so long. We explained what had happened then made our way out. On the way, Sarah spied a guy wearing braces and made conversation with him. This turned out to be Ormond, one of the most naturally happy people I've met in my puff and as Welsh as the day he was born. We hung for a bit before deciding to get some munchies, so Clare, Eileen and I flew solo to get some grub. They settled on chili cheese fries, which I refused to allow them to miss, they're pure angel breath - and I hate cheese! I settled on a zebra burger, because come on, how often are you going to get to eat that? Guess what? It was better than beef, by quite a lot actually. Sweet, tender and juicy...so good. I'm switching to zebra. After we discussed what the Chief had given us earlier, we decided to chance our arms and head back to see if we could get a bit more.
No joy. The neighbours were all away doing their own things. I later quite drunkenly and very embarrassingly, after some mostly self-imposed pressure, asked other neighbours if they knew where we could get some, which I heard them chatting about the next morning, seemingly unaware that it was the person right there in front of them. But they didn't. Oh well. We settled on sitting in the tent, drinking and smoking. Now, we had a case of Coors, a case of Kopparberg, a case of Stella, two litres of Jagermeister, two litres of vodka and tons more, so we had no shortage of, well, anything really! We sat and chatted away, wondering where the others were. I remember drunkenly reciting South Park songs in their entirety, word for word, since we had no radio or music of any kind. After a smoke or two, the two sisters were constantly collapsing into fits of laughter, which was nice to see. Eileen soon became a laughing air sofa, later simply melting into the air sofa altogether. Before too long, Nikki and Ormond appeared. They must've felt similar to us because they joined in and the atmosphere was just right. We only had a wind-up radio and didn't know how to change it, so we sat in a dark tent, using fairy lights and LEDs for light, listening to classical music, chewing the fat. At one point, I snuck off to get my mask and wig. I quietly approached the tent door, put my face right behind Nikki before Clare shouted her from outside. She quickly turned around, looked right into the mask, froze in pure terror for a second before unleashing the most blood-curdling scream of absolute horror I've ever had the pleasure of causing in my life. How we laughed.
We chatted about some pretty deep things, some I don't remember and some I'm just keeping to myself. The others were worried about Sarah. I reassured them best I could that she could hold her own and was probably having the time of her life, which I genuinely believed - I tried to say she could hold her own, but typically of me, my compliment was so crazy verbose that what I was actually trying to say got lost somewhere in the sea of drunken bollocks I was talking. As predicted, Sarah soon came in like a hurricane. Turned out I was right, she'd held her own and had a great night, but was also worried about us. We did some pretty hilarious Home Alone impressions to the point all of us were in legitimate pain from laughing. When some joke about Ormond (I was convinced his name was Almond, that's how it sounded to me with Nikki and Sarah's accents) getting singed went on for about ten minutes, Clare and I decided to call it a night. Keep the change, ya filthy animal.
What you see above is what our campsite looked like by the end of the next afternoon. I'd drunkenly rolled off the air bed and slept on the canvas, directly on the grass, again, so I was feeling rough, again. Eileen decided to help the situation by having a cheeky fart in her tent, which Nikki described as smelling like she'd brought a dead animal back to the tent. Sarah made breakfast for us this time, which we were much more open to than the day before, we were all starving. Later, Nikki smelled burning plastic and it wasn't coming from Eileen's direction, so we sprang into action and stopped the campsite from going on fire via a fence holder block thing and pretty much saved the entire festival, obviously. We all had our jobs. Clare, Eileen, Nikki and Sarah packed up their stuff and began dismantling the tents, table and other equipment. I sat and rolled cigarettes. As I was doing this, I heard the neighbour across the way saying he needed some baccy, but didn't know where to get it or how much it would be. Realising I had an unopened pack, I decided to sell it to him for £3 (I happily took £2.80) to save him the bother. They were so suspicious of it, asking where it came from etc. despite it being an unopened pack of Golden Virginia bought in a corner shop in Scotland, but were extremely grateful when they realised that it was what it was, tobacco. After a gruelling two hours, we had packed everything up and it was in the car, saving us an utterly Hellish job the next day. Time for the final round.
I absolutely did not want to miss From The Jam. There were a good few well-known bands and artists playing at the festival, but they were the only one I wouldn't forgive myself if I missed. By yet another cool coincidence, I didn't even know they were playing, but of the four shirts I'd packed, one of them was my Jam shirt! So, when we heard the sound of Town Called Malice begin, we quickly paced towards the main stage. Within seconds, I was consumed by the pure energy and vigour of the performance and began dancing and singing like a man possessed. I'm later told some girl behind me said "He has a nice little wiggle, doesn't he?" as I danced away. Huh. Halfway through their set, a guy next to me said "You're really feeling this, aren't you mate?" and we all rocked our wee hearts out. The set was about an hour long, which was absolutely perfect as far as we were concerned, me especially as my voice was just about ready to give out altogether. We sat and rested nearby for a while as Squeeze played and massive flamethrowers sprayed across the sky from the stage, you could feel the heat from them from about 30ft away! I chatted about The Milk amongst other Welsh things with Ormond (he knows who they are!). Sarah got some munch from this barbeque place, which was right next to a Persian foods stall, and I got my chili cheese fries at last. This was the third time in two days I'd been served by the same girl at the food stall, I made a point of not going back again or she might get the wrong idea. She was really cool though it has to be said.
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| No I didn't Clare! |
Some really cool ska/reggae fusion band called King Porter Stomp. Unusual name but look them up, they were brilliant. The two burly lads we'd met the day before by the main stage made one more appearance and joined up with us at this point. I had told myself earlier I was too tired to dance anymore but wouldn't you know it, all six of us wound up dancing our hearts out to the brass and verve of the band we were watching, you couldn't not dance to this stuff! I did eventually check out that suggestive Earth Area by the way. It was just a spiral maze thing made out of multicoloured wire for the 'hedges', but I did indeed see one or two little caps lying on the grass. I shortly after met and spoke to a giant Pikachu. We took one special photo before I described to them two very specific photos I wanted to get, which ended up being an absolute gut laugh because in spite of my best efforts, the pic turned out nothing like what I wanted. Oh well.
This was it, the end. We all walked back to the cars in a state of pure bittersweet melancholia. Ormond had been great the entire time, but as you should always be, I was wary...as nice as someone is, you just never know. I had nothing to worry about, he'd been shooting straight with us the entire time, an absolute gent and a real dude to party with. He said bye to us all as Nikki and Sarah drove the car out into the night. We followed her on foot, having a mobile disco in the headlights. I remember someone quoting Baby Wants to Ride, which inflated my ego, because that was one acid house track I actually do know (it's by Frankie Knuckles)! When we found our car, we faffed about for about 15 mins before we finally left Bearded Theory. I followed Nikki in the hire car along the motorway, neither of us speeding or doing anything stupid, in perfect synchronicity. Clare and Eileen were shitting themselves the entire time, bless them. I was for the first ten mins or so before settling into it, listening to every timeless 80s classic you can name on Absolute 80s. We had to turn the radio down every time the DJ began his drivelling though, in case Eileen heard the Formula One results before she'd seen it. We stopped at a McDonalds for a brief break, a banana milkshake and a bottle of water at 1:16am then drove back through some pretty intense fog towards Sarah's house. We said bye to her then went to Nikki and Sarah's folks' house with Nikki. What a beautiful house they have. We chatted for a bit in the kitchen before retiring.
The next morning, we felt like death again, the most up to that point. We met the parents, had a brew, some toast, I was my usual overcareful self with regard to getting the hire car back to Manchester in one piece. We left with about four sets of directions and I'm pleased to report that within half an hour, the car was back with the rental company without a scratch and we wandered the Arndale shopping centre (which was a massive disappointment actually, I expected something colossal but the Entertainment Exchange in Glasgow is bigger!). Then we were back on the bus. There were two openly gay football hooligans in front of us who I watched scroll through Facebook on their phones, pressing on every status they saw without so much as a smirk as they reacted with the 'Haha' emoticon, and a guy who was so lustfully desperate to listen to the audiobook of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that he held his phone in front of his laptop, using bluetooth, for an hour while it downloaded. I made Clare listen to an obscure, shall we say, track called Fisherman's Horizon while we drove through the Scottish hills. She loved it. Clare and I said bye to Eileen before getting our train home. The train stopped dead halfway along the route as rain pissed down and two young neds annoyed the piss out of the whole carriage for half an hour. Yep, we were definitely home.
In summary, I had the best time of my life possibly, it's at least up there with walking the streets of Vegas out of my mind. I have never known myself to have such a long, consistent streak of good luck but that's all our weekend was, one big lucky break. I'm not religious by any stretch, but I can't help but notice the timing of all that luck - immediately after putting my father to rest. I mentioned this train of thought to Sarah on the last night, sat outside the dance tent, completely consumed with this concept. I think he's at peace now, which means I'm at peace and have a beautiful, sunny life to look forward to from hereon in. I have just this second found out this weekend documented was Memorial Weekend. Holy fuck. Anyway, next year is the tenth anniversary of the festival, so we're expecting something pretty mental and we plan to take a larger group this time. I can't wait. Oh, I'm also going to apply to perform a chillstep set at the next festival, so we'll see what the future holds for DJ Slowpoke. Thank you for the good times, everyone at the festival. I miss you all like crazy already. In a bit.
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