Part_of

thanks for my ticket application even though I never emailed them and had no idea this was going on. hmm.

and watch the audience clash.

It was being co-promoted with Trailer Trash, friday night polysexual dirty electro shoreditch night extraordinaire. I would have paid much more than a fiver to see that..

The Dirt

in that I don't know of many people who have run out of money and thought "gosh I'd better stop taking the crack now so that I can do things like eat and buy things that aren't drugs", as opposed to robbing / selling themselves / whatever they can lay their hands on, continuing their habits and generally fcking up their lives even worse then when they had decent jobs.

Invented Mr Whippy-style soft scoop ice cream. Fact.

which I guess I stuck up there for the sake of balance after everyone said "but look, no-one has written saying they had a good time".

I think I read somewhere that someone said that they had to work to enjoy it, or enjoyed it despite the organisation, and that's about right.

First off, I only got there at about 5. I had been looking forward to it for ages but didn't get my tickets because of what I assume was an honest mix-up between organisers, record shop and me.

I've no connection with the organisers and never met any of them but when I phoned up a few days before to explain the situation the guy was really helpful and said he could see what he could do and gave me his personal mobile number and email. He really did seem to be in it for the right reasons and the love of music. I phoned him on the day and after a bit it got sorted out. That gets a lot of respect points from me. I was pissed off I missed Chromeo and Foals but it was much better than nothing.

I'd like to add that I didn't see a cynical "look after your mates" attitude at all, just genuine organisational difficulties, naive or otherwise. When I was queuing to get my tickets from the box office, I could see various record label luminaries enduring the (at least) hour long guest list queue along with all the random blaggers (who I'm sure didn't help speed things up).

The girls who were in the box office / guestlist bit weren't slacking either - the one I spoke to had been working since 8 am without stopping for a break or food at all apparently.

Inside, the queue for alcohol was ridiculous and my mate and I did fancy a few drinks. It did take over an hour, so we bought 8 pints. They were a bit of a mission to carry at first but we survived. Didn't queue for more than 10 minutes for any of the food and there were soft drink stands with queue at all if you didn't just go to the nearest one to the stages. Perhaps the queues had just died down since mid-afternoon.

The free water tap did have a queue but it was moving quite quickly (though I didn't join it).

The toilet situation was a shocker. It was easy for me to ignore this, being a guy, but there's no excuse for that and the girls were in a pretty terrible predicament, short of squatting. Had I needed a dump I would have been mighty pissed of as I'd have missed bands unavoidably and no re-entry combined with the facilities balls up was pretty unforgivable here.

I'm told there were queues for food and drinks (not as bad) backstage too.

The sound was really bad on the main stage, thought it was fine in the tents but the bugged out tent was too much of a road block.

What I really liked was how friendly everyone was - I met loads of strangers and happily shared food and drink with them and vice versa, including plenty of people who were happy to go and get drinks from backstage to save the queuing.

I left at the end of it having had a good time overall.

I was also left with the feeling, judging by my limited dealings with the organisers, that they meant well but fcked up. No idea if they turned a large profit or not. If they did, then I suspect the right thing to do would be to plough some of it back into a free gig etc.

I never understood this whole individual liberties argument about not banning smoking.

yep, we don't care if you kill yourself by smoking, that's all good - you know the risks and noone's forcing you to do it.

Complaining about having your right to give other people lung cancer taken away from you is a little selfish though, no?

living longer on account of not getting lung cancer and contact lenses not getting so fcuked by the smoke :-)

smelling people's B.O and farts down the front :-(

...but for some reason I now can't stop singing "Kir-sten Dunst" in my head to the tune of Tracy Jacks