Saturday 13-09 - End of the road day 2

We woke up late. Which is ok because nothing happens in the morning anyway. The night had been really cold. I woke up a few times in the night, shivering. I had two pairs of socks on. I got dressed in my tent and ready for the day. The place was still a field of mud so we continued to live in our wellies.



We wondered around to the festival site. Our breakfast was a brekkie burrito with organic savoury potato, egg and some other greasy carb-y bits. I loved it as a woke up from the night before. The other two seemed to regret the eating of the burritos.



By the entrance of the camp site were two tents: the making tent and the doing tent. The doing tent had some storytelling activities while the making tent had creative stuff. Dani and I painted pictures with the kid safe paints. I painted a sloth while Dani made duck. Then we stuck them on the wall.



We went to get money out of the cash point. Only to find out that it only took British debit cards. Fuck. And according to the info guy that was the only atm for 6 miles. So for now we would have to rely on Dani. We did manage to by a jug of Pimms from the garden bar. The garden bar was the only place that used cards and the pimms had a 10 pound jug deposit that we got back. So we managed to get another 10 from that.

I wanted to see Darren Hanlon play at some point, I hadn´t seen him play for ages. His main show was on at the same time as Jeffery Lewis who I wanted to see. But he was also set to do a set at the comedy stage. So we wondered down there. We discovered a beautiful garden area with green grass for sitting.

The comedy stage was a small building with wooden floors and a low stage. Every had to take there wellies off first and left a forest of gum boots sitting on the stairs outside. We sat in socks.



We sat for a while listening to his guy do his stand up. He was self proclaimed whimsical and brought up a volunteer to insult his whimsy. He brought up a young boy with scary face paint like the joker. It made for an interesting show. Only then I glanced at the timetable and realised Darren was only on a day later.



Then it was time for Noah and the Whale. Everyone in London seemed to be enthralled with these guys. I hadn´t really heard of them until I got here. They were pretty good, but they didn´t make me swoon like everyone around me was swooning. I enjoyed the set.

We drank more Koppelburg cider and ate gourmet hotdogs for lunch.





We sat on a garbage bag in a muddy tent for a band I had kind of heard of, Seabear. They turned up with their gorgeous Icelandic accents and thousands of instruments and just blew my mind. I wanted to marry everyone in the band for being so damn adorable. And funny, with this great dry wit and dead pan honour. For sure the high light of my entire day. I went back and bought a vinyl copy of their album after the set and Dani ought the cd.





We had coffee and cake an the tea garden, a cafe set up with polkadot tables clothes and green hedges.





We wondered around for a while and had some more cider. We saw the peacocks and the macaws that were supposed to live in the gardens. It reminded me of the peacocks at UWA.



Before Low was another band people were crowding to see It made finding a good spot a bit hard but we ended up second row from the barrier on the right side.

As Low were starting a guy pushed in front of us to his friends. Josh got really angry about it but I thought Oh well, I would have done the same thing. I only got angry when they started making out in the middle of the set and blocking everyone´s views. I started passive aggressively standing on my toes to see and ´accidentally´ losing balance and falling onto them. Soon after they left and I got the spot on the barrier.

I realised that Low must have released a record while I had been traveling around. They played mostly songs I didn´t know but that everyone around me seemed to know very well. It dulled the joy of the experience slightly, but they still played some of my favourites.





It was an interesting set, with interesting banter from Alan Sparhawk the vocalist. It went along the lines of ¨I know you all had a great day, but I had a crappy day. Today everyone I loved told me they hated me¨. His wife and bassist replied with a upbeat ¨not everyone¨. At the end of the set Alan started to swing the guitar around like a madman. Then he let to go and sent it flying into the crowd at high speed. Everyone was shocked and a gasp. I thought it would have definitely hurt someone. Later the bassist came back out and apologized and asked if anyone had been hurt. It seemed that everyone was ok and some happy Low fan had earned himself a guitar (or what was left of it).

After the set Mercury Rev played. We were at the back of the crowd for this one and I just wasn´t getting into it. I enjoyed the Pukkelpop set more. So we listened for a while then went to get late night burritos for dinner. We chatted to other people from the Low set. Everyone gossiped about how shocking the nights events were and talked about if it would make the papers. I didn´t think it would.

To keep us up we got cider at the cider bus. We danced with people and played limbo with a tree branch. We didn´t stay up too late. The day drinking left me exhausted. We made our way back to the tents.