{"id":28258,"date":"2018-09-05T14:25:31","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T12:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/festivalmag.com\/?p=28258"},"modified":"2018-09-05T14:34:53","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T12:34:53","slug":"boomtown-2018-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/festivalmag.com\/reviews\/boomtown-2018-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Boomtown 2018: the weekend that spanned a working week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe I\u2019m old now. Maybe Boomtown<\/a> is just too good for me. But after this weekend that spanned the length of a working week, I feel knackered.<\/p>\n

An extra day-more mental<\/strong><\/p>\n

It started on the Wednesday. Did we really need a day more of mental-ness this year? I don\u2019t know, but I seemed to think we did when we booked it. And when we turned up in Boomtown Springs, a luxurious exclusive corner that we went in for as a treat, it did feel at first like we\u2019d made the right decision. We were greeted at the gate with an extraordinary welcome: young women \u2013 noticeable though for its lack of men \u2013 in tight white tennis outfits skipping up to us and offering to take our stuff. Through the gate we were offered a flute of champagne and a programme. It felt, though, and I have to say it, a little forced and overwhelming. It was a relief when the woman who was helping us confided she\u2019d been snaffling the free champagne all morning. There we go Boomtown, you\u2019re back.<\/p>\n

The problems started when we tried to re-enter. Yes, I know, there\u2019s always been alcohol restrictions and first-entry only rules. But have they ever really been enforced? Not as far as I knew. We\u2019d bought beers for a friend who didn\u2019t have time to pick any up, and as we were the only members of the group with a car, it seemed fair enough. We\u2019d taken the beers in on our first entry, so we headed back for our rum. And yes, I know spirits aren\u2019t allowed anyway really, or glass bottles, but that\u2019s why we\u2019d decanted it, see? At reentry, they dug through our bags and picked out my water bottle. \u2018What\u2019s this?\u2019 the guy asked, and took a sniff. \u2018Ugh, that\u2019s strong! Smell this,\u2019 he said, laughing, and passed it to his friend.<\/p>\n

\u2018Not as strong as that other stuff we found last weekend,\u2019 his mate responded, wafting it under his nose. The first guy laughed, looked over at his supervisor’s turned back, quickly did up the bottle and put it back in my bag.<\/p>\n

\u2018You\u2019re free to go,\u2019 he said, eying me carefully. I thanked him quietly, packed my bags up quickly and turned to leave.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hey, you can\u2019t take that in, that\u2019s got alcohol in,\u2019 said a different, nearby, horribly watchful security guard. He called his supervisor over. \u2018She\u2019s just put that bottle of spirits back in her bag.\u2019 He looked shiftily at his colleagues. Thanks, mate. Ensue unpacking of bag again and cries of \u2018But that\u2019s Lidl\u2019s finest rum that is!\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018We can\u2019t let any unopened bottle in,\u2019 she told me firmly as she poured a third of the week\u2019s alcohol onto the grass. \u2018It would be the same if it was orange juice.\u2019 Desolate, Frank and I walked back into the arena. The gate had closed behind us and we were out of all drink already. Predictable enough perhaps, but still not a good start to the week.<\/p>\n

Tango, tobacco and dodgy tarpaulins<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thursday day turned to night in Tangled Roots. As we danced, a couple fell into the centre of our group like a pair of dominios. There was a moment, where he\u2019d caught her and they were together, covered in glitter and neon glow sticks, him leaning over her and her hanging from his neck like a pair of tango dancers, where she managed to cram in the profound \u2018Where-you-from?\u2019 before they resumed engorging themselves on each other\u2019s faces. Friends\u2019 attempts at rolling cigarettes kept being thwarted at the front of the stage as the bass bounced the tobacco out of the paper. We wandered out into Downtown. After deciding to peruse the new city layout, we happened upon the Incinerator stage. The screens outside advertised women in traffic-cone bras and little else. Inside, upbeat music accompanied a strange, blue-luminescent-striped, mohicaned dancer as he pranced around the stage. We edged towards the front just as three ladies took over, one in the aforementioned traffic cones. As traffic cones and another danced about, the third took centre stage. From the dark corners, the pair brought out a tarpaulin and spread it beneath her. Oh dear.<\/p>\n

Centre stage began to dance suggestively. The two guys I was with began to look uncomfortable. She started to strip, until she was left wearing only Lidl badges on her nipples and a grand headdress, which was suddenly clearly a model of a baked beans can pouring beans on her head. It all moved very quickly from there. In only a thong and the Lidl nipple badges she began to lick and pour baked beans from a can over herself to pumping beats and enthusiastic screaming from the crowd. When I turned back, Frank and Mike looked absolutely horrified. (When I teased them for it later, Mike\u2019s response was \u2018It\u2019s the fact they were cold!\u2019) We managed to follow this experience with a trip to the Little Gay Brother stage, where flouncy men in long wigs danced on a catwalk in front of a wind machine and had a thoroughly glitzy time. Thursday night seemed to be where it was at.<\/p>\n

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood<\/strong><\/p>\n

Friday, and I found myself asking a mustachioed steward which way to go. \u2018Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,\u2019 I said to him cheerfully at the crook.<\/p>\n

\u2018Yeah, and neither of them \u2018ad signs, did they?\u2019 he replied. It wasn\u2019t even dark, but in the welfare tent someone was having a fit, while around the sides people were sitting, grinning ghoulishly and gurning. A more clever gang than ours traipsed through the festival, each carrying the corner of a large gazebo, a slight tussle breaking out as it passed us: \u2018You sit under it, you carry it!\u2019. We lost half the gang that evening, and as usual there was very little signal to call them on. Eventually a text came through from Sophie: they were at the front of a stage. I managed to push along the edge of the tent until I reach the security guard. I pleaded with him to let me run along the front to reach Sophie at the edge of the barriers: \u2018We\u2019ll never find her again otherwise!\u2019. He acquiescenced, and I squeezed sideways along the barrier, head low, like a crab. When I appeared under Sophie\u2019s nose I poked her.<\/p>\n

\u2018You are chaos!\u2019 I screamed at her over the music, referencing the last six hours of searching for her.<\/p>\n

\u2018You\u2019re in a K-hole?!\u2019 she screamed back from underneath her gold bucket hat and sunglasses, in the dark, unnerved and alarmed also by my sudden appearance on the wrong side of the barriers.<\/p>\n

\u2018No!\u2019 I told her where to meet us and, as quickly as I appeared, galloped away down the barriers in my crab pose and into the great outdoors, where I bashed into someone while apologizing for barging into someone else, ricocheting off punters. \u2018I feel as spangled as that man over there,\u2019 I told them in a gabble, by way of explanation, pointing at someone dressed as a unicorn and covered in glitter from head to toe. On my way to the others, I approached a couple passed out in a strange lump under a spotty blanket against a barrier to ask if they were okay. They didn\u2019t respond, because on closer inspection they were a pile of rocks. Probably better that they didn\u2019t respond, to be honest. As we moved on up the hill in the dark, cool night, it was like being surrounded by thousands of ducklings, all wide eyed and pattering along in noisy groups, swerving to avoid others. I shook someone awake as we drifted past him. \u2018Mate,\u2019 I said, \u2018You\u2019re in a bin\u2019. He looked up at me from under his bucket hat with surprisingly clear eyes.<\/p>\n

\u2018And?\u2019 he asked. Fair enough.<\/p>\n

You try walking fast in thick mud, in pumps, in the dark, after four days of hiking around drunk<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the fastest speed at which a group can walk is directly proportional to the amount of people you\u2019re trying to walk with. This proportion seems to be greatly exacerbated if the people you\u2019re trying to walk our our friends \u2013 some more than others \u2013 and if it\u2019s muddy. Boomtown 2018 was not the slowest year on record, but it certainly gave it its best shot. In only lovely red ballet pumps designed for a frolic and a picnic in the garden, not four centimetre deep mud, I was one of the Great Exacerbators of the universal truth this year, and as I struggled up the hill at close to minus hours a minute, one friend decided embarrassment would be the faster way to get me moving. \u2018Kat,\u2019 she shouted from under my arm, \u2018are you on ketamine?\u2019. While the group next to us hooted with laugher, red faced I stumbled forwards, clinging to my abuser\u2019s shoulder, feet sticking and sliding at random in the gloop.<\/p>\n

One of the \u2018attractions\u2019 at Boomtown this year was the \u2018Booster\u2019 ride, a contraption that appeared to spin you round and round and upside down while pumping you full of drum and bass and thrusting you 130 feet into the air. \u2018The instant hangover cure\u2019, Frank renamed it, as we watched it spinning over our heads at 3am, alerted to it by the sound of people screaming as they bore down on us from above and vomited all over themselves as they stumbled off. There was an entire murder of deliverooers \u2013 the appropriate collective noun, I\u2019m told \u2013 all in uniform, but sans bikes, and more likely a bit ketted up than delivering pizzas to the campsites. As we went up the hill, splay footed for traction, I felt like a penguin braving the icy cold, year-long walk from the sea to the snuggly circle of mates in the middle of the land.<\/p>\n

The citizens take over<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Sunday night, at about a quarter past midnight, the music handed over to us. At the drumming \u2013 an aftershow performed entirely by punters, banging out the last of their drugs on bins \u2013 a guy with a \u2018ket 4 a kiss\u2019 sign held proudly above his head wandered through the crowds. A giant conga line circled the bar, and one girl caught my attention, banging away, ecstatic, with sticks in both her hands and kick-dancing the drum. People danced, swayed, shimmied their shoulders to the beat nearest them. It began to take off, people climbing trees and on the roofs of the bars, dancing on tables in sparkly outfits, climbing the wooden walls. It was a party at the end of the god of all parties, stomped out in the mud.<\/p>\n

The Radical City \u2013 is the ultimate eco-festival almost upon us?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why is the greatest bit of Boomtown always the closing ceremony? They push you, force all the energy out of you, make you dance like you’ve got pegs on your feet, like there’s nothing else you can do but dance – and then, boom. It’s over. And then this year there was the added schtick of having an environmental message at the heart of the ceremony. Boomtown, you’re gonna make me cry. The closing message was simple: care about the environment. Footage showed tents discarded over fields and told us 20,000 tents were abandoned at Boomtown last year. Next year, we were told, would be the year of \u2018the radical city\u2019. It was enough, already, despite only a day or two before having sworn this would be my last Boomtown \u2013 I don\u2019t have enough energy for this place anymore \u2013 to bring me back to the fold. Although next year, it\u2019s going to be a strict three-day affair for me. Promise.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo: Sam Neil<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe I\u2019m old now. Maybe Boomtown is just too good for me. But after this weekend that spanned the length of a working week, I feel knackered. An extra day-more mental It started on the Wednesday. Did we really need a day more of mental-ness this year? I don\u2019t know, but I seemed to think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":28259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[547,12132],"tags":[10889],"yoast_head":"\nBoomtown 2018: the weekend that spanned a working week | Festival Mag<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/festivalmag.com\/reviews\/boomtown-2018-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Boomtown 2018: the weekend that spanned a working week | Festival Mag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Maybe I\u2019m old now. Maybe Boomtown is just too good for me. But after this weekend that spanned the length of a working week, I feel knackered. 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