Das Bierfest

Things We Learned At The Tynemouth Beer Festival

• That undertakers are the most likely to survive in a zombie apocalypse. (We began by agreeing that midwifery, tax collecting and undertaking were the three most certain professions. But would undertakers be doomed if the dead returned to life? We agreed not - they are used to dealing with corpses, and have ready access to shovels, an excellent weapon against the undead in its combination of 'sharp wide metal blade' and 'long wooden handle'.)
• That street food is a welcome addition to beer festivals. Seriously, I don't miss the days when greasy chips with "curry" sauce were the only food to be had. Give me a burger made from something that once went "moo", any day.
• What a beer festival looks like when it runs out of beer. See photo. 
• That ska-dancing is fun. 
• There is never a bad time to play "Monkeyman".

And one thing we did not expect to hear:

"Hang on, are they out of beer?"
"It's alright! They've been to Tesco's!"

God or No God Alley

When my church discussed how we could promote ourselves to others, one popular idea was to have a stall at the Newcastle Community Green Festival, where we might encounter like-minded individuals who would be interested in hearing about our message of religious and spiritual liberty, and cake.

Now in its 19^th year, the Newcastle Community Green Festival happens each June in Leazes Park in Newcastle upon Tyne, and exists to “spread a message of environmental protection and social justice”. Last weekend, along with many others, we rolled up at Leazes Park beneath an ominous sky, and set out our stall of posters, leaflets, free cake, badges, and Unitarians happy to talk about our faith.

Three hours later, the heavens opened, and from then the Saturday became something of a mud bath. Nevertheless, we were having a great time. Based in the big blue Information Tent, we encountered many people, from the genuinely curious, to those who had dashed in to avoid the weather, to people who were happy to stop, pick up a free badge and some cake, and have a chat about Unitarianism into the bargain. The most commonly asked questions were “What’s Unitarianism? I’ve never heard of it” and “What are your core beliefs?” Most people were open-minded and happy to hear about it, even if one or two decided it wasn’t for them.

As if to make up for the preceding day, Sunday was warm and sunny, although the ground was reaching Glastonbury Festival levels of mud. Everyone in the tent helped put straw down to make the conditions underfoot a bit easier. Meeting the other stall volunteers was a very enjoyable part of the festival.

We encountered people ranging from Sea Shepherd to the North East Humanists and the Green Party, several of whom expressed an interest in Unitarianism, or at least in hiring the church’s rooms. The Humanists had their stall opposite ours; we could only wonder if someone with a sense of humour allocates the stalls (at one point we were referring to our part of the Information Tent as “God or No God Alley”).

I also took the chance to wander around, catch up with several of the Newcastle crowd, and watch a few bands. Fun and pizza was had by all.

Intermission

This blog took a break last week, as I stuck my work-related woes on the shelf, took some leaflets and a banner down from the shelf, and went off to run a stall at the Newcastle Green Festival. Write up coming soon. Here's a picture!

Glastonbury, Day 2: Gan for a Wander

Glastonbury, day 2, Wednesday. It was warm, if not actually sunny, and we were at a slight loose end. The festival doesn't really kick off until Thursday afternoon, and we didn't have a bar shift for a while. We had heard the distant cheer as the car park gates were opened; the punters were arriving, and later we would be needed to sell them beer.

Not to worry. We decided to wander off in pairs. I took R to see the Green Fields, which are usually the bit of the festival that gets set up first - if you're there early, go to the Green Fields as there will be something happening. We wandered around, looked at things, sent postcards (yes, you can post postcards at Glastonbury) and enjoyed a bit of alternative therapy. I had a massage, which I needed, and then fulfilled a small Glastonbury tradition of mine, of going and sitting in a meditation tent for a bit. If you have read my post about arriving at Glastonbury, you will know why.

We found the bar, and I found out when and where one of my favourite bands, "Seize the Day" were playing on the Thursday, by the always-reliable method of checking the sides of the toilets (they always put stickers there). The bar shift came and went. The team were great. My teams always are.

One last thing; as we wandered around the Green Fields, we came across a music space, with a couple attempting to play folk music whilst their young son clawed at the front of Mummy's t-shirt. One of their songs was a rather nice rendition of "The Ghost of Tom Joad". I still fondly remember Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band playing that in 2009. It seemed fitting that it should be the first live song I heard at Glastonbury 2013.

Festival Planning

Not much to report at present. I'm heading to Glastonbury next month. This may be my last time as a volunteer, or as the organiser. Then again, it may not. My going is dependent on whether or not I'm still in my current job. As a union member, I can organise my teams of bar volunteers to raise funds for the union at the festivals, which I've been doing since 2005 (my God, that's a long time). Were I employed somewhere else, or in a job where it wasn't possible for me to devote my time to organising the volunteers, this might not happen anymore, and it's not impossible for me to move jobs. That could happen next year, so I've decided to take advantage this year and enjoy Glastonbury.

Alas, I'm still doing the organising. See above t-shirt picture.

Leeds 2011 Day 4: Na Na Na (Na Na Na, Na Na Na, Na Na Na)

Leeds 2006

As we wandered out into the Sunday morning sunshine, reflecting happily on the previous day's fun and digesting the canteen's oddly tasteles porridge, I thought back once more to Leeds 2006. Annoyingly in retrospect, I could have seen My Chemical Romance live for the first time (first time for me that is) at Leeds 2006. It was very shortly after this I really got into them. 

At the time, however, they hadn’t really registered on my radar. As was famously the case, they had to play after Slayer, on the “hard rock” day of the festival. I seem to remember Mastodon were the opening act, followed by Killswitch Engage – after that, it was all just noise to me. (Just checked: the others were Bullet for My Valentine, Less Than Jake, and Taking Back Sunday).

With the exception of Slayer, who were on at the end of our shift; we’d got the 12-6pm on the Friday. I seem to remember thinking “Hey, these guys can actually play!”. I’m old-fashioned; I like my music to have identifiable tunes and words. So did most of the team, and the aural battering we took over the course of the shift, combined with huge queues, malfunctioning MDUs, and a manager who seemed hellbent on off everyone on the bar, and it was one of the least fun shifts I’ve ever done in six years volunteering for the Workers Beer Company. (I seem to remember Killswitch Engage’s frontman yelling “You guys fucking suck!” at the crowd, and thinking “Yeah, we’re thinking that right back at you”.) 

As the end of the shift approached, we sidled to the back of the bar, ready to make a quick exit, and bumped into the team coming on shift. They were staring at the front of the bar, eyes wide in shock.  

We turned to see what they were looking at, and realised that the queues of, black-clad, dirty, tattooed metallers were about ten deep, and they were still coming. When you’re at the front of the bar, you don’t see this. You just appear in front of one customer, get the order, give them the drinks, get the money, go tot the next customer, same thing again, lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseum. At the back of the bar, though, the oncoming hordes were clearly visible. It was like being in Shaun of the Dead without a cricket bat. 

I’d liked to say we muttered some comforting words and patted their shoulders. In reality, it was more like we grinned evilly, muttered “See ya! Wouldn’t wanna be ya!”, grabbed a six-pint holder of cider each (this was before the WBC really cracked down on servers helping themselves to free booze – these days you’d get fired for it, and technically back then we weren’t supposed to do it, but after that shift, I was really not inclined to stop my guys helping themselves to drinks, not least because I badly needed one myself), and scarpered as fast as we could.

We paused briefly to ask each other “Do we want to stay in the main arena?”. The answer was “Nope, can’t take any more of this racket”, and we skittled off in search of the NME tent and better music. And that is the tale of How I Didn’t See My Chemical Romance At Leeds 2006.

Leeds Festival, Day 3, Part the Second: Let's Watch This World Explode

We headed in search of food. Specifically, a stonebaked pizza. There was a huge queue, which is always the way. The only van that doesn't have a huge queue is the "Goodness Gracious Healthy Foods" vegan stall. Here, all was chaos and order as people with flour in their hair ran around throwing dough about and yoicking pizzas in and out of ovens. I ordered one with butternut squash on, and it was delicious.

With time to kill, I joined A in seeing Noah and the Whale - the deal being that I saw them with her, and she saw My Chemical Romance with me. I'd never seen them before and was curious. And they were very, very good. The turnout was fantastic. We were stood near the back, behind two men with matching Bert-and-Ernie-from-Sesame-Street hats, but it did look like the band were thrilled by the crowd, and made every effort to give them a good time. We jumped up and down, we sang along to "Bohemian Rhapsody", and I'd discovered a new band.

From the new to the old, as it were; it's somewhat of a surprise to think that My Chemical Romance have been around for ten years. (Possibly not as much of a surprise as it may be for the band, given their previous personal histories.) Leeds and Reading, famously, were when they were bottled by angry Slayer fans. (Gerard Way's take on it: "So I come on stage, I have white hair, I look like a super creep, everything about me screams 'Throw piss at me'...".) They swore that they would not return unless they were headlining, and four years on, here they were, and here was I. Having missed them in 2007, I would have been deeply, deeply, irritated if it had happened again, but it hadn't. And, even better, it wasn't bloody raining.

I had that faint nervousness I usually get around watching My Chemical Romance live, although I was distracted by 30 Seconds To Mars's final show, in which the audience were invited to invade the stage, and did so with gusto, screaming along to a song the name of which I do not know. Gotta say they don't grab me. All was silent... and then, BANG, My Chem were onstage and I forgot all nervousness and tiredness, and prepared to be entertained.

And boy, were we entertained. C, A and I jumped up and down until we spilled our drinks. I have never seen a band give so much to one performance, with the possible exception of Blur at Glastonbury 2009. You could see in their eyes "We are headlining, and fuck it, we will demonstrate that we have got what it takes". (What they didn't have was Brian May, who only showed for Reading, but frankly I didn't care.) A asked wryly if Gerard Way's hair was really that colour. (Me: "The colour depends on what album they're promoting at the time".) It was a brilliant, brilliant gig. The only very minor thing I would have changed is the absence of "Bulletproof Heart", which is probably my favourite My Chem song, but you can't have it all.

Back to the WBC village, still riding the high, and we joined in the late-night party in the bar. I drank slightly too much, learned the words to "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones, and we had a great time. One day left, and so far it had been brilliant. Could Pulp knock it out of the park for the trifecta? We could only wait and see!

Leeds Day 2, Part the First: The Mud Has Reached Glastonbury Proportions

And it rained.

It rained, it rained, and then it rained some more. It rained during the night, it rained when we woke up, it took a brief pause in the morning, and then it rained the rest of the day.

We filled in the morning hours by seeing Mark Thomas recounting his tale of walking along the Palestinian – Israeli wall, and nearly being shot by the Israeli army. It was told with great vigour and amusement. After that, we turned up our hoods, tucked in our trousers, donned our T-shirts and trekked back to the Main Stage bar to start our noon to six shift.

Rarely have I ever been so glad at a festival to be working. At least for six hours we were inside a sturdy, waterproof tent with ready access to a toilet and some hot drinks. I’ve never served so many people who looked at risk of incipient hypothermia. By the end of the shift at 6pm, I was ready to start handing out blankets and hot water bottles to people instead of pints of Tuborg.

We had the usual cider saga of faulty machines, although given the rain, it’s not surprising. I vividly remembered my first Glastonbury, when the rain knocked out all the MDUs on site. The only drink we had for sale was the real ale, since you pour it from a cask. I’ll bet the real ale suppliers were very happy that year.

I also vividly remembered the other reason I like Glastonbury: big tents and lots of coffee and bar tents. Admittedly Leeds has lots of big tents, but it’s short on bar and coffee tents, which is a problem in this weather – people need somewhere to sit and chill out – or in this case warm up – and hide from the rain.

Still, we did have two big things to look forward to, a) Elbow and b) Muse. Two of my favourite bands of all time. We ate pizza, and then headed to take up our places in front of the stage.

Leeds Day 1, Part the Second: Die, Stripy Bastards, Die

We strolled off the coach, attached our backpacks to ourselves, and staggered off in search of the WBC person who was handing out the badges and directions. Having acquired both, we yomped off across the site to the WBC camping village. As is the inevitable way of these things, it was at the other end of the site. By the time we’d got there, my shoulders felt they had fused together in the middle.

Fortunately, the sun was out, the grass was dry, and it was perfect tent-putting-up weather. We carefully selected a spot based on my past experience (“Not too near the bar because it’s always noisy, not too far away from the toilets or we’ll have long walks in the middle of the night, not too near the toilets or it’ll stink by Saturday and everyone will fall over our tents in the middle of the night”). We chose to volunteer for an extra bar shift in the Campsite Bar, and set off to acquire some lunch and explore the site prior to our shift.

Leeds hadn’t changed too much from what I remember in 2006, although sadly our campsite back in those days was much nearer the coach park! We ate pizza for lunch at what I’m pretty sure was the same pizza stall I ate my first lunch at at my first Leeds festival. (If I can remember this, how come I can’t remember where I hid the spare shed key last year?) The sun was out, the crowds were roaming, and the site was not yet covered in litter.

It may be apparent that my love for Leeds is somewhat less than my love for Glastonbury. This is largely due to the fact that frankly, I find Leeds a bit boring during the day. At Glastonbury, there is always something interesting or strange happening somewhere. At Leeds, it’s all about the bands and the alcohol, which is great in principle, but a bit dull in practice unless you get lucky and find lots of bands you like.


(Actually, for many people it’s also all about the drugs, the sex in tents and the fights, with added possibility of setting fire to stuff at the end. For us, the first isn’t our thing, the second would have required our other halves to be present, the third was unlikely to happen unless someone really kicked off behind the bar, and the fourth was unlikely to happen unless it got really cold!) This is particularly an issue if, like us, you can’t drink much during the day due to having to stay sober for your bar shifts.

As 5pm rolled around, we headed to the Campsite bar for our first shift. It is a source of some amusement to me that the WBC makes (rightly) a big fuss about briefing its teams, but that at least half the teams I’ve taken to festivals over the years have done their first shift (ever) with no briefing at all, since we always volunteer for the extra-day shifts. This was no exception.

Luckily, both C and A displayed unflappable calm, and got the hang of it with great speed. Although there was some flapping, as the hot weather and the sticky spilled drinks attracted every wasp in a 5-mile radius. We had some quite effective wasp traps, but most of us got stung at least once. I’m normally a peaceful human being, but by the end of the shift, I was standing in front of the wasp traps watching the little buggers flap their last in stale Irn-Bru and shrieking “Die, stripy bastards, die!”

Ah yes, the end of the shift. There’s a tale….

Leeds Day 1, Part the First: Thanks A Bunch, Ricky Wilson

And here I am again, writing up my trip to one of the UK’s many music festivals – in this instance, Leeds, where once again I was leading a team of intrepid volunteers to serve pints behind a bar for six hours a day to raise funds for our trade union. As myself and the other two members of my team, A and C, dozed gently on the National Express coach to Bramham Park, I found myself reflecting on the last time I was at Leeds Festival.

It was back in 2006, the last year there was no Glastonbury Festival. (There will be none next year either, due to a) their needing to give the site a rest, b) it being impossible to get Portaloos for love nor money next summer due to the London Olympics.) I was jointly leading a team of ten intrepid volunteers to raise funds for our union’s regional Young Members network. This was also the year that marked the beginning of my education in why it is unwise to trust people you haven’t met to turn up and volunteer.

Two of my potential twelve volunteers dropped out the night before due to illness and childcare problems, which was fair enough. Another asked to travel separately to the rest of the group, turned up, collected her pass, and didn’t work the festival; we never saw her again. There were other members I hadn’t met before they turned up at the coach station; looking back, it’s amazing that things worked out at all. (Since then I insist on character references for people from their line managers, and that the team meets for a briefing and travels together. I also hit people from the start with the “you have to commit to it months in advance, you’ll be on your feet for seven hours a day, and if you serve alcohol to under-18s, you’ll be paying an £80 fine” approach. It may be tough but it well works.)

Apart from that, I remember good things of Leeds 2006, funnily enough. Except for one of the bar managers, who was universally hated by everyone in the bar. He opened his account with us by being found in the bar we did our late-night shift on the Thursday in, lying in the bar’s rest area claiming to be too drunk to stand up. He then bossed everyone around for the rest of the week, to the extent that even I wanted to dot him with a trayful of twelve pints of stale lager.

Oh yeah, apart from that… I remember seeing Franz Ferdinand in my 20-minute rest break (I snuck out of the back of the tent and into the arena to get a better view), who were great. I also remember trying to force my way into the NME tent to see the Kooks. The crush was so bad that we made no progress, until eventually someone yelled “Sod the bloody Kooks, let’s get out of here.” I took their advice and shoved my way back out of the tent and back towards air. It was at this point I realised I had lost all my team, no-one was responding to my text messages, and I was facing the prospect of spending the entire Friday night on my own… until suddenly one of them appeared in front of me. Our catching sight of each other must have been a thousand-to-one chance, but it happened. The rest of the night was fun.

This was also where the famous “I Predict a Riot” event occurred. We were on the main stage bar. It could just be that at the time I was less experienced a bar worker and thought the crowd was worse than it actually was… but I remember queues ten deep at the bar and servers tripping over each other running around the bar. The MDUs pour twelve pints at a bar, and the trays literally would not touch the table before people snatched the pints out of them and dashed off. At the time, we had cup holders that would hold six pints at a time, and people would order two or three of them at a time to save having to come back to the bar. I was trying to fill one, waiting at the table for the machine to pour, when the harassed person on it yelled “It’s only doing three pints at a time! Sorry!”.

I turned round and caught sight of the queue for the first time. I could not see daylight between their heads, they were so closely packed together.

And then, with perfect timing, the Kaiser Chiefs struck up with “I Predict a Riot”. Thanks a bundle, Ricky Wilson.

Funnily enough, I discovered at Leeds 2011 that my memories are wrong. I’ve actually seen Muse not three times, but four; I saw them at Leeds 2006. This was before I really became a Muse-head though.

This time around, things were different. I deliberately gave up my place at Glastonbury 2011 to go to Leeds, which was not an easy choice. (I’m entitled to one place at one festival each year as a reward for doing the organising.) But when the festival headliners are Muse, My Chemical Romance and Pulp, supported by Elbow… well, when your four favourite bands are headlining, there can be only one choice, even when you love Glastonbury as much as I do.

The coach bumped its way into the coach park, and we hopped off into blazing sunshine.

Bottlefed Ferrets (Newcastle Green Festival)

...I then wandered toward the bar, drank a half of exceptionally bitter beer (maybe “endured” is more the word), and listened to a local band. Continuing the trend started in 2003, lunch took the form of a slice of pizza from the StoneBakedPizza van, which was doing a roaring trade. I’d managed to come out with only £20, there were no cash machines onsite, and I couldn’t be bothered to wander off into town and find one, so it was a bit like being a student again and having to account for every penny. (Something my bank manager would be happy to see me do, no doubt.)

My accounting for every penny took me around several stalls, where I purchased a keyring and dodged people wanting me to buy secondhand books and sign petitions for things I don’t know enough about. Since shopping wasn’t on the agenda, I strolled past a woman bottlefeeding a ferret in the rest tent(1), and headed in the direction of the other music stage.

Here was the festival vibe, if you take the view that festival vibe consists of ramshackle wooden music stages watched by teenagers in black with bottles of cider, and adults with dreadlocks (and also bottles of cider). Having been to quite a few festivals in my time, that tends to be my view, and I should know because I’m often the one selling the cider. Albeit at this festival I thought it unlikely that anyone would be selling pints to two men in full Victorian British Army officer uniform, and their pal in a gorilla suit, as once happened to me in Glastonbury.

Still, people were decidedly Having A Good Time, pogoing up and down to some white-guy reggae played by several men from Cambridge with dreadlocks. Even better, there was a tea tent nearby. Or possibly a tea yurt. Either way, it had hot drinks and buns for sale, and I ordered a coffee and a cupcake. (Don’tcha love British festivals? You can’t part the British from their buns.) The man behind the counter revealed the secret of the tea yurt’s handsome profits by murmuring “Do you want a shot of brandy in that?” Answer: yes. I took myself, my cupcake and my slightly alcoholic coffee outside to groove along to the reggae, which was nearing its end, but the band refused to go quietly.

With the security staff giving them increasingly hard glares (and the police stood behind them watching the situation with expressions of “we’ll see how this pans out”), they launched into an encore, wisely choosing a song with a refrain even the thoroughly pissed could sing: “In my TREEEHOUSE, in my TREEEEEEHOOOOUSE”, so that by the time the security staff finally yanked the wires, everyone was providing the chorus. It was as close to the communal spirit of a music festival as I’ve got in some time, and I wished, not for the first time nor the last time this year, that I’d made it to Glastonbury. It was the right decision not to go, but it wasn’t an easy one. Still, I’m looking forward to Leeds. As the festivalgoers strolled out of the park in the rain (“In my TREEEHOUSE, in my TREEEEEEHOOOOUSE”), I smiled, and headed for a rendezvous with my tea.


(1) Yes, really. I don’t need to make weird stuff up for this blog. I just go into Newcastle.

Hanging with the Hippies: Newcastle Community Green Festival

Back in June this year, I wandered on down to the Newcastle Community Green Festival at the weekend, late on Sunday afternoon. I’d hoped to get there earlier, but life got in the way, as it is wont to do.

Now in its 16th incarnation, the Green Festival and I have a long history, going back to 2002, when I first attended it in Exhibition Park with my university boyfriend at the time. I remember the sun shone and we had fun. In contrast, in 2003 I was staffing a stall on climate change with a friend from the university’s People and Planet environment campaigning group (having since broken up with the boyfriend), and it chucked it down all day. It rained to the point that a regular occurance involved sticking your head out of the marquee, yelling “Watch out!”, and then poking the tent roof with a broomstick to tip the water that was collecting in it onto the ground. I also remember watching live poetry, the joy of trying to carry a massive display board between two people all the way from Exhibition Park to Central Station and back to Durham, then eating a much-needed pizza when I got back home.

Since then, I’ve attended when I can, a highlight being when I and some friends spent a sunny afternoon there back around 2008 when it moved to Leazes Park, when the sun shone, they had a live dance music stage, and a streaker entertained everyone by running into the pond and staying there doing laps whilst the police waited for him on the shore. There was no festival in 2009 due to “financial irregularities”. I know someone who knows the organisers, and her verdict was “corruption never, possible financial confusion with the paperwork – yes”. Anyway, the festival is now back on, and I went along to enjoy.

This time around I was on my own, which didn’t particularly trouble me. I strolled on up to Leazes Park on a grey and slightly drizzly Sunday afternoon, and said hello to a friend who was staffing the Newcastle Cycling Campaign stall... (TBC)

Darn You, Ezra Koenig

Darn you for writing an extremely catchy song. Darn you for writing a song that gets stuck in my head. Darn you for writing a song that I was absentmindedly singing in the same room as my mother. Darn you for putting "Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?" in the chorus*.

Darn you, Ezra Koenig!

In other news, Muse are headlining Glastonbury. I am praying to the gods of music, starting now, that my team doesn't get the shift that clashes with their set. Please, please, please, Gods of Music. I am begging here.


* Though, this is still not as embarassing as when I was doing the washing up whilst at work and whilst listening to "Headfirst for Halos" on my MP3, started absentmindedly singing along to the chorus.

Don't ever do this, unless you want to be on the receiving end of some very funny looks and several concerned enquiries about the state of your mental health.