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)

Boat of Puking Divers, Part the Fourth

The other best cure for seasickness is to jump in the sea. Since it’s caused by confusion between the signals for the eye and the inner ear balance mechanism, being in the sea, and thus moving with it, cures this. Hence the oft-recommended cure for seasick divers – “Just go on the next dive” – is not born entirely of heartlessness. (Although there may be an element of that among the more gung-ho instructors.) And yes, you can throw up through a scuba regulator mouthpiece underwater, though I imagine it’s not much fun.

The first batch of divers kitted up for the second dive, and jumped in. Two of them promptly jumped back out again; a diver from Edinburgh whose drysuit was leaking badly, and A, who threw up at the bottom and promptly decided he didn’t fancy half an hour’s swimming around and puking through a reg (since the cause in this case was an OD on brandy, jumping into the sea didn’t cure him).

L decided that he would take A’s place on the dive, and jumped in, leaving me with J as my dive buddy. As I kitted up, I wondered balefully if this was L’s idea of revenge over the failure-to-stop-vanishing-banana incident.

We submerged as fast as was safe. In answer to a frequently asked question, yes, you can (and we do) dive when it’s raining, but it’s not ideal for two reasons, even though we are planning to submerge ourselves entirely in water: a) rain and wind stir up the sea and lower the visibility, and the lack of light means photos don’t come out so well, b) it’s one thing to be entirely surrounded by water, and another to be bobbing about on the surface getting cold water repeatedly blown into your face. Think of the difference between swimming in the pool and getting caught in a winter downpour without an umbrella. It’s like that.

This dive immediately looked more promising. The vis was not brilliant as we were relatively near the shore, so the surge (waves going back and forth overhead) was pushing a bit of sand around, but the light was a bit better and there was immediately more to see. More plants, more fish, more rocks, and less depth, so more light to see them. Also, a welcome absence of the slightly sick feeling I’d had in the pit of my stomach. It was so mild I hadn’t realised I had it, until I submerged and it went away. (It may not surprise anyone that it was whilst diving off Eyemouth that I developed my habit of singing “I Feel Better” by Hot Chip to cheer myself up during surface intervals.)

We happily paddled about hunting for lumpsuckers. It was an interesting experience, which I’m tempting to say was a bit like diving in a washing machine, albeit the sea didn’t actually spin us around! I don’t particularly mind diving in a bit of surge or current, as it’s quite fun playing with the sea. (Albeit a wise diver never ever forgets that the sea is bigger than you are, stronger than you are, doesn’t get tired, and has no affection for you whatsoever.)

Suddenly, J spotted it. There, beneath a rock, was a flash of pink in the sandy water. I promptly swam on over, and was rewarded with a sight I’d never seen before: a lumpsucker guarding its eggs. As you can see from the photo, the “lump” part of the name is apt. They must be one of the least hydrodynamic creatures in the sea.

As for the “sucker” part, the lumpsucker has an interesting reproductive cycle. They normally inhabit deeper waters than most divers venture into, but during spring, the lumpsuckers migrate into the shallower and warmer waters near the shore to lay and fertilise their eggs.

The female lumpsucker then thinks to herself “bugger this child-rearing lark, I’m off”, and swims back into the deeper waters, leaving the male lumpsucker to guard the eggs, which are attached to rocks near the shoreline. The male then attachs himself to a rock near the eggs to defend them and keep them oxygenated by finning water over them. Since the eggs are on rocks near the shore, the swell of the tide going in and out would dislodge the male, were it not for the part that his ventral fins (the fins just below the head) form a sucker, which he uses to firmly anchor himself.

I was extremely excited by this sighting. I enjoy the sensation of diving in itself, but for me an extra-good dive is when I see something I haven’t seen before. The photo I took can be seen above. We paddled around the rocks some more, then headed on back to the boat for the journey home and a hot chocolate. Several toasted sarnies in the harbour café afterwards, and we were on our way home from the Boat of Puking Divers.

Boat of Puking Divers, Part the Third

B sat with his arms folded.

“Why aren’t you going back in?” I asked, as I attempted to make myself a coffee whilst not acquiring a burn on my left arm to match the one on my right (the result of an accident with a kettle earlier this year); no easy feat when the boat is pitching around.

“It’s cold.”

This surprised me, as B is by no means a fair-weather diver. Then it occurred to me. “Didn’t you just get back from the Phillipines?”

He gave me a look of deepest gloom. If you imagine the expression of people who have just arrived back on the plane from Florida in August wearing t-shirts, shorts and sandals only to look out of the plane window and see black skies and hurling rain, multiplied by a factor of ten, you’ve more or less got it. “Yup.”

“’Scuse me.”

This was not B, but A, another regular dive buddy of mine. A suddenly stood up and dashed past me to join the other divers on the puking side of the boat*. This also surprised me, since I’ve never seen A throwing up on the boat.

“What’s up with him?”

“Two bottles of wine and a brandy last night.”

“No sympathy then.”

“’Scuse me.”

B pushed past me to join A. This was becoming a pattern. I looked through the wildly-lurching porthole, and counted five people throwing up over the side. This was something of a record, which J, the senior divemaster pointed out with slightly more relish than was necessary. I decided to go outside myself; I’m not usually cursed with seasickness (thank you, God), but even I was feeling slightly “off”. The best way to cure this is to sit in the fresh air and look at the horizon, which I did for all of five minutes, before I got fed up with being rained on and decided I could look at the horizon through the entrance to the cabin.

As I wandered in vaguely thinking about a Mini Roll, J was asking “Does this banana belong to anyone?”

I looked across. “Yes, it’s L’s,” I replied, somewhat pointlessly since half the banana was well on its way to become part of J. I sincerely hoped this meant L wasn’t going to be suffering on our next dive. I can’t say that I was exactly looking forward to the dive – I was having visions of the warm seas, clear water, and sunshine I hoped to encounter on my upcoming summer holiday in Crete** – but it did have the great advantage that it would take us away from the boat of puking divers.



* There is a system for this, and it’s mentioned in the PADI Manual, believe it or not. You go to the leeward side of the boat (leeward = if you stand on that side facing towards the sea, the wind is blowing on the back of your head, not the front – windward is the other way around), and throw up over the side, the theory being that the wind will blow it away from both you and the boat. Which makes sense, since if there’s one thing guaranteed to add insult to injury when you’ve just thrown up, it’s getting it all blown back in your face. (The PADI Manual also helpfully adds: “Stay out of the head [toilet] – that’s about the worst place to go”).

** Correctly, as it turned out. Watch this space.

Boat of Puking Divers, Part the Second

I cannot say that the first dive out of Eyemouth was the most visually interesting dive I’ve ever done, but in its own way, it had a certain hypnotic calm. Vis was not too bad, and we were at 12-15m. The only real sights were the pale grey rippled sand beneath us, the green water around us, an occasional rock or crab on the bottom, and thousands of small hydroids in the water around us. Hydroids are the free-floating larvae of sea anemones before they attach themselves to rocks, and look like very small jellyfish. It was a surreal experience, but in some ways almost meditative, drifting steadily along with the current and following the divers ahead.

After half an hour, I was mentally taking bets with myself as to how soon it would be before the large male novice diver (LMND) in front of me got towards the reserve on his air tank and we went up*. I interspersed this with the occasional barrel roll to see if my buddy was there, as he had a fondness for swimming about two metres above me. Technically I should have been swimming at the same level he was, but I like to see what’s on the bottom… he told me afterwards that drifting along with the current with only the bottom for reference was giving him nausea and vertigo, and he was happier swimming a bit higher up.

The answer proved to be “not that much longer”. LMND and his buddy started to head upwards, accompanied by a flurry of hand signals from the instructor in charge of the dive. My buddy produced his SMB and deployed it at about 6m whilst we were making a safety stop: it was as well he did it at this depth, as the line attached to the damn thing got tangled around his tank valve, and we did the underwater Untangling Waltz. Buddy and I surfaced with no mishaps and yoicked ourselves back onto the boat (thank god for boats with lifts).

The instructor informed us that his hand signals had been intended to mean “you two can carry on if you want to”. We replied that our actions had been intended to mean “we know, but we don’t want to ‘cause it’s a bit cold and boring, and we fancy a cup of tea and a Mini Roll”.

In search of the aforementioned Mini Roll, I lurched into the cabin – the sea was getting quite choppy – and encountered a shivering, coat-wrapped and be-hatted mass in the form of one of my regular dive buddies, B. B looked up at me and ground out “I’m not going back in there”.

It was going to be one of those mornings.


* Risk factors for going through your air quickly: being a physically large person, being male, and being new (new divers tend to move through the water less efficiently, and waste more air through inflating and deflating their buoyancy jackets). The reserve air is the amount of air everyone on the dive agrees to have left at the end of the dive, usually around 50 bag. You never plan to dive until the tank is empty, for safety reasons – you need the reserve in case something delays you on the way to the surface or one of your buddies runs low on air.