More LLAMA festival

As you might have gathered from my last post, the Boy and I plus our friends Corporate Curls and her husband the Student went to the LLAMA festival at the weekend.

Because we are lame we didn’t set off till Saturday afternoon as we had to go to the supermarket to buy supplies. Curls tried to convince me to buy the sloe gin because ‘it might be interesting’ but I demurred, because a campsite with nowhere to buy booze is Not The Place To Find Out You Don’t Like the Only Gin There Is. No it isn’t. And camping without gin? Is like strawberries without cream. And then the Boy and I had an argument about whether meat would survive the journey in the heat. Which I won, but I now think he might have been right, it would have been okay in the cool bag. (Shhh.)

A torturously hot car journey across Exmoor later, we arrived at the campsite to find we were in the overflow space. Which was on the edge of a cliff more or less. And therefore incredibly windy. After putting our tents up in gale force winds which was only achieved without a full scale domestic on the part of the Boy and I by suppressing all our natural instincts so as not to embarrass ourselves in front of our friends, who were naturally a picture of marital bliss AND got their tent up in record time, alcohol was handed out all round. Frayed tempers darned, the barbeque was got going by Curls who made us some suitably greasy sausage sandwiches. Glory of glory the wind had died down. Bliss. There is nothing quite like lounging around on a hot sunny day with a well made G&T in one hand and a sausage sandwich in the other and nothing to look forward to but a music festival.

After some more drinks we ambled down the festival and ended up listening to some bloke from Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci play some odd little tunes on a keyboard. Quite charming but not as charming as GZM themselves whom I saw live once in London. Many drinks and packets of Salt and Vinegar crisps later and suddenly it was rather late, the music was ended and our campsite was the wrong end of a 1:4 gradient. Fortunately a mini bus had been laid on for us drunk tired and emotional festival goers to ferry us back to our campsites. The mini bus driver was called Keith Richards and was determined to fit at least 50 people into a mini bus designed for 12. This precipitated and amusingly frightening lurch up aforesaid 1:4 gradient road. Back at the tents, the re-appearance of gale force winds curtailed any further drinking socialising and I gratefully collapsed onto the air mattres*

The next morning (after a night of lying awake listening to the wind howl round our tent) we awoke to find the wind had died down and it was another glorious day. A peaceful morning ensued, punctuated by reading aloud the more revolting bits of the Sunday Mirror, (the only paper available in the campsite shop) bacon sandwiches and cups of tea. We struck camp and drove to Linton to park for the festival, where the Boy found a shop selling rather fetching straw hats. With some encouragement from me, he bought one although he (correctly) pointed out that it made him look like a Panamanian drug dealer called Carlos. The rest of the day was spent listening to psychedelic folk music, drinking cider and eating crab sandwiches and ice cream. I burned my back terribly but it was worth it. And that is how I spent my weekend.

*To quote the Domestic Goddess (one of my sisters, do keep up) 'After a certain age a woman needs a supportive mattress. I am one of those women. I do not do camping without an air mattress and a duvet.