Thursday 3 September 2009

Festival Sanitation

I'm afraid this post isn't going to be in the best of taste. But to be true to themselves, bloggers sometimes have to go where others fear to tread.

Bob spent three days at Reading festival last weekend. He was particularly keen to go, not so much for the bands as to get away from the pervasive smell of muck-spreading in our neighbouring fields.

The day before he left I noticed he was eating abnormal amounts, even for him. In between meals he seemed to be forever stirring snackpots and rice or pasta ready meals. The microwave was pinging like a wind chime in a gale, delivering cheeseburgers and steam puddings. Eventually, noticing I was giving him funny looks, he explained that he had a cunning plan. Given the primitive and unsavoury nature of festival sanitation, he aimed to put away a vast amount of food the day before, thereby guaranteeing a tremendously successful final sitting in the comfort of his own bathroom before setting off, and avoiding the need to eat much and use the very basic facilities at Reading.

I got up at 5 am the next morning to drive him to the station, and found him standing in the darkness outside the back door with his backpack and handfuls of tent, sleeping-bag, gas cooker etc (the backpack was full of beer), looking slightly bloated. He seemed disconsolate; "My plan didn't work," he confided.

Ironically, we'd all had a disturbed night because his mother and the dog had eaten something which had violently disagreed with them (not necessarily the same thing), and had been suffering the opposite problem. There were scented candles burning in several rooms when we came down and, as the cowsh-fragrant wind wafted over from the Downs, Bob remarked "I can't decide whether it's worse indoors or out".

(Postscript: Bob has drawn my attention to the phenomenon of 'Poo Girl'. At Reading's simultaneous sister festival at Leeds, this poor girl dropped her handbag down the long-drop loo. She tried to reach down through the hole to retrieve it, and became stuck, head first and legs in the air. She had to be rescued by firemen, and has since become a facebook hit.)

18 comments:

  1. Oh, the heady, happy days of festival going, eh? Thanks for the reminder BT. (Although, do you know - in my day I don't think they had loos. Memory, thankfully, is dim!) Right, I'm off to google 'poo-girl' now...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Another cracking tale pal. (also googling poo-girl as we speak)

    ReplyDelete
  3. gotta admire a man with a plan, sugar! *snickering* bless his heart! xoxoox

    ReplyDelete
  4. OMG - is that true about poo girl? It did make me laugh. As for Bob - if I was young and in the UK I would spend my life going to festivals.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dotterel - I seemed to miss out on festivals. Living on the Isle of Skye might have had something to do with it!

    Jimmy - You have to commiserate with her, and I bet she doesn't benefit from the marketing that's going on.

    Savvy - It seemed like a sound strategy, but he hadn't allowed for the early start!

    Fancy - You couldn't make it up. As for festivals, I understood you do?

    ReplyDelete
  6. As someone who has spent an inordinate amount of time at music festivals in British fields, I have to say that the tale of Poogirl sent a shiver up my spine. A true cautionary tale if there ever was one.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I regularly suffer from a stubborn anus - when I want to offload before a long journey or some other event where poo-ing ad-hoc is not an option I can guarantee that my arse will just not play ball. I swear it has its own sense of humour. Toilet of course.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I only went to one - the Killers and Springsteen day - so it was more a concert than a festival. The whole thing was 3 days in a field and I went home after my day.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ah yes festival facilities...went to Virgin last year and have remained resolutely constipated ever since.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Haha, great story! I actually dropped my sunglasses down the loo about 12 years ago! I had tucked them into the front of my tee shirt and was lifting my then 2 year old off the seat when "plop" in they went. It really was one of those moments "do I or don't I retrieve them?"

    ReplyDelete
  11. I'm impressed that Bob can time his mass peristalsis so well. He is to be congratulated on an expert understanding of his internals.

    ReplyDelete
  12. What I want to know is how Bob got on at the festival with all that waiting to happen?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Excellent story; I'd like to know how he got on too! He must have had to use the facilities some time.

    ReplyDelete
  14. There'll always be an England, AYE!!!

    aloha my earthy friend

    Comfort Spiral

    ReplyDelete
  15. Oooh, Pot Noodles... dirty! Bro, I've memed you on my blog.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Poor Bob and poor poor poo girl! I love your description of the microwave-it reminds me of my brother's approach to food! Hope all is well with the family's stomachs now.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Imaginary - I quite agree. There's something to be said for sporrans after all.

    Steve - I laughed aloud at this. For some time. There are some things that cannot be planned.

    Fancy - I remember now. Still have you down as a rocker, though.

    NB - When I managed to stop laughing at Steve's I read yours. I think I must have inherited a lavatorial sense of humour.

    Amanda - I can picture it; a certain inevitability. Did you retreive them? (Yes, of course you did. But I bet you never felt quite the same about them again)

    Madame DeF - He no longer has much faith in his ability to do that. And there's me thinking that mass peristalsis had some sort of liturgical significance...

    ReplyDelete
  18. Eryl - You really don't want to know! We had a text saying he thought he'd caught his mother's problem. And then another to say that it was alright, he hadn't. His companion, however, who avoided the festival facilities for three days, nearly made it home, but reached crisis point in Paddington station!

    Completely - See above. He sensibly seems to have lost his inhibitions. Perhaps a week's prior exposure to muck-spreading helped.

    Cloudia - You're right; there is something peculiarly British aboutsuch preoccupations!

    Gadjo - Quite! (Thank you for the tag; I've had a go).

    Sarah - I feel so sorry for the girl. Reading is supposed to be quiet activity. (And thanks, everyone's fine now).

    ReplyDelete