“I’m not singing for the future
I’m not dreaming of the past
I’m not talking of the first times
I never think about the last
Now the song is nearly over
We may never find out what it means
Still there’s a light I hold before me
You’re the measure of my dreams
The measure of my dreams.”
Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan
In my wisdom , when heading off for a run through the Electric Picnic last Friday morning, I decided to wear an orange hi-viz vest. This was for safety when out on the Abbeyleix road, but was mainly for it’s magic ability to make security and marshalls around Electric Picnic open gates for me where mere mortals are not allowed. What I hadn’t thought of was that in order to get out on to the Abbeyleix road I had to run through two campsites and I was met by a deluge of souls carrying multiple rucksacks , and trolleys full of beer, who kept asking me where various campsites were. I stopped each time and showed them on the Electric Picnic app on my phone where they were looking for and where they were now. Most people were grateful and thanked me. Some people gave out to me as I ran slowly past that the signage was terrible. I told them to write me a letter. This did not go down well.
“What’s your name ?”
“Benny. I’m over at Brutopolis.”
One poor man , who had a small backpack on his chest and a huge rucksack on his back , was desperately looking for the family camping area. He gestured back to his very fed up kids who were leaning against the most heavily laden trolley I’ve ever seen, saying that they’d walked a mile out from the village to get this far. I took out my trusty app and we both looked in horror at it’s revelation that he was further away from the family camping area than we’d he’d started walking from the village. And worse still, the only way to get to it was back the way he came, and then walk that distance again in the other direction. I think I heard his soul deflate.
I ran 4k out the road against a steady stream of cars coming the other way, all heading to the Red Car Park. By the time I was coming back the Garda were using both sides of the road to send cars down to it. I went back to the camper, woke the kids, made breakfast and then we headed over to Brutopolis to paint rust effects on Turf Reactors, and make freshly painted signs look old. A lady shouted my name “Paul !” , it was a very old friend that I hadn’t seen in…forever. Una Curley. There had been an occasional message over social media, but the last time we’d had a proper chat was…yesterday and a long time ago too. We’d had a mutual friend, Gabriel Duffy, and he’d been staying in Dawson’s Lodge on the Leslie Estate in Glaslough, and it was one of those summer where Gabriel, Una, my Soulmate and I seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time together and then didn’t. There was no reason, there had been no falling out, just life drifted in different directions for all of us and yet as soon as she called my name and we hugged, we were very giddy and very opinionated mad things again. We were tripping over each other in our rush to tell Robyn and Elliott old war stories.
It was magic.
We painted more rust effects, then moved on to painting grime stains on all the fake outlet pipes and air vents dotted around Brutopolis and then we ran away before Benny , Mark or Paul would say “Do you know what would look great ?”. We’d learnt over the past two days that these musings usually led to one of us on top of a very tall ladder painting something very high up that no one would see. Or lying on our bellies painting something that again, no one would see.
We headed off to find the Aldi pop up store to get some milk and on a path between 4 different websites someone on the other side, heading the opposite way shouted “Paul Bond !”. We stopped and waited for them to cross the stream of campers to discover that it was Adrian Corcoran. Adrian and I spent every waking moment of every Christmas, Easter , Summer and Halloween holiday together between the ages of 12 and 15. He was our neighbour, Mrs.Turley’s godson, and lived in Dundalk, but came down to stay with her every holiday.
We goofed around together, spent late nights sitting up with Mrs.Turley’s daughter Denise, who was 10 years older than us, effortlessly cool, and listened to Fleetwood Mac, The Kinks, and The Human League and many other albums.
We spent a good chunk of formative time with each other.
And then we’d see each other less. We kept in touch until we were 17 or 18 and then we only met at funerals.
We were so excited to see each other. Robyn said later that we were both grinning from ear to ear and just holding each others shoulders and not really saying anything, nothing comprehensible anyway. We arranged to meet later to see Jinx Lennon play on the Croi stage at 7pm.
We got our milk and headed back to have something to eat.
At 5pm we went to a breathwork session with our next door neighbour , Shauna. She was nervous about hosting what is normally an intimate and quite personal event in an open sided tent in the middle of a music festival, and also that as it was on so early on the first day when people were still settling in, no one would show up. Elliott, Robyn and I doubled the initial crowd. But as she started we could see people taking places either side of us and could hear people moving behind us.
It’s hard to describe a breathwork session to someone who hasn’t yet done one. I think of it as a guided journey to a wee oasis of peace, memory and hope. You’re soon oblivious to sounds around you. It is deeply relaxing. Sometimes different emotions come up for people, quite unexpectedly on occasion, and Shauna suggests going gently with them.
At one point during the session, while we were all stretched out , feet facing Shauna, she suggested that we were free to move our hands, arms or feet if we felt the need to do so. I slowly raised my arms above my head for a stretch and opened the palms of my hands…and someone touched them ! I was in a wee bit of a shock. I thought I’d touched someone’s feet, but it felt more like a hand…I hurried back to my peaceful oasis.
At the end of the session while we were sitting up a lady from behind tapped me on the shoulder, “I hope I didn’t give you a scare.” she said.
I half turned around and said “No, I just thought I’d disturbed you.”
“Not at all. I’ve done these sessions many times. I think we both needed to touch someone, to connect with someone , in that moment.”
I nodded slowly, but that was not what I’d been thinking at all. She was looking earnestly at me, waiting for an answer. “Thank you.” was all I could think of to say, which was seemingly what she had wanted to hear, as she started to make moves on a hug, so I involuntarily stuck out my hand to give her an awkward ‘High Five ‘ instead, and then quickly introduced her to Robyn and Elliott, who were staring at me wondering if this was another life long friend that I’d randomly bumped into. I got up quickly as the touchy lady was telling Robyn about ‘our connection’. We made our way over to Shauna who was now besieged by well wishers. We all gave her a hug and said it had been fantastic. Fifty other people , including Touchy Feely, were queuing up behind us to do the same, so we left her to it.
We went for a wander, had a beer, and then went looking for Adrian and his wife Clare at Jinx Lennon. He was there with his brother Donal and his wife, who hated Jinx Lennon and told us and everyone around us loudly and repeatedly after we’d been introduced. After we’d all had a chat, Adrian and I spent the next hour listening to Jinx, drinking pints of Moretti and catching up.
It was heavenly.
And then it was over.
They were heading to see Sophie Ellis -Bextor and we were heading to New Dad. I imagine we are destined to slip in and out of each others timelines again, and in a sadly brilliant way, it will be something to cherish and hope for.
New Dad were great.
Villagers were fantastic. We’d for gotten how many of their songs we knew, and having intended just popping in for a bit and heading off, we stayed for the whole set. We then headed to see Faithless, just in time to catch Insomnia and, my favourite ‘God is a DJ’. Epic !
Elliott headed off to meet Teresa, and Robyn and I wandered slowly back towards Survivor where we got some beers, and a seat, chatted, and tried not to listen to a tribute band absolutely murder Talking Heads classic album ‘Stop Making Sense’. Elliott and Teresa caught up with us, the band finished, we got more beers and had a bit of chat.
I was tired and wanted to head back and lie down, but said that they could go on somewhere, but they said that they were tired too, so we all headed back.
We went to bed and then…Transmission started on one side of us, and Terminus started on the other. These were two giant rave tents, who were playing similar music, but ever so slightly , and very annoyingly out of sync with each other. Most annoyingly of all , Transmission, the closest one to us, was playing until 4.00am. I stared at the ceiling for hours, watching Stacy wobble on her web in time to the bass beat.
Saturday was a great day.
We had a lie in of sorts, a leisurely brunch, another game of Uno, which I won . On our way to see Blindboy we stopped at the Salty Dog stage to see a new band, Shark School, from Galway. One of the great things about Electric Picnic is catching a band that you hadn’t heard of, or planned to watch, but which makes a huge impression. Shark School were one of those.
Blindboy had Garron ‘Follow me I’m delicious’ on as his guest and we spent an hour sitting on the grass laughing at their good natured and quick witted bonhomie. Robyn then marched us to the furthest point in the whole site from our camper to see Teddy Swims..to discover that we were a day early. We then hoofed it back to Brutopolis to see a play ‘Peace Bread & Land’ where our new friend Hannah was playing music. We had to leave early to catch Kneecap’s performance, and so missed the finale where the Tzar stripped naked , covered in baby oil, jumped into a paddling pool filled with sequins, and then danced provocatively on stage.
We saw Kneecap. The crowd went wild. We were the crowd. It was easy to get lost in the moment, but I did feel some discomfort and started to question when the music of protest possibly strays into hate of the other side. But that was for another day. Kasabian were great craic. Robyn and Elliott had even greater craic watching me video songs and then realise that I hadn’t switched from camera to video. They played their song ‘Fire’ for over 10 minutes, and it was still too short.
We then went to see The Waterboys, in a packed tent where the whole crowd belted out all of the classics. Robyn and I got to witness a , possibly, unique occasion…Elliott sang along to ‘The Whole Of The Moon’. We hugged him at the end.
We then went back to Brutopolis where we were issued with passports and ration cards by Una. Robyn and Elliott then spent an hour looking for hidden turnips in order to get their ration card stamped. I sat down and watched a mesmirising performance by Fun Protestants, an electro/techno combo who sang about Red Hands, Dr.Martens, and Kinky Traybake sales. The crowd loved them.
We headed back to the camper because we were tired, and decided to have one for the road, and a quick game of Uno , chatting about our highlights of the day. We laughed a lot …and went to bed at 3. We even fell asleep to two giant rave tents, who were playing similar music, but ever so slightly , and very annoyingly out of sync with each other. Stacey was curled up in her web.
Sunday was a slower day.
We got up late and meandered to the main stage to see The Stranglers play a magnificent set of classics while we sat in the sun. We wandered through the arts trail in the woods, ending up at a ‘Celine Dion vs. Bonnie Tyler Sing Off’ at the survivor stage which was mobbed by a crowd of 2,000 people roaring out ‘It’s all coming back to me…’.
We finally saw Teddy Swims, who had a fine set of lungs on him before we went to the artist that we’d been waiting the whole festival to see, CMAT.
For a lady with only two albums so far she played a greatest hits show. She did it with great style. Robyn and I , and 10,000 others roared a long to every single song, including a special cover of ‘Wuthering Heights’. Her appearance on this stage clearly meant a lot to her, and she received love and affection from the crowd. It was actually quite an emotional occasion. She is a wonderful and powerful performer. The hour flew. We were emotional wrecks at the end. Happy emotional wrecks.
We headed back to the safety of the woods after that, leaving the rest of the festival to enjoy Kylie.
We drifted through the mayhem of Brutopolis towards the refuge of the camper and played our final game of Uno and drank the last of our cans.
And that was our Electric Picnic adventure.
It was full of firsts.
Robyn and I wore the same band tees each day, Thursday was Radiohead, Friday was Buccees, Saturday was The Smile, and Sunday was Taylor Swift.
We witnessed Elliott sing in public.
I won an Uno championship.
We did a breathwork class together.
I met my first breathwork stalker.
The three of us sat in a field on a Sunday afternoon drinking Moretti…. No, I tell a lie, I’m quite sure we’ve done that before.
Robyn and Elliott chaperoned me throughout the weekend. Robyn has a series of videos which I pray she never shows anyone of me seemingly wandering off, distracted by a new noise, seemingly oblivious to their presence.
There were some great moments.
It was a pleasure to witness Benny’s dystopian dream of Brutopolis State come to life, and attract a large crowd of wonderful weirdos. Their whole area was a performance in itself and I felt pride in my friend.
We were also immensely proud of Shauna and her magical ability to lead you to another place, in the midst of mayhem. Glorious mayhem, I should add.
It was also amazing to witness 75,000 people, mostly younger than me…OK, mostly a LOT younger than me…OK, OK mostly generations younger than me…but all getting on. We didn’t see any trouble, and never had a sense of any. Every single person we met was polite, generous, and just out for a good time.
Unknown lasts ?
Well you just never know , do you ?
Will The Stranglers play together again, and if they do, will we get to see them ? Will Shark School make it, or will college, life, God knows, get in their way ? Was that their peak ? Will Elliott ever sing in public again ? Will Robyn and I be there to witness it ? Will I catch up with Adrian again over a beer before we have to go to another funeral ? Will Una be allowed back in Brutopolis after being caught exchanging ration cards for favours ? Will you ever get 4 straight days of sunshine at another festival ? Will I win again at Uno ?
You don’t know.
You can’t.
So don’t wait.
Go now.
Do stupid things.
Do great things.
Meet that friend.
I had a great few days.
I got to spend them with Robyn and Elliott.
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This was CMAT’s opener at EP, ‘California‘….we were putty in her hands after that.
