But there is one thing I just don't get, It's Festival Chic! How on earth can you look like you have stumbled out of a fashion mag, when on average you have only one hours sleep a night, it usually pisses down with rain, and the only mirror you have is a compact job. Your means of washing comply of babywipes and/or bucket of cold water and when you are totally bursting and hungover, the bucket ends up as your toilet too, your whole complete portable bathroom in one!
I must admit I appear to have got the whole getting dressed and application of make up in tiny confined spaces down to a fine art, but I assure you, it has taken me five years of Festi attendance to achieve this, there is a method to it, but it also, I am sure, makes me look like I have completely lost the plot, putting on my clean knickers and then jeans, sprawled out on my back wriggling like an upturned beetle because I have no room to stand.
Then there is the make up. Foundation + Concealer stick + Mascara = Festival Must Haves if you want to emerge from your tent not looking like Rob Zombies future wife! Luckily a small compact mirror is all I need in this emergency, but it is a struggle with only a tiny circle reflecting your face.
And dont get me started on the hair! Dry shampoo becomes a 'Can't live without' necessity, and for a whole weekend my straighteners get a holiday! My comb gets pulled through my messy hair (after dancing and headbanging like a lunatic) and I wear a hat almost religeously to protect my locks from rain, sunburn and/or bottles of wee being thrown through the crowds (How old are they, really?!?)
I come home so filthy, so tired, and so happy to see my little clean, quiet, warm flat that I almost do a dance of joy on the spot. I swear to myself that, yes I am too old for this kind of caper, and that I should take up more age appropriate activities in the summer months. But I know, that come the new year, when the line ups start getting announced, I start to feel that itch, I start to crave the warm beer and the live music, and that as festival season approaches, I will pull out my much abused credit card and book a ticket! So if you are at Sonisphere or Download next year (will see nearer which one I book out of the two) look out for the fully made up woman with the messy hair, but on no occasion, if you stumble across my blue flowery tent, must you enter, my upturned beetle dressing routine is not a pretty sight I'm sure!
