Top 10 Festival How-To Guide

8th Jun 2011

With such beautiful weather in Skibbereen at the weekend for Cork xSouthwest and the Indiependence festival in Mitchelstown kicking off next month Corkonians are realising that they no longer have to travel to other counties for a proper music festival.

And as a bonus you get treated like a real human being and not an animal with a wallet.
 

Here’s some of the basics that make festivals in Cork so much better….

1. Dry tents

Not waking up at 6am to find Decco from Ballymun dispending a body fluid on your tent is always a bonus. Is there anything as enraging and against the mood and morals of what a festival is supposed to be? It won’t happen in Cork.

Headline act: Muddy Waters

2. No queues for toilets. Ever.

Is there anything worse at a festival than arriving at the toilet bay to see an enormous queue that makes you actually consider, however briefly, the option of voluntarily wetting yourself for the first time since your “burst capri-sun” incident in junior infants?

I suppose I do have an empty bottle...

3. Bogs that have been cleaned out and emptied at least once since 2003.

The tried and tested technique of taking a huge deep breath before entering a festering festival jacks is the only way to prevent yourself retching from the inevitable ‘festival-stink’ but if you’re boozing all day this can be both difficult and dangerous. The only upside of smelly toilets is that nobody, including all females, will spend any longer in the cubicle than they have to thus speeding up the queue.

4. The queues for booze are less than forty foot deep.

When drink companies sponsor festivals the least you’d think they’d do is make sure their product is easily accessible and that ordering a gat doesn’t mean you miss an entire act. Although a fiver is a handy round sum for bar tenders the plastic glass of booze never feels like a proper pint and you need to be prepared to lose ten to twenty percent of the contents traipsing back to your friends with spillage. Thumbs up to Cork xSouthwest last weekend for quality cold pints of Cork stout that were less than a fiver.

Just don't trip after all that.

5. Employing stewards who don’t sound like Alex Ferguson.

Now don’t get us wrong. The Scots are great: a good sporting country with a sense of independence about them. But trying to communicate with the many Scottish stewards that seem to be employed at most big Irish festivals requires an interpreter or subtitles especially if you’ve had ‘a few’ and the auld aural-skills are slightly diminished.

‘Excuse me, is the water from the tap in the toilet bay safe to drink?’

‘Ach, ahe haff a wicki nae as more ah said wen yeh do aye hey hey’

The bhoys discuss a security issue

6. Stewards with good memory capacity who, having just checked your bag, don’t want to check it all again ninety seconds later as if they’ve never seen you before.

Yeah, yeah, they have a job to do. It’s not easy. And every festival has its fair share of drunken langers who want to smuggle all manner of illegality inside but the amount of wristband checks and frisking at some festivals would make boarding a plane at JFK look like a queue for the noddie cars in Perks. Chill out bubbilas!

7.  The absence of intense side wards rain that requires industrial goggles to just look up at the stage.

Outdoor stages in Ireland are high risk. If it’s sunny then everyone thinks the decision was amazing but once the sun goes down everyone is happy to be in a tent. If the weather’s a dose and the main stage is unsheltered then peering through a tiny slit in a hood while clutching a tiny cup of luke warm tea that cost €3.50 at the main stage isn’t fun no matter how you gloss it up.

Fukushima-chic: Bad weather festivals can be fun but only if you're properly kitted out.

8. No Nordies that insist on asking everyone for ‘spare pills’

You’d never be totally certain whether Nordies are genuinely looking for drugs or whether they’re just deliberately trying to make you all self-conscious because you now think you look like somebody who has narcotics flowing through your veins even though you’ve just arrived and still have your car keys in your hand.

Watch them though because they always forget that not all Gardaí wear uniforms and the law of averages means they’ll be exiting the festival sooner and far quicker than they expected!

9. Tickets that cost less than €100

Why travel outside the county when you’ve got Indiependence at Mitchelstown and Cork xSouthwest in Skibbereen coming in at €99 and €85 respectively for three-day festival ticket including camping. Plus instead of being hammered for over €250 to share a bleak and barren field with people from inferior counties you get to balm out in stunning locations.  

The sceeeeeene in Skibbreeeeeeeen.

10. Festivals that are in Cork

Part of the festival experience is hanging out with people you know so by staying in Cork your Corkonian friends who are suspicious of other counties are far more likely to go along. This also means there’ll be way less Kerry and Kilkenny jerseys wrecking the beautiful surroundings.
 

Read others and give your opinion:

Indiependence Festival (Mitchelstown) discussion thread: click here.
Cork xSouthwest (Skibb) discussion thread: click here