mkjones

For me, the 2007 festival season is over. Glastonbury and V is enough for an ageing relic like me.

This year was my 10th year as a festival goer and my 16th festival, others include:

• v97
• Glastonbury 98
• Reading 98
• Reading 99
• Reading 2000
• Reading 2002
• v2003
• Glastonbury 2004
• v2004
• Glastonbury 2005
• v2005
• Leeds 2005
• Glastonbury 2006
• v2006
• Glastonbury 2007

Wowzers! Only when I list them all I realise just how many hours I have spent in a strange field surrounded by tents and burger vans over the past decade.

This year has been hailed as the best V festival ever, high praise indeed. I am as yet unsure if it will sustain this accolade once the memories of previous years re-surface but it has defiantly sustain the moniker of the wettest V ever.

Rain Pains..

The rain has changed the festival dynamic like nothing else. Over the years I have expected it to rain at Glastonbury and then bask in sunshine at Reading, V or Leeds as they are always deeper into the British summer calender.

However, not since v2005 have I felt the sun on my face while a small vile of room deodorizer is slipped under my nose during the mid-afternoon lull while a not-quite-good-enough-for-the-top-20 band plays their singular hit. Ahh, happy days.

Alas however, climate change cannot effect the enjoyment factor of a festival. Over the years my friends and I have grown used to not having fully functional toilet facilities or even running water, we can surely embrace the rain in the same way.

10yrs of Photos

To celebrate my 10th year I will attempt to publish ALL of my previously unseen festival photos to the web. Most of them are pre-digital-camera and so will require the arduous task of individual scanning, a task I already see me putting off for a while.

For now I will dig up some from more recent years, with comments:

v2005: This is Ramone, my and Tony looking weary after a long day in the sunshine.

Glastonbury 2005: The rain. These are my girlfriends fashionable wellington’s which I got her as a joke for Christmas, they turned out quite handy in the end.

v2006: The ‘Festival Jumper’ makes an appearance.

Leeds 2005: Tony and Ramone get rather inebriated early in the day. I think we went to bed soon after this as we only had a 2 day break between festivals that year.

v2006: A random moment.

Glastonbury 2005: Festival rain has never been as bad as it was in 2005. This bar was swinging the night before I took this photo.

v2006: Festival group photos are few and far between for some reason. This is a great one showing the rain.

Leeds 2005: Nice coat.

v2006: Yes, we did get naked to the Beautiful South. The reason I love this photo is because the ‘Lifeguard’ guy in the background makes it look like we could quite easily be midnight swimming.

v2005: Ever since 2002 I have been able to get VIP Press tickets for the V Festival because of the music webiste I run. This is me and Tony 1/2 asleep mid-afternoon backstage trying to muster the strength to move into the blistering sunshine and catch the end of KT Tunstall.

Leeds 2005: Putting away our huge 9 man (which 3 people generally share) tent. It almost didn’t make it back this year.

Glastonbury 2007: Rain and Cider.

Glastonbury 2007: Me and my soon-to-be wife before the rain kicked in. Glastonbury has always been a ‘couples’ festival due to the sheer difficulty of getting more than 2 tickets.

v2006: Another decent group shot. If you are ever at a festival, buy one of these green army shirts, they are a bargain at £3.

Glastonbury 2007: Bails of hay soak up some of the mud.

v2005: Peter Kay! How lovely to see the over-sized comedian backstage.

So… That’s about it… More can be seen at my photo site..