Originally published in print February 2021.

Relinquishing any shred of street cred I may have ever had, I must first confess that I am not in fact a music festival veteran, having only attended a single festival (*cough* Electric Picnic *cough*). At least I can say that I never hit up Longitude though, so that’s something. My memories from the weekend vary wildly but they all had one thing in common: my friend Julie. We went to EP together directly after spending a week holidaying up on the coast of Donegal, sharing a tiny two-man tent after sharing a room together for five days. (By the way, a two-man tent should not be called a two-man tent – those f**kers can hardly fit one medium-sized girl not to mention two of them and a big bag of cans). Anyway, Julie and I rocked up to EP with our tent and two massive bags filled with clothes that were wholly unsuitable for the Irish climate, more spirits than we could have ever drunk, and a ridiculous number of cans. 

Our first port of call was the train to Portlaoise from Donegal. We lugged our massive bags on a 20-minute walk to the station and proceeded to miss said train. Come an hour later we hop on the next one and off to Laois we go. Given our later-than-expected arrival, we didn’t manage to get as good a camping position as we hoped, and ended up in the dreaded beside-the-toilets spot. 

Never. Camp. Beside. The. Portaloos. 

Hundreds of thousands of youths putting god knows what into their bodies for days on end can’t end well for the poor toilets. Day one was relatively bearable but by the morning of day two, it was Pong Kong outside our tent. Sorry festival organisers, but I think we can all agree that we are happy to sacrifice the bloody merry-go-round for some genuinely functional toilets. I can’t believe I had to wait in line to enter those cubicles of doom. Sometimes, when one of my pals went into a cubicle and were taking a minute, I honestly had a thought that they had passed out due to toxic fume inhalation. We’re not asking for much people, just some toilets that work please, and toilet paper would be a huge plus too.

Now that we have functional toilets, let’s continue. So Julie and I have found a spot in which we think our tent will fit. We whip out the tent materials and attempt, for the first time ever, to assemble a tent. It is at this moment that we realise that we have brought with us a tent with a broken pole. Yes, my dad asked me if I made sure everything was fully functional, yes I smoothly lied to him and performed approximately zero checks on our camping materials. Julie and I were in a bit of a bother about the whole ‘not having a place to live’ situation, and we had roped our camping neighbours in to aid us in our quandary. The four of us decided that the best course of action was to duct tape the entire pole, stick it in and hope for the best (please, get your minds out of the gutter). We did exactly that and by some miracle, the tent survived the entire weekend. Julie and I realised at that moment that with duct tape, anything is possible. We spent the weekend attempting to convince anyone we came into contact with that we had discovered the answer to everything. We even fashioned, unasked, a shot glass made of duct tape for a random man in the woods to drink his poitín from. In my ideal festival, there would be a duct tape station where those poor souls who failed to bring the sticky stuff can source some to mend anything and everything.

Rewinding a bit to when we managed to convince our camping neighbours to help us solve our housing issues, I must mention that this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship that has lasted to this very day. Seeing as all our friends were working at the festival to get in for free and hence staying in a separate campsite, we were very excited about making some new friends a bit closer to home. I hate to say it but from day two onwards, the tension was rising between me and Julie. I began to despise the fact that she always walked slightly ahead of me regardless of whether she actually knew where we were going, and she started to hate that I could not for the life of me make a quick decision about anything. We needed a buffer badly, and we soon realised that our new friends were not just keeping the fury that was brewing between me and Julie under wraps, but somehow managed to make us have some good feelings towards each other as well. In my dream festival, Saorlas and Seans live beside every person to make their festival experience all that they could ever want and more.

To be honest, I wouldn’t change much else about festivals at all. The mud, the sweat, the love booming from all around, the music, the laughter and the fun, the being within two metres of people, the teens pressed up against you shifting each other, the horrendous dancers banging into you, waking up in the morning with a wicked hangover. This is the quintessential festival experience, so really all I want is for festivals to come back. I can take the noxious fumes, the broken tents, I could even put up with Julie for another weekend. We love and miss you, festivals, and we’ll be waiting for you when you return.