Blog: End Of The Road

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I'm back back back from DORSET, where I spent a delightful weekend at the End Of The Road Festival. Everyone always goes on about what a lovely festival it is, and I can reveal that the reason for this is that it IS. Very well organised, everyone's happy, a very low wanker-count, plenty to eat and drink that isn't ludicrously expensive and, vitally for me this time, quite campsites.

I say VITAL because I seem to have turned into a MASSIVE LIGHTWEIGHT who cannot stay up late anymore - I went to be at 11.30pm on the Friday, which wasn't TOO bad, but by Sunday night I was in bed by 10 o'clock! That can't be right, can it? I went with my pal Simon and his brother Nick and felt a bit GUILTY about BAILING OUT so early, but they seemed to BRAVELY struggle on without me and perhaps even have some fun, altho I'm sure this was extremely difficult without my presence. Well done team!

We saw some GRATE bands - my particular favourites were The Boy Least Likely To (who we only saw by accident as we FLED from the awful DIRGE that was The Low Anthem - there was quite a lot of SLOW POINT-FREE TWINKLY DIRGE MUSIC going on, hello The Fleet Foxes!), Bob Log III (who I've heard about for ages but never seen) and Darren Hayman (who i have LUDICROUSLY managed not to EVER see - ridiculous!). I also really liked The Brakes, Euros Childs and First Aid Kit altho this latter was slightly less AMAAAZING than I'd hoped because a) they were in the tiny, Tipi Tent - annoyingly only allowing about 100 people to actually SEE the bands playing - and b) it sounded EXACTLY like on the record. I know that's not really surprising, and it IS an excellent record, but it felt slightly underwhelming. Still lovely songs tho!

There was quite a lot of stuff I DIDN'T like - there was a LOT of finger picking and "Americana" which I fear just sounds like FOLK MUSIC to me - but I ROSE ABOVE IT and didn't WATCH that. Aha! This seems to be a plan that WORKS and leaves more time for drinking RED WINE and HOT CIDER - which i feel may be the reason behind my early nights.

I also couldn't help but notice that the BEARD and Checked Shirt COMBO seems to have become quite the "in" "thing" - either that or Dorset had been invaded by particulary sickly LUMBERJACKS. You couldn't MOVE for it - the uniformity of clothing and hairstyles made indietracks look like... er... somewhere where there was a much wider variety of "look" and, now i think about it, music.

All in all tho it was DELIGHTFUL. Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves and were relaxed, possibly due to the wide age range, with LOADS of families and people even OLDER THAN ME, so that you felt that anyone who DID get a bit lairy would be GLARED AT so sternly they would immediately have to stop. I know some people go on about this being "middle class" but personally i don't think that NOT BEING A WANKER is the exclusive preserve of the blue collared, it's just a good idea when there's lots of people in the same place.

But I have to admit my FAVOURITE BIT was perhaps just a little bourgeoise: SCRABBLE SUNDAY! We sat in a lovely field for a bit of an old sit down and were surprised to hear someone next to us explaining the rules of scrabble to her friend. "Who doesn't know the rules of Scrabble?" i thought (OK YES I KNOW, PASS THE CIABATTA JULIAN) and they noticed someone ELSE nearby playing the game... and somebody else, and soon it was like a particularly TILE HEAVY remake of THE BIRDS... until I noticed the huge sign saying SCRABBLE SUNDAY over a GAZEBO (LEAVE ME ALONE!). It was a lovely day, we were knackered, and an hour's worth of board gaming was JUST what was required.

So yes, all in all a DELIGHTFUL weekend which was a smashing way to see out the Summer. My jumper went on on Sunday afternoon which I felt like the season's end being accepted. Now for four months of sitting in pubs! HOORAH!

posted 15/9/2009 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

Think you've got that wrong way round. Doesn't 'blue collar' mean overall and 'white collar' mean shirt? I'm not making a comment on who more likely to misbehave, just pointing out I think you used 'blue collar' to describe 'middle class'. Anyway, at EOTR it sounds like they had the nicest collar of all: checked collar! :-)#
posted 18/9/2009 by Anonymous

I think you might be right - to be honest I checked online to find another synonym for middle-class (i kept saying BOURGEOISE so much i was beginning to sound like Citizen Smith) and may well have done it WRONG!
posted 18/9/2009 by MJ Hibbett

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