By DJ Paulette
I love a good festival. I’ve been to a fair few and can remember Glastonbury (on and off site), V, T In The Park, Reading, Tribal / Global Gathering, Womad, Worldwide, Montreux, Inox, We Love Green off the top of my head. Shame upon shame, as a Northener and a Manc, I have never been to Parklife. There I’ve said it. Paula (my twin) has never been to a festival. ever. She is a fresh-out-of-the-box festival virgin. There I’ve said that too. We haven’t been to a gig together for years but when we went clubbing at Christmas I managed to get a shot glass stuck under my tongue and she nearly got us refused entry at Viva for talking to the security with her caps lock on (if you know what I mean). By day, Paula has a responsible teaching job. I am a DJ / Writer / Presenter by day and night. We yin and yang perfectly with our similar tastes yet different lifestyles, are a good and a bad influence on each other depending on the place, day, time and tipple and we don’t agree on everything all the time.
In order to keep this as a recipe for an unforgettable weekend and not a disaster, we set some ground rules.
Rule #1 Planning is everything
It’s got nothing to do with
Vorsprung durch technique you know
(Parklife)
The build up started late on Friday night with some Whatsapp bullet points and a two hour tactics chat. Stay in the park from the beginning until the end on the first day, go later and leave early on the second. We both have a map and I have downloaded the app. We are sorted.
We also decide that it’s best to be flexible on the plan of action but decide equally who we see and when. Set times can change. Queues can be slow.
Rule #2
“Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur
of what is known as
(Parklife)
Of course the BAE squads were festival fit: they were all over that 80’s V shimmer and bronzer contouring, over-lashing and unicorn glitter, but thankfully this is Manchester and Parklife not Coachella or Burning Man. We all eventually became slaves to the relentless weather. FYI the rain had been biblical since Friday – so my advice to forget the glamour mags’ ‘festival fashion’ pages unless you were insulating your wellies with them and to wear clothes and shoes that you don’t mind getting filthy and totally fucked up in the rain and mud was unsurprisingly on fleek. Our fear of the al fresco fashion show was needless (although hats off to the poncho vendor who sold these transparent trench coats – we liked these a lot).
As for taking light layers to pile on when the temperature dropped around 7/8pm? Also spot on. If you want to have fun, lose your for sure but be sensible and wear that pac-a-mac with pride. Be there for the music first. Who cares about anyone or anything else?
Rule#3
ALL THE PEOPLE
SO MANY PEOPLE
THEY ALL GO HAND IN HAND
HAND IN HAND THROUGH THEIR PARKLIFE
We are both excited and enthusiastic and agree that whatever the festival weekend or crowd of festival goers throws at us we will keep our mood balloon-buoyant. Rain or shine, push or shove, bar / food / toilet queue or vip loos we agree to smile, laugh, spread love and stay positive because that’s always where the magic happens.
In the beginning, the walk up and view from the mildly squelchy, potter’s wheel off cuts sucked me back to the midnight festival pre-planning session. Hashtag teamtalk. Hashtag excited. Hashtag one more sleep. Hashtag we are so not festival ready. Hashtag are we weather ready? This is Manchester where no one clearly gives a shit about a bit of rain and a little water hasn’t deviated anyone from their festival Instagram / Snapchat / Twitter / Facebook / GoPro addiction. This is Parklife Festival 2016.
Tiptoe-ing past touts buying and selling tickets, we saw the makeshift stalls selling bottled water and showerproof ponchos were already doing a roaring trade under the light drizzle. Fully made up glitter babies in daisy dukes and hunters mingled with ‘roid injected metrosexuals whose limited edition trainers were slowly disappearing into the substrata. All were body-swerving the rave kids standing by the dustbins who were drinking as much as they could stand before entry. Being carried out by midday is not cool – although some were. We could see why they didn’t get the three day extension as there were people peeing in the bushes in front of some of the most exclusive houses this side of Manchester. Also not cool.
Getting retained by the security dog due to my twin’s Lupus medication was an unexpected bonus ball but a flash of her official medical ID card sent us smoothly on our way.
Saturday
- Walk. Don’t Run.
The anticipation. Paula was tempted to run – these were her jams! I held her back on safety grounds – no injuries before the end of the first day please!!! But I secretly loved this unbridled enthusiasm – after experiencing years of music events I realised that it’s too easy to take what’s on offer for granted. Before we’d even gone anywhere it had this 1Xtra devotee’s seal of approval. And as we entered the arena, Elf Kid breached the 1xtra tent’s sound barrier with Solo 45’s ‘Feed Em To The Lions’. It was like a clarion call and my tune of the day – since we heard it pop up later in various sets in the 1Xtra arena, MTA to the VIP and even the Nando’s stage.
Pour an uncapped bottle of cheap but drinkable rose down your neck for an hour and watch what happens. Soul II Soul was our festival ‘love in’ moment.
Even in the pouring rain Caron Wheeler, Jazzie B and band kept us singing along, encouraging others to keep their spirits high and kept the crowd entertained, smiling and jumping. Even if I’d have preferred to hear ‘Living In the Light’, Caron’s ‘I Adore You’ was a welcomed addition to their set.
and our walk off to ‘Jazzie’s Groove’ looked meticulously choreographed #shitthattwinsdo
It was time to take a break and do a little exploring. We hadn’t walked far before bumping into my nephew Ciaran and his girlfriend and arranged to meet at the main stage for Gorgon City. Hmmm … That reduces our discovery time…still I’m pretty sure that the perimeter of Parklife is smaller than Glastonbury in square metrage so we both found it fairly easy (even with the increasing mud drag and shoe slippage) to orientate ourselves and adequate signage meant myopia wasn’t a problem by day. You can never have too many signs though especially as the day and alcohol consumption progressed. Night visible signs weren’t that evident but the tents were at least colour coded.
In explorer mode, we found that Parklife is super well stocked for food and bars. £20 for a bottle of wine was the most economic choice.
During your daily shopping trips, £7 for a medium portion of chilli and chips with a light cheese dandruff and a begrudged wooden fork is a bit on the pricey side. Still, when you need to recharge and refuel you can eat and drink to your heart’s content. The selection and quality here is high – didn’t see much vegan / vegetarian options on offer but big ups to Manchester’s finest ‘Hip Hop Chip Shop’ and ‘Almost Famous’ Burgers and the Jerk chicken stall just for being there. If you feel that human dignity does not have a price, then the £15 for VIPees paid for toilet / clean up / storage area might seem a reasonable investment. On the downside, once you’ve checked all this out there’s not much else to do. The merchandise stall was well stocked but the artisan stalls were admittedly a bit hit and miss. There are phone charge and water points but the internet is oversubscribed and patchy and you’re here for two days. Don’t be surprised when you get home and find those 20 tweets that you thought were amazing are still sitting in your draft folder unsent.
Not ones for whirly or whizzy or reverse-y switchback rides we avoided the ferris wheel and fairground bungee ride elements and sought a place to just hang. There was a large decked area in front of the entrance / exit that was being used as a makeshift meet point, then there was the medical tent. This is where we found the festival really lacking.
Without a VIP bracelet, there is a meeting point but no chill out area like Glastonbury’s Healing Fields or alternative entertainment option. After Rude Kid, Soul II Soul, Shy FX and two bottles of Rose, we stumbled into the Oxygen Bar to clear our heavy heads. This gets our extra curricular double thumbs up. If you are a VIP you get queue jump entry, can shelter from the rain in a welcoming bar, hog a much welcomed seat and a shared table, profit from a shorter toilet queue and cleaner toilets and enjoy some quirky-looking alien dancers as entertainment and much much more. Our advice – upgrade if you can afford.
Back to the music and it’s Garridge, trap, dubstep and grime that are running things today. The MTA Arena – (aside from being dry and warm) is a consistent crowd pleaser. Shy FX gives us shelter from the downpour and holds us fully rapt enough to want to view it through rainbow prism sunglasses. The Gorgon City main stage meet became collateral damage.
We follow Shy FX with Rude Kid (it would have been rude not to!) but by the time we get to the Main stage we’ve missed Gorgon City AND Stormzy. Whatever. Sigma are on now and they are smashing it to pieces. We stay. They slay. We snake through the colourful El Row tent where B Traits and Alan Fitzpatrick are working the crowd like puppet masters. Paula has no patience for this heavy techno sound so we make a beeline for Mistajam and Preditah at the 1xtra stage and she perks up immediately. Even though a hot tea is a great recipe for revival, by now we are feeling chewed up, spat out and mulched . It’s almost as if ‘Feed Em To the Lions’ is some sort of subliminal message that is following us around the site.
Jack Garratt is this year’s Ed Sheeran. Fact. His dynamism and energy were off the scale and he burned like a fireball through his set. We heart Jack Garratt.
We pass The Temple and catch a bit of Solomun – he is playing a Michael Jackson re-edit with a techno beat underneath it which doesn’t get Paula’s vote at all. I tell her that he is one of my favourite djs. She looks at me like I am speaking in tongues. We don’t stay. We miss the end of Craig David’s TS5 due to my wanting to hear Todd Terje. ‘this just sounds like hi nrg to me’ says Paula grumpily wrinkling her nose. I can’t really argue so we don’t stay long there either . As the night closed in, we headed back to the MTA tent catching the end of Craig David’s TS5 and watching the mad crowds roll in for Chase and Status. Suddenly the atmosphere has changed and the energy is sparking like an XXXL jump lead in an electric storm. When they take to the stage I realise that my twin has escaped from me and has morphed into a front row centre moshpit monster who likes to get proper involved. I felt like a total wuss. For the first time that day, I had less rave energy than she had. I like to weigh in myself when the music’s right but she is a whole other beast unleashed. Respect.
For the first time that day we split up. I like Chase and Status but I wanted to catch so much more – Bastille were closing the Big Top, The Chemical Brothers were closing the Main Stage and Kaytranada was closing the Now Wave tent. So – as weird as it felt, I left her to shak out alone and I wondered off into the night to catch healthy chunks of all three mobbed stages.
Rule#4
And morning soup can be avoided
If you take a route straight through what is known as
(Parklife)
Despite the security chain, black and yellow tape cordon and clean up operation we synced and linked perfectly at our MTA meet point. Crowd control was respectful, and our exit was good humoured and trouble free under cover of darkness. The walk home went a bit tits up though as we missed a turning and Paula’s Google Maps got stuck on constant refresh and recalibrate. Instead of a 30 minute walk home as the cros flies from Heaton Park we lost ourselves in deep conversation not noticing that we had missed a turning and were now facing a 90 minute round trip through Simister. By the time we got home at 2am my feet were so swollen that Paula had to pull my vacuum locked, disgusting muddy wellies off. At least I didn’t have to be cut out of them like some but it was a close call.
My advice? To comfortably get an uber / taxi / bus or metrolink from the site either leave around 7/8pm (and enjoy a jaunty daylight walk to Bowker Vale) or if you stay till the end, be prepared for no cabs from any company to be available and / or a long walk to find some kind of transport that will get you to where you need to be or to get home. Be a little bit clever. 140,000 people will simultaneously be thinking and doing the same as you. And indeed as us.
After Saturday’s mission, Sunday’s plan was a lot more laid back. We were now old hands and took our sweet time to go over there. Who wouldn’t choose a delicious home cooked Sunday roast / brunch at home over festival street food, then order a taxi instead of hoofing it for a crowded Metrolink and slowly sink a chilled mini bottle of wine in the taxi before getting in amongst it? We weren’t embarrassed to be the princesses who arrive around midday looking and smelling fresh and feeling full and happy.
Sunday plans weren’t bulletproof though. Not living in Manchester plus teaching responsibilities and Monday assemblies meant that the fun quotient had been reduced for my twin. There was no getting ridiculously lairy on cheap wine for us today. Most of the acts Paula really wanted to see – Skepta, Danny Howard, Annie Mac, Hannah Wants, Major Lazer fell dangerously outside of her ‘time to leave’ red zone. Still, festival flexibility means if official plans change or if your trip is curtailed for any reason, it pays to be just as happy with your second and third choices.
Running times were becoming slowly baggy, sagging under the rain, the steamy humidity and the artists’ late arrival times. This was fortunate when it meant catching SG Lewis’ sublime, emotive, first-out performance in the Sounds Of The Near Future tent. PMR Records’ humble yet hugely talented, homegrown rising star did them proud and gave us shivers with a sublime and emotive performance that we both thought merited a later slot and a lot more people.
Ady Suleiman and the opening of WSTRN brought the funk and tropical sunshine to the main stage. And by 2.30pm? Wasn’t it wine o’clock already?. No, sadly not. Being told ‘we’ve run out of wine on all bars even the VIP’ on Sunday morning – Day 2 of the festival – when the bars had practically just opened was a budgetary disappointment and a buzz killer par excellence. Carrying an uncovered plastic cup and an uncapped (£2) bottle of water around a muddy festival is tricky and comedy indeed. Plugging open bottles is easy – serviettes, cardboard, crisp bags and tissue work handsomely (though look a little skanky). An open cup is not that conveniently converted. Either have to take the constant ‘shots’ route to your hangover so you can have both hands free for that all essential balance when you leave or if you try to sip it beyond the bar area be ready to lose your drink at first twitch and slip in the crowd and mud (annoying, especially if you have just paid for the round). Flat soft bottles were seen dangling from the waists and belts of those who really knew. I envied these people.
We stayed in the significantly more fragrant ‘Sounds Of The Near Future’ tent expecting NAO onstage but seeing Mura Masa first. Another unannounced but happy accident due to the Parklife app not updating properly. (This not updating thing eventually got the app the ‘Thumbs down’ from both of us). We loved the classy sounds of the morning’s entertainment (I instagrammed parts of it). SG Lewis, NAO and Mura Masa were a glorious future soul introduction to the day’s proceedings.
When we headed outdoors for Ady Suleiman, Wilkinson and Katy B we got the full festival onslaught.
The mud had started to smell gross in the humidity which was unsurprising as it was surely mixed with all manner of unidentified emissions by now. Like Pigpen in Charlie Brown, we had also started to have that perma-camping odor of barely breathable fabrics, waterproofing and sweat that huddled in the aura that had settled around us and leapt out at our unsuspecting noses when we opened the zips or vents. But did we care? Did we fiddlesticks. Festival ready? You betcha we were. It didn’t stop us thoroughly enjoying Wlkinson’s drum and bass jump up: we bounced, jumped, raised our hands and sang along full voice to ‘Afterglow’
By 5.30 the mud and the on/ off rain-drizzle-downpour routine was getting a little wearing. Even though Patrick Topping brought the funk to Jamie Jones’ ‘Paradise’ and Diplo dropped ‘Someone to Lean On’ to rapturous applause we headed to the VIP for some food (Jamaican jerk chicken this time) and a civilized sit down.
Sensing that Paula has started to clock watch. I said ‘which artist would you choose to see before you leave from the artists on stage right now?’ She said – ‘I’m not bothered. You choose’. I said – ‘We have Black Coffee on the Paradise Stage or Danny Howard in the Big Top’ trying to narrow it down for the final feature flourish. She no longer wants to play feature, wants to go to the toilet anyway, has never heard of Black Coffee but loves Danny Howard (being a Blackpool discovery and all) so we agree to see a bit of both and head off the site around 6.45 to meet our lift outside at 7/7.30.
At this, the crucial moment, we got separated. Paula was wearing head to foot black, which rendered her invisible in this sea of people wearing head to foot black. I was wearing shocking pink and orange for that reason but she doesn’t see me. Her phone hasn’t picked up a signal on site in two days and is not picking up a signal now. We finally meet each other in the car and we have missed Danny Howard and Black Coffee.
Truth is, you haven’t been to a festival if you haven’t got lost or separated at least once. As long as you don’t panic and remember the meet points everything will be fine. On the double-plus side she is home in Blackpool in good time to prepare for her school week and to get a good night’s sleep. Priorities are in the right order and everything is right with the world. Our Sunday night / Monday morning is spent exchanging pictures and soundfiles and status updates in the comfort of our own beds and hi-speed wifi.
She gifts me Solo45’s ‘Feed Em To The Lions’ on i-Tunes with a thank you note and posts ‘Parklife blues’ as her status update. It makes me super happy that she is post-festival sad and that her festival christening has been a happy one. She has had a great time.
As I am writing this, It is Thursday and I am nursing a case of bursitis and tendonitis in my right thigh and hip that is so severe that I have been x-rayed at the hospital and need to roll out of bed and into and out of chairs like a fat panda. Every movement is accompanied by a pained wince. I am broken. My Whatsapp pings – it’s my twin Paula – she writes :
‘About those early bird tickets for 2017. I’ll cry if I don’t go. ‘
I wonder if it’s too early to email my request to my editor? Of course I’d do it all again in a flash – but with better wellies and a trainer shoe change in my backpack.
And then I’m happy for the rest of the day safe in the knowledge there will always be a bit
Of my heart devoted to it
(Parklife)
