Reading, the festival that never was...

Reading Festival,

Cancelled

Ok calm down, not really.

I'm just not going. I just can't afford it (the woes of a student) and although it was the one I was most looking forward to, it also had a flip side of scaring me a little.

The news reports of the Sunday riots, the general crowd dynamic (wow my lecturer would be impressed with me whipping out that term) just worry me especially as I would be expected to deal with these situations and if my 2 festivals with Oxfam have taught me anything it would be this: Don't expect to learn anything until you have to deal with it.

This can be fine, you can't brief about every eventuality in a 20 minute chat before you go on shift and for Download and Glastonbury this was more often than not perfectly adequate. But I can just imagine being faced with a crowd issue, like surging, or the large amount of unsafe fires that Reading is infamous for without any backup, support or prior training other than a video of a man tackling a bucket fire with a fire extinguisher and how this is not appropriate because the force just knocks it over and only last about 2 seconds.

So yes, no Reading for me. My stint with Oxfam is done.

BUT bring on End of the Road!

Glastonbury, home to angry people.

Glastonbury Festival,

21st June ~ 28th June

I know it's a while after Glastonbury but here is the summary.

It was hot.

Very hot. Which made trying to sleep when not on shift almostimpossible, which made for a lot of grumpy workers and some very high ones.

I was working on checking the photos on tickets, the security features and taking the stubs off. I also did a very uncomfortable stint working on the outer gate making sure everyone had their passouts ready before they got to the inner gates to ease congestion. This was where I faced most of my abuse, because people were taking a bit of a run up from the car park with all their gear after taking the tent in on the first run.

Glastonbury has a weird system of wristband, ticket and passout needed to get back into the festival. I have never heard of anywhere else that has this passout system, nor had most of the people who I had to ask to see their passouts, it was either, WHATS THE POINT OF THESE BLOODY THINGS???? Which I hadn't actually been briefed to answer (note Oxfam: Maybe teach your stewards the answer to some of these questions?) and also....

'What's a passout?'

This last was the dreaded reply, because that means they are either trying to pull a fast one and have someone else's ticket and a fake wristband or a borrowed wristband or well any means of getting into the festivals without paying. Or the more likely, they stormed out of the festival because they are hot, thirsty, been sitting in traffic since 6am, missing the England match, have a few screaming kids dragging behind them or just had no idea they had to stop, and were missed by the stewards handing out the passouts and letting you know you had to keep hold of them.

Well my first one was a guy who hadn't been given one, I had no idea what to do, so as usual its a run around to find a supervisor because as the security told us on our gate they 'don't give a fuck, he ain't getting in without a passout'. At that rather damning reply, the 20-something guy in front of me looked a little close to tears for my comfort zone so yes, some speedy running to get someone who could sort it out. It actually turned out that it was easily sorted out, a little visit to the ticket office, some questioning, checking the photo matches the ID etc. and you can get in. So a little more on the job learning to add to my festival knowledge.

Back to my main job of the festival, working on the ticket checking stations, to begin with it was just that, check the photo, check the security features, rip it, tell them to keep the ticket out for the wristbanding guys.

By the second hour it was check the photo, ask them to take their sunglasses and hat off, check the security features, construct make-shift shade around the light boxes so you can actually see the security features, rip it, stuff the ends into an over full bag which keeps falling over, tell them to keep the ticket out for the wristbanders, answer questions about where there is camping space left (classic answer: I've been on shift for 4 hours, I have no idea), where do they get the programme and laminate lanyard thing from (I didn't even get one of these!) and why am I not doing their wristband.

Then we became the vehicles for important festival information (why can't this be sent out with the tickets?) such as: you must have your ticket on you at all times (met to gasps and moans) and you must have your ticket if you want to leave the site and please remember to collect a passout. This all had to be said as eager customers were heading to the wristbanding area, ignoring me and generally cursing the heat, the sun, standing up and in several cases me as well.

Glastonbury vs. Download

This really didn't end up as I thought, I actually don't know how this is possible but I enjoyed Download more, the work aspect I mean.

We had a job, we had a chat, the customers seemed happier, they joked (better jokes than I AM READY TO PASSOUT... geddit?) and seemed to be interested in our jobs rather than at Glastonbury, as we have been referred to on a popular festival forum, seen as 'jobsworths' out to ruin the fun of the masses.

Glastonbury appeared to have a lot of angry people, angry at the queues (this is compared to the 20 people I met at 8am who had been there since about 3am at Download who were actually, other than knackered, generally happy people), people were angry about the passout system, the 3 part security checks (ticket, wristband, passout) and all the other 'admin' that went on before you even set foot on Worthy Farm.

At Download, Oxfam seemed a lot more interested in if you were ok, I was left out in the heat wave of that week repeatedly promised I would rotate with the shadierpositions for about 5 hours at Glastonbury.

I put this down to the sheer numbers at Glastonbury (volunteers topped about 2,000 in the Oxfield) compared to Download (this is a guesstimate but I think around 300).

Once again I didn't want a good camera to end up broken in a field, so this little gem from my phone camera, the view over a very empty (of people, not buildings, almost everything was set up by Monday) Worthy Farm on the Monday before Glastonbury.