Watching the world through a screen

My first festival of 2014 gave me a good opportunity to ease myself in to a summer of raving in the sunshine. A non-camping festival, We Are FSTVL gave a perfect chance to have a couple of days in the sun (and a bit of rain) dancing with good friends to amazing music. While I was there I was lucky enough to see the likes of Annie Mac, Knife Party and Fatboy Slim giving massive sets on the main stages. It was incredible to finally see three of the top acts I have been dying to see live on a main stage in just one festival and with a huge line-up We Are FSTVL was a surprisingly intimate affair. Despite this, I noticed a continuing theme across the stages and tents, which made me slightly sad. Forget those who are hepped up on pills and the rest, forget those who are too drunk to stand up, forget those who decide to light up flares in the middle of a crowd. At least these guys are living in the moment and are really making the most of the experience. These ones aren’t the ones who bother me.

The ones who really upset me are the ones who are living it through a screen. I might be overreacting slightly, but it actually really offends me to see a crowd full of people who are watching a once-in-a-lifetime set as a DJ they have been wanting to see all their lives closes the main stage, but that they would prefer to watch it through their camera lens. After seeing Fatboy Slim play XOYO in London on the opening night of his Eat Sleep Rave Repeat tour, my mind was blown. I had never expected I would actually get a chance to see him live in my lifetime, let alone playing brand new material. But from then on, the dream grew and I was just desperate to see his set transform from the basement of a tiny, dark club to the main stage at a festival and how lucky I was to find he would be headlining the first festival of my summer! I, and all my friends, were beyond excited to see him play live and we made sure we got up on one of the platforms facing the main stage nice and early so we could get a good spot for Annie Mac as well. We had a perfect view of the whole crowd, the main stage and the sky above it which was filled with fireworks, flames and confetti throughout.So imagine my dismay at seeing the people around us pulling out their camera phones and holding them up for the entire set. Not just up on the platform, but even down in the crowd, there was a sea of phones raised to the sky. What is the point? Can anyone tell me? In the days of Woodstock and early Glasto – when some would argue festivals were at their finest – no-one had camera phones or insisted on Instagramming every moment. Instead they lived every second, they dances to the music, felt it in their bones and spent the time meeting people, making friends and singing along. THIS is what festivals are all about. I know the convenience of camera phones means people want to capture every moment, and I have no problem with that as I too love to take photos of my friends smiling and happy, to keep those memories for long after the hangover had faded.

My problem is that people are choosing to do this rather than live the festival and the music. They would rather watch the whole explosive and incredible set through the phone screen and be sure that it is perfectly framed and looks like you are having an amazing time rather than actually experiencing it themselves. These are the people who don’t end up dancing at the festival, the ones who arrive home looking as perfect as when they set out and care more about the way the festival looks than feels. To me, the most important thing has always been they way I felt in that moment. When you see an incredible headliner take over the main stage after waiting months to see them live, when the stage explodes with confetti and flames, when you are singing along so hard you lose your voice, when you’re dancing so hard you nearly knock out the person next to you, and when you and a complete stranger throw your arms round each other and bellow out the words because you’re both just so excited. THAT is what festivals are about, losing yourself in the moment. They are about getting home and trying to tell people about it, but knowing that words just cannot do that moment justice. That no matter how you try to describe it, that those who weren’t there just won’t understand.My concern is that our technology is so convenient that so many are missing out on this experience. They don’t know the beauty of having a single picture that transports you back to that moment and how you felt, rather than an hour-long video of the set with terrible sound and a jiggly camera focus. Who really wants to sit there watching it back later on? Do you really think your friends will be jealous when they see you spent that hours-long set videoing it rather than enjoying it? I certainly wouldn’t be jealous of that, I would just consider it a wasted ticket. I have lots more festivals in the pipeline for this summer and I just hope I will be seeing a lot less of this and a lot more people living in the moment. Ironically, one of my favourite festivals from last summer was BoomTown fair which was all about the experience and I barely have any pictures from it because I was so caught up in the moment and thoroughly enjoyed myself. (See my preview for BoomTown here.)

What kind of festival-goer are you – guilty of living behind a lens or totally in the moment and forgetting you have a camera?

The songs that will make my summer soundtrack

After last year’s incredible summer, I plan on hitting up a heck of a lot of festivals this year with good friends, a crate of warm cider and a muddy tent in tow. What more could a girl want over those summer months? With the first festival of the season taking place over this weekend – my birthday weekend – I’m so excited to get properly in the summer mood and get dancing. But what is it I’ll be dancing to this summer? Well, here are my top summery songs of the moment – these are the ones that have me dancing along in my car and singing along to with the radio.

Forest Fires by Fred V and Grafix is just one of those chilled out songs that instantly puts a smile on my face. It makes me think of summer drives with a car-full of friends and the sun beaming down on us, lots of cocktails and laughs. It’s a perfect summer warm-up song and I just know I’m going to be hearing it a lot this summer.

Another huge tune that I absolutely love has got to be Mr Probz – Waves which is my ultimate driving song of the moment. This song is the perfect length for my drive to work and when the sun is shining in the mornings, it is perfet for de-stressing me and chilling me out before the chaos starts.

Any song with a hefty dose of saxophone is always going to make me happy and Faul & Wad Ad vs. Pnau do exactly that with Changes. Although released a little while ago now, I’m still not bored of this and I can’t imagine it going away. This is the sort of song that is used as the soundtrack to festival videos and that’s why I love it. Hippie Sabotage – Stay High  is another of those really chilled out songs that I just love. It reminds me of being at BoomTown Fair last summer sunbathing and hanging out at the Shisha Tent with the boys or dancing in the woods.

Duke Dumont – I Got You is such a happy sound, the steel drums just scream summer and it just makes me want to dance around at a festival and pull silly faces in photos with my girls. When you listen to the lyrics, it is such a cute song and I love what it is about.

Again, like Duke Dumont, Sigma – Nobody To Love also puts a huge smile on my face and I love that everyone always sings along. It’s such a fun song and no-one can resist a teensy bit of Kanye thrown into the mix. If you haven’t heard this song, I’ll be shocked because it is everywhere at the moment.

What would summer be without Paolo Nutini to light up my life with his latest album? Pretty dark I’ll tell you. I love his soulful sound and it’s perfect for lazy summer days in the park. I would absolutely love to see him live at a festival but sadly he won’t be performing at any I go to this summer.

Let it be known that I heart Bastille. Last summer, I saw them perform their whole album in the gorgeous sunshine at Secret Garden Party and it was one of my favourite festival moments of the summer. They were amazing live and it cemented my love of them entirely. A year on and their album is still one of my automatic go-to playlists and I still know all the words.

What’s your summer anthem of the moment? Leave me recommendations below and I’ll add them to my playlist!

 

Aspiring to finish the festival bucket list

When doing some festival research the other week, I came across this article by Pulse Radio listing the 20 Must Do Festivals Before You Die – I’ll be honest, my heart skipped a beat when reading about some of these! As a complete and utter festival loon, I can’t resist the opportunity to lose myself in the music, excitement and craziness that comes with these huge events. You wouldn’t believe that I would be the sort of girl to sleep in a field for a week, use portaloos and camp with boys if you had met me three years ago. Heck, I didn’t even think I had it in me! But a reunion with some of my university friends saw me frolicking in the fields and dancing away with my warm cider – loving life! Read here about how that first festival actually changed my life.

Just a couple of years on, I am editor of a festival news website – This Festival Feeling and in two summers I have been to eight different festivals – one of them in Croatia – and have seen all manner of weirdness. Safe to say, I love festivals whether they are big, small, posh, grubby, hippy, packed with dance music or theatre and talks – I’ll take them all! So this list is very exciting – I have not actually done a single festival on this list yet – I am hoping and praying there might be a chance to get Glastonbury tickets through my work – but there is no guarantee. I had dreamed of getting tickets to Tomorrowland and EXIT Festival for this summer, but sadly I think life will get in the way and it will be a choice between saving my pennies for travelling or raving it up in Europe.

I would absolutely love to make my way around all of these incredible and unique events in my lifetime, but there are a couple that really stand out as musts. The Snowbombing line-up always looks amazing and I really would love the idea of combining a festival with a chance to learn to ski or snowboard – plus it would be a very different experience to rave on the slopes instead of in dusty fields or deep in the woods. Electric Daisy Carnival  has all the dance music greats which suits me fine, and if that wasn’t enough, it’s in Vegas too!!

Burning Man is one that I just have to do – it looks like such a life-changing experience and full of all the weirdness and everything that I love about festivals. Plus it will take me deep into the Nevada desert – perfect excuse for an American road-trip! And one that I had never heard of before, but would love to check out, is Kazantip, in the Ukraine. It sounds like a heck of an endurance test to rave and party for two weeks straight, but I think I’d be up for the challenge – I’d certainly give it a go.

It must be such an amazing thing, to create a festival, and something I dream of doing, or being involved in. I would simply love the opportunity to work with the teams that create such incredible events – it wouldn’t really be work when it is something I love so much. Last summer, I managed to get round to five different festivals ranging from posh midsummer balls, to theatrical madness and those that were all about the music. This summer, I am hoping to do as many as possible, even attempting to beat last year’s total but on limited funds – this will be interesting!

Which festival is your must-do before you die, and why?

The time I fell in love with festivals

Michelle, Stav, me, Katie and Serena

There’s always one moment that sparks a passion, whether it is the moment you first hear a favourite band, the moment you realise the career you want, that first moment you lock eyes with the one you love – for me, it was at The Parklife Weekender that I realised I was a true festival girl.

It sounds trivial and more of a hobby, but realising how much I love the atmosphere of music festivals, the people there and the sheer escapism of it all that has really changed my life over the last two years. I went to the festival in 2012 with my university housemates – it was our reunion and had been months since we last saw each other. It was tricky to organise meet-ups b=with us all scattered across the country, but when someone suggested we do a festival we all jumped at the chance!

Serena and I

Parklife was a great choice, not only did it take us all to a city that some of us had never been to, but it was a non-camping festival to ease us all in. We rented a gorgeous luxury apartment in the city centre and all piled in buzzing with excitement after a long drive from all directions. We arrived in Manchester in the pouring rain and were pretty worried about the festival site and how muddy it would be the next day – but we needn’t have worried, excellent drainage meant that despite a full 24 hours of hard rain, it was actually pretty dry! We had glorious sunshine for the rest of the weekend and loved every second of wandering across the festival fields, exploring the tents and generally having an amazing time.

Two years on, I can’t even remember which acts we saw except from some of the highlights – Dizzee Rascal’s set was incredible and I remember dancing on a wheelie bin with two of my friends until it collapsed. Labrinth was also amazing and perfect for watching in the sunshine. We also spent hours in one tent watching Jaguar Skills, Chase and Status, Zane Lowe and a bunch of other DJs. The rest is a blur of warm cider, smelly portaloos and meeting randoms – but I know one thing, and that was that I had a bloody good weekend with my girls.

Glade Festival

Pete, Banks and me

Parklife was my first ever festival and it helped me to realise that I am not as much of a girlie girl as I had previously thought, so much so that I went to my second festival – Glade Festival – a week later and raved all weekend. This was also incredible. I was loving my time at the festivals so much that my boyfriend suggested I get in contact with a festival news website and see if they were looking for reviewers or writers – I did and was taken straight on as a staff writer for This Festival Feeling. They gave me the opportunity to review the brand new Zoo Project Festival in Kent and I jumped at the chance, despite this being the first camping festival. My boyfriend and I went along with two friends and met some others there for this zoo-themed festival that was taking place at an actual zoo!

Sarah, me, Mark and Piers

We had a perfect weekend of camping, drinking, raving, exploring the zoo, laughing at the gorillas, meeting the meerkats and making all kinds of friends. It was truly epic and we all had such an amazing time. It really cemented for me what festivals are all about – good friends, good memories and pure escapism. It was awful coming home and back to reality after such a good weekend, but it really brought the four of us closer together.

Sarah and me meet the locals

That summer changed my life. It sounds silly, but that first festival really has turned me into a different person, has opened me up to meeting so many new people and to new experiences and has given me so many amazing memories. As a result, I have become the editor of This Festival Feeling, which last year gave me the opportunity to review Croatia’s Hideout Festival. I have become the type of girl who camps with no worries, isn’t bothered about not washing her hair for a week, can cope with portaloos, camping with boys only, can rave all night and cope with no sleep in four days, can walk all day every day and much more. And I absolutely love it. Bring on the next festival season and all the adventures ahead.

Piers and Mark making friends

Is there a moment that has changed your life? Something that seems small at the time but has made a big difference?

Some of my favourite pictures of 2013

These first few days of the new year have been spent thinking back over the past 12 months, over the amazing memories, over the mistakes that have been made by both myself and others, and of course, the hopes and dreams I had and achieved, or didn’t. Here are some of my favourite memories of 2013, captured, by myself, in a series of photographs:

House of Boobs visit King’s Lynn

Still not entirely sure what the heck what was going on in this picture but we were all a bit tipsy and had been playing lots of games including a hula-hoop competition that my team won! The university girls all came to visit, and although they are not all in this picture, this one best sums up the chaos and fun of that weekend.

Me and the boys go to Jaguar Skills

An epic, and very messy night, I still don’t remember much of what happened, but I know that I was with my boys and having an awesome time at Jaguar Skills and Matrix & Futurebound earlier in the year at the Waterfront in Norwich.

Glamping at Sedgeford

This picture might not have any faces in it, but it perfectly expresses what my weekend Glamping with the girls was all about – a freebie treat for my best friend’s birthday – it was a great blag and a fantastic weekend filled with barbecues, gossiping, wine and good fun. We drove all over eating ice creams, chilling in gorgeous coastal pubs, and fed the goats on site – it was so much fun and some well-deserved time with amazing friends.

Mr T – loving the sunshine

My gorgeous little tortoise, Mr T, was loving the sunshine this summer and spent hours exploring our garden, testing the boundaries and generally making me laugh by pushing things over. We built him his own enclosure, which he loved, and he spent so much time out there, we even lost him in a few times when he wanted to sleep outside!

At Wyndstock in the summer with the boyfriend

One of the best festivals/events I have ever been to – loved playing lawn games and croquet in the sunshine, eating cream teas at the fete, swing dancing and going to literary talks before watching fencing matches – such a variety and we all ended up dancing with our dirty bass faces in the woods until dawn – Amazing.

Hideout Festival

Partying from dawn until dusk with the ‘we stay out all night’ crew, meeting up with more amazing friends out there in Croatia and making lots of new party pals was an amazing experience that I will never forget. It was also the deal-breaker for certain other friends and I’m glad that it happened, although it may have broken a friendship up, it also forged many others that were far more worthy than this one. Not even half the people who should be are in this pictre, but this sums up the holiday – dancing to Vogue as the sun rose over Zcre Beach.

London Hen Do

Definitely not the most attractive photo of the three of us, but we’re besties to the end and this was an amazing night celebrating my best friend, Rachel Auker’s engagement before her wedding a few weeks later. We headed to London to a posh hotel for cocktail making, a nice meal, spa session, night out and lots of fun. It was a fab trip and a great hen do – the perfect send off for my friend before her wedding! Especially when we ended up racing through Piccadilly Circus at 4am on a rickshaw!

Pig racing – just one of the many crazy moments at Secret Garden Party

Secret Garden Party was an incredible festival and an amazing weekend of fun and madness with the boyfriend – it was like Disneyland for adults and I loved it. Watching Bastille play in the sunshine was one of my favourite moments, and the fireworks after Faithless will always stay in my memory. So much happened at this festival, and so many amazing pictures were taken, but I just felt that this best expressed the randomness of the event. Can’t wait for next year!

Three best friends at the Wedding

Here I am with my beautiful best friends at Rach’s wedding, which was the most beautiful wedding ever, Leanne and I are bridesmaids. It really was the most perfect day for Rach & Vito, they really deserved it after waiting so long just to be together, and we all had so much fun. Such a wonderful day and it really was amazing to watch two people who mean so much to me tie the knot.

Boomtown Fair

The most insane place I have ever been and with a great bunch of people – it was a crazy weekend and one I will never forget. I love this picture, it looks like a vintage photograph of a festival and this was one of my happiest days of the year so I am glad someone captured the moment. I will always remember this day and how amazing it was – the things I saw and did. So much fun and I can’t wait to go back this year.

Sister sister time at V Festival

My birthday present was tickets for me and my sister to go see Beyonce perform at V Festival – such a good present! We had a great day out at the festival and we managed to see loads of amazing acts including a special secret performance by Wretch 32!

Ireland for the Wedding

An amazing long weekend away with the boyfriend and his family for a beautiful wedding with lots of delicious food, Irish music and plenty of booze. It was such a beautiful place and I was so glad we could get away just the two of us after being with so many others all summer at the festivals – some much needed couple time.

House of Boobs reunion

Me and my beautiful ex-housemates were reunited for another weekend of sleepovers, snuggles, food, Disney movies, drinking and dancing – it was a perfect weekend with my girls and gave me the fix I needed to make it through to the next reunion. Still miss my girlies so much though!

Zombies & Sub Focus

A bunch of us went on a Zombie fun run before heading to a Sub Focus gig in Norwich one weekend – it was brilliant! Stupid fun running around in the woods pretending to be zombies before heading to the union to dance the night away to Sub Focu (one of my fave DJs) and get smashed. Such a good night and a great chance for me to make up friends with a girl who I had earlier fallen out with.

Natural History Museum

Me and the boyfriend went on a little trip to London to the Natural History Museum and it was one of the best days out ever! We saw all kinds of animals, learnt loads of facts and just had so much fun walking around getting excited about everything like little kids.

Fatboy Slim

Major Lazer

Basement Jaxx

My three best gigs of the year have to put altogether, both Major Lazer and Basement Jaxx were with the boyfriend and Basement Jaxx was my absolute best of the year – also my birthday present! Fatboy Slim was incredible and all the boys came along – such an epic night!!

Christmas with the family

The year was finished off with the perfect family Christmas – what more could a girl ask for?!