Summer Festival Madness 3: Mind-Blowing Party City

The final festival was always going to be the big one. Boomtown is actually closer to us than Wickham - close enough to hear from our house when the wind's in the right direction - and we'd been meaning to get to it for years. Last year, our brief visit using one day 'locals' tickets convinced us we had to go for full immersion – and it was quite a trip. As such, my account is less a blow-by-blow account of acts we saw, and more a collection of experiences and observations.

First off: this is a dance festival. It's not just the beepy electronic stuff, although every known form of that is available, because there's also folk (in various forms), lots of ska, reggae and dub, some blues, and a smattering of World tunes However if hearing a complicated rhythm does not instil any need to move with the beat, then Boomtown is not for you.

Secondly, drugs. At night I sometimes felt that D and I were the only people not off our faces. However, given the choice of being surrounded by confused but happy (sometimes VERY happy) people vs drunk (and possibly loud/belligerent/threatening) people, I'll go for the caners every time. Boomtown know people will get wrecked, and apply a 'cane responsibly' policy, with free and anonymous drug testing, useful advice ('It's a marathon not a sprint. Eat food. Drink water. Try to get some sleep. Please.') and hazard marking tape bearing the helpful slogan 'Pace Yourself'.

The festival did not start well for me, and for most of the other punters. Due to a combination of heavy rain leading to a delay in opening the gates and the strict (if largely ineffectual) drug search policy, it took hours to get onto the site. Six hours for me, the last four of which I was standing up and shuffling forward every few minutes, dragging my rucksack and other gear with it and to add insult to injury, about four and a half hours in a wasp stung me; given the press I was in, had I had any sort of reaction (aside from swearing and swatting the little sod) I'd have been in trouble. As a bonus complication Dave was arriving later, and by a different gate, so although I left home shortly after 9am, it was nearly midnight before we were met up. An inauspicious start, but not something to we let ruin the rest of the festival.

At the official opening ceremony the next day we got to see Toots and the Maytals (as missed at WOMAD), on the biggest purpose-built reggae stage in Europe, which looks like an Aztec temple. Ah yes, the scale of the thing. Boomtown is BIG – with 65K attendees and a massive site spread across two whole valleys in the South Downs National Park, it's second biggest UK festival after Glastonbury. It's a temporary, purpose-built party city made up of distinct, themed districts, many of which could have passed for Hollywood film sets (if only I could master how to post pictures to DW … if you follow me on Facebook, there's an album of piccies there). Scattered through these districts are more stages that it's possible to visit over a weekend, varying in size from the Lion's Den Reggae stage, Robotika DJ stage (built from shipping containers) and most massive of all, the Bang-Hai Towers dance stage through to some indoor 'stages' only able to hold a dozen or so gyrating punters: in the SF themed Dstrkt 5 we danced in the 'micro-rave' – a tiny nightclub done up like the inside of a microwave oven; in Old Town we enjoyed some subversive live Grime (it's a type of modern rap music y'know) in 'Granny's Front Room' complete with standard lamps and worn sofas. Everywhere you looked the place had been built with care and love and attention to detail: I loved the blue plaque in the Town Centre, dedicated to 'Nicholas Boom, founder of our fair city. Gone but not forgotten.'

But there's more than music – and optional intoxication – to Boomtown. I mentioned personas in my last post and D and I have actual characters who live in specified districts; as it turned out we didn't get to do much with them, but we did interact with what (in gaming terms) one might call NPCs including haranguing representatives of the evil and all pervasive Bang-Hai media crop, who are trying to take over, homogenise and package the entire city – never! Other weirdness happened in passing: in the Wild West district we had to stand aside while the sheriff and his deputy rode past on actual horses; in the colourful slums of Barrio Loco we were beckoned into a garish back room where I had my face painted and D had his fortune told; on the edge of Chinatown, at Bang-Hai studios, we joined the audience of a gameshow which featured punters (or possibly actors) eating banana split off of a glitter-encrusted woman with coke spoons; there was baby-oil wrestling in the backstreets of Mayfair; and, our favourite of all, Rimski's Yard, where you can trade half-baked ideas and broken dreams for strong tea, freeform insults, knitting lessons, a go at on the massage machine and the chance to 'Punch a Trump' (very popular, that was). The festival even puts out its own daily newspaper. The final afternoon saw a 'Swing Party Takeover/Riot' in Mayfair, complete with temporary speaker stacks/barricades and a bank robbery, after which Boomtown dollars were thrown around liberally; Dave now has some on his hat.

It was a bit much at times, especially the full-on dance madness of the Downtown districts after dark. In retrospect, although we were right to camp for the full immersive experience, I hope to get space in the quiet/family area next time, as we were surrounded by people who partied way harder than we're capable of these days, and not much sleep was had by anyone. We did find two quiet spaces to withdraw to when we needed to chill. One was Lost Tribes, one of half a dozen trance music stages actually set up in the woods; in this case the stage was built partly of branches, overlooked by a guardian totem owl in NW Native American style, with the Amerindian hangings in the trees billowing around, and making the trees look like they were sailing up the hill when the wind caught them; in addition there were lots of seats and soft sand underfoot and a distinct chilled flavour to the trance available here (as opposed to the frenetic high BPM of the Psy Forest). We saw some great acts to sway gently to here, including old favourites Ozric Tentacles (now onto their second generation!). Our other sanctuary was Whistlers' Green, which was a whole folk/world/hippie festival on top of the hill, nearly half the size of Wickham by itself. Here you could listen to live blues and get the best veggie breakfast on site at Coyote Moon, have a sauna, and do a chocolate workshop – this last was lovely, shambolic and informative with touches of New Age woo; also, plenty of free samples. The main stage in Whistlers' Green was called the Windmill as it had two windmills built in – plus a working waterwheel - and the copse of trees in the centre of the district had been filled with flowery bowers, hammocks, a sand pit (!) and an bizarre but melodic giant, electric, upright xylophone. Even here Boomtown's glorious madness intruded in its own way: on Sunday, I was waylaid on my way for a much-needed massage, firstly by the Police Rave Unit – 'This is a designated Rave area; Dance towards the van in a disorderly manner'; then a bunch of mutants on stilts, presumably escapees from Dstrkt 5, and finally an actual carnival, smaller than the WOMAD one but with Notting Hill level of costumes.

weather, fashion and culinary notes

There was some mud, but by this stage in the summer I'd stopped noticing it. My nose got sunburnt.

Food-wise there was a good selection – the crumpet stall was a hit, especially their peanut butter and banana special – though this isn't a festival/city with a great emphasis on food, as many of its denizens were not much interested in ingesting solids. The longest queue I saw was at the milkshake stall. I realised I'd got into the spirit of things in my own small way when, on day two, I had a continental breakfast in the tent, consisting of chocolate brioche sticks and merlot from my wine box.

When it comes to costume, at Boomtown people go full out. Glitter beards and disco leggings were the least of it. Efforts ranged from the exquisite – butterfly wings, often threaded with LEDs so they lit up at night - though the dodgy/erotic – a number of people eschewed actual clothing in favour of lots of glitter – through the usual crop of ill-advised cross-dressing – although the hirsute chap in a hard-hat and 80s meringue wedding dress really carried it off - through lots of 'character' dressing to fit a particular district (pirates, cowboys, toffs, cyber warriors etc) and the default setting so quirky/draft/ironic. This latter category included: a set of teletubbies, a backpack with a cornfield on it and a pop-up Theresa May head, and a group of a dozen blokes who were actually wearing their tents. I'm already planning what D and I might wear next year...  
 

Coda

Boomtown was two weeks ago; this Bank Holiday weekend we had our final festival hurrah for the summer, with a nearby village beer festival. Again it was a chance for visitors to use our house as a base and venture out to party. We were pretty lightweight compared to our previous extravagances, although our livers might not agree right now. This summer's glitter-bug reached new heights though, with an unexpected Glitter Fairy distributing shiny stuff to anyone in range. Even the pub dogs ended up with glittery backs.