As you have probably noticed, we’ve been very quiet – no – none existent the past 3 weeks. That is due to our yearly pilgrimage to the holy Wacken lands and returning to civility with our obligatory attendance at one of the best UK heavy metal festivals – Bloodstock. After a week or two to recover, catch up on thousands of e-mails, catch up on work, nurture our bank balances and finish washing all our favorite t-shirts we are now back to normality and thought we’d share a few images of the past few weeks!
When it comes to festival season, organisation is key. Especially when you are going to live in a field for the best part of a week. Because of this, Gem and I generally go a little quiet the week before we set off to Wacken Open Air which is in Germany. We make several lists and then frown at each other when we discover all of the unnecessary items we have packed. With four of us squeezing into my (generously sized may I add) estate, we really had to tone down on the excessive ridiculous nonsense items we usually take with us. ( Oh the luxury of camping by your car). Once of the magical things I discovered this year was placing my duvet and pillows into a black back and sucking the air out with a vacuum. Instead of taking up the entire boot, it fit nice and snug behind the driver seat and is now a well honed skill I also used to squeeze my duvet into the suitcase for Bloodstock.
After saying goodbye to CJ, who was less than impressed at us upping and leaving her, we left the house in the early hours of Sunday morning, heading to Harwich to catch a 6 hour boat to the Hook of Holland. During this time we tried to take a few “all in” selfies which were all marginally disappointing and always seemed to cut half of us out and bought a pack of cards to amuse ourselves with a few (or 100) games of “bullshit” or “cheat” to those of you into language less foul. Once we arrived in Holland, Roode’s mum was kind enough to put us up for the night before we traveled to the Holy Wacken lands the next morning.
After a fairly swift 5-6 hour drive across Europe, we finally arrived at Wacken and set our massive tent up. The only way to festival, is to festival in comfort! Thus we don’t leave home without our airbeds, pillows, sheet and duvet’s. It makes camping a dream. A few Gem and Pants selfies by our England flag and our drummer sunbathing on his car roof with a good book and a pint of bitter and we were well on our way to having a great week. We also bought some giant inflatable skittles that we later made into a drinking game.
The food of the week (even though we brought a car load of food with us too) was from the Vegan Gyros stand. So obviously a picture of me stuffing my face had to be included. (*Awaits comments from our resident blog troller who regularly likes to tell Gem and I how “overweight we are”). Honestly though, best festival food ever – Vegan meat style pieces, Sauerkraut, salad, shredded cabbage, Vegan cheese, garlic and chilli sauce all tucked into a toasted panini. It was so delicious. Gem and I also bought pretty headbands so we could be Princess’ and they were definitely our most random purchase of the week. ( A few more intoxicated selfies)
Being in Europe, there was a distinct lack of menthol filters for the smokers of the group, so drums decided to try and make his own, with a pack of mint imperials and some regular filters, unfortunately this didn’t go down too well but served well as entertainment for the onlookers. The last few memorable and exciting things of note was the diabetic cocktail, which was made from Fernandes (a very sugary dutch pineapple soft drink), every flavour or cherry sours and a fair dash of wine, which went down a treat, the making of Matthew Jones our guitarist, who sadly couldn’t be at Wacken, instead we made him from beer cans and chose some apt phrases of his. Lastly, on our way back home before boarding the ferry, Brains picked out some “Lange Nekken” for me. Although they may look just like ordinary biscuits covered in chocolate, they had a Giraffe on the front which instantly made them the best thing ever.
We had an absolutely amazing time at Wacken this year, we had great neighbors in our campsite which really made the week, the weather stayed dry and we watched some amazing bands an discovered a few new ones too! So as sad as we were to return home, it wasn’t time for the post festival blues to sink in as we busies ourselves washing everything and repacking for Bloodstock which resides here in England.
There was no early start for Bloodstock, since it’s only 40 minutes away in the car, so after feeling rather smug about how little I had packed, I had time to take a cheeky excited for Bloodstock pic to amuse myself whilst waiting for Gem and Roode to get ready. A little queuing and some tent assembly to get on with and we were ready for our camping chairs and first beer of the day. A few cuddles with Matty J (this time in the flesh and not made out of beer cans) were in order whilst we drank the night away and waited for drums to finish working. (He spent the festival drum teching for the Sophie Lancaster stage). After the first night, my air bed decided it didn’t enjoy being inflated any more, which I understood, since it had been going for three years (that’s a lot of festivals!), but luckily Adam had a secret stash of ready blown up air beds in his mini camp back stage so all was right in the world.
The few times we venture outside our camp, we always bump into people we know since Bloodstock is generally the social event of the year for half the metal community. This year we spotted little (who is not quite so little) Mikey, the son of one of our fav reviewers “Uncle” Chop. We get very excited when we see children of the metal community experiencing their first metal festival! Some hours later and we visited drums in festival prison – well Okay, he was back stage working whilst we complained that we missed him.
Despite spending a long time in a field, Gem and I still enjoy playing with hoards of makeup, except she was lucky enough to have hers done by Roode, who thrives off applying her blusher. This was a strict pre-drink activity though.
Before we knew it, the weekend was over and it was Monday morning. Reluctantly we packed away our things and arrived home. There was nothing more depressing than coming back to normality and doing the weekly shop in the miserable rain – made only marginally better with a sighting of a double rainbow. So now festival season is completely over which can only mean one thing … Christmas is coming! Having almost caught up on day to day life, I am excited to be back in the blogging seat and will blot out the post festival sadness by playing with makeup.
Hopefully you didn’t miss us too much whilst we were gone!
Totally hellbent for return of the blogging
– Pants
