Creamfields

2 of the stages before the rain

I think it's fair to say without exagerrating, that the last few days have been the craziest of my life. Spontinaity is a really important part of living, and one that I strive to gain more of, being someone who's OCD is planning and organizing every minute of my time just for that comfortable feeling of knowing what's happening next. But the thing is, when a plan goes wrong, you're either left flustered having to handle an unexpected turn, disappointed that things didn't work out how they should have, or pleasantly surprised with the new outcome. The latter doesn't seem to happen too often, so I tend to end up disappointed or constantly buzzed in a heated attempt to follow my plan through. Spontinaity allows for no future thought or image - change excites humans, it's part of our nature to look for new and exciting things giving us that rush of adrenaline to feed off of. This weekend was like a tropical adrenaline storm, it just kept going with a force that didn't stop.

While the mud was shallow

Running around London day after day was getting tiring, and an email from a friend that I'd met once on a crazy night in KL, offering me an all expenses paid for ticket to 'Creamfields' (the biggest druggy techno-house-trance festival in England) caused my light bulb to ping straight away. I accepted on a whim, sorted out my shifts with the excuse of 'my cousin's last minute weekend wedding in Scotland' and picked up sleeping bags off a friend. Within a few days, a familiar face arrived at the door looking bedraggled after a 12 hour flight from Malaysia. The familiarity of having someone around that had shared the same life as me, was so relieving. It was so nice not feeling alienated or stuck behind a culture barrier. We spent three days in London, cooking, chatting, bunning and food shopping.

Taken by 'Example' during his show :)

The day of the festival finally arrived, we'd planned to have a full nights sleep before our adventure began but being the teenagers that we are, our heads hit the pillow at about 3am, giving us a good long 3 hours of rest before the alarm shrilled. Jumping out of bed in a state of pure dillusion, we showered, changed and grabbed our countless bags, dragging them down the pavement to the tube station at 6.30am. It's funny how easy it is to take a wrong turn when you're tired, and how much it affects your journey -- by the time we got to the station to catch our 7.30am train, it was 11.00am and 3 trains had since passed. In-between buying coffee to keep our eyes open, and conversing with his other two friends who had also missed their train, we managed to figure out that we could catch the next train at 11.30 and still get there on time. Luckily, unlike our friends, we didn't have to pay any extra costs for our mistake - we did however get moved back from first class to third, cramped up with our sleeping bags and boxes of rice-cakes in the corner of 'carriage F' - oh well.

We get to Creamfields, all we see are rolling hills, and hundreds of people with welly's and bags looking bright, colourful and ready for an amazing time. We could already hear the beats of Calvin Harris and David Guetta in the background, only serving to raise the anxiety levels to storm through the queue's and get to where we needed to be. We ran into a few road-blocks on the way to our destination but managed to get around them somehow (I tell you, having boobs in this day and age makes life so much easier). We amazingly got through the police checks, sniffer dogs and ID men without having ID or sober suitcases on us, and we made our way up the muddy path towards the campsites. We were in luxury camping, meaning hot showers, 'nice loos', set-up tents, airbeds and a short walk to the main arena's. It took us an hour to realize none of us had any sense of direction, and 2.5 hours later we had trudged through knee-high mud with our bags, having explored every campsite, arena and food-stall until we finally reached the tangerine fields - luxury camping. We walked passed funky heart shaped huts with wooden floors and beds (1k for a weekend) and sighed. Our 2 bedroom tent wasn't too shabby though, we lit up and lay down after our tedious journey, thankful to have finally arrived, at 6pm.

The crowd <3

We cleaned ourselves up (wet wipes ftw), got into festival gear and set out to join the crowds. The moment the magic kicked in everything went in fast forward, I felt like I was walking on an airport escalator, zooming through crowds and music -- the world spun out of control and the lights and colours carried us to a state of bliss. Nothing can really compare to live music, huge top quality speakers, the buzz of the crowd and the passion for the music, it went on till sunrise through the pouring rain and freezing gales. People's bones were literally aching due to the cold; body heat and dancing was frostbites only alternative.

Above and Beyond

Waking up in the morning all you could hear were mutters of 'is it cancelled? It's flooded. No Dedmau5. Everyone's leaving'. We poked our heads into the ongoing rain to ask what was going on -- sure enough, nature had got its own on technology and the sound equipment was all completely under-water. An intoxicated girl had fallen face-first into the mud and drowned, a man had shot someone in the head with his rifle, and about 20,000 people were all making their way towards the exit doors. Chaos.

Silent disco

Those of us who decided to stay, breathed in the opportunity with a smile. 80% of people leaving meant: Free food, free tents, free beds, sleeping bags, mats and chairs. We managed to move into a huge tent, we each had our own room, bed, (packeted) food supply and dry area - it was heaven. The clouds moved on and the sun came out at the same time as bikini's, shorts and glasses did -- the rest of the day was spent in a blazed wave, lying on mattresses in the sun.
By night, the mood had shifted. The vibe was so intense, this was the night everyone was planning on going wild. Substances, music, people, colours, everything was out in the open. The next few hours were like the first night, times a million. Hundreds of us raving on hills in the middle of nowhere. Everyone's eyes equally wide as we soaked in the atmosphere - we each met about 50 new people, heard a million new stories and tried a million new things. There was nothing to lose, no one cared what they looked like or sounded like, it was all about the love. The sun rose for the last time and we all sat huddled up, holding hands for body-warmth in the biggest tent we could find, still moving to the music. We packed in a half-daze and caught the last bus to the little town of 'Warrington' with a new group of friends we'd met the night before.

The rain took over.

We all walked into civilization together, feeling the cold-hard stares as people awed at our muddy, bedraggled and homeless appearances. From nature to cement, shops, and warmth - it felt so strange. Mothers directed their children away from us and we just stared in awe at how clean everything looked. We soon found heaven; the waitresses at Nando's hurried us in in a motherly manner, taking our bags off and sitting us down at their two biggest tables. We ate in a comfortable silence appreciating the hot food and the warm room.

We sat outside and rolled a  last celebratory joint. It made the realization that we'd missed three trains, again, less-stressful. We eventually sauntered over to the train station - this time, our seats had been degraded from first class to the carriage in which we sat squashed up on the floor with about 15 bags around us. At that point, nothing mattered, and we lay back on whatever was behind us, and fell asleep. London was a trip to return to - Carnival had just finished and it was feathers and glitter galore.. we walked through the craziness and finally got to what we'd been waiting for - a warm shower and a dry bed.

I've had a day to recover and my eyes still can't see straight. Post-festival-blues has hit and I'm wondering why there isn't a legal cure for this? The pharmaceutical industry are focusing on the wrong crowd.. The light at the end of the tunnel is seeing the photo's from the disposables that we bought with us (and magically managed to bring back!) if only life could be one big festival - Thank you Creamfields! You were a trip ;)



Recipe of the day: Daal and rice (This food saved me at the festival - an extortionate price of 5 pounds, but so worth the result)

http://www.indianfoodforever.com/bachelor-cooking/simple-dal.html