day 58 - download part 3: mud is everywhere

Sunday - the day of the hangover

Inevitably on Sunday we felt like arse.

I really wanted to see Shinedown but we missed them :(  I have loved them since 2003 when hardly anyone here had heard of them, and seeing them being successful enough now to be playing on the main stage at Download made me feel really proud. They're my babies and I love them. 

We got to the arena just in time to hear The Diary of Jane by Breaking Benjamin. We had wanted to see their whole set but we dilly dallied too much with the taking stuff to the car. 

I forgot how much I like Billy Talent, so I'm really glad we saw them, despite not really having the energy to move very much.

Disturbed covered The Sound of Silence, which gave me feels and was by far my favourite song of the whole festival. I'm always super impressed when a singer of a metal band is actually a really good singer in general. That probably sounds silly because singing is literally their job and they get paid a lot of money to do it, but it is a whole other style of singing so it surprises me nonetheless. Turns out their version of the song has been around for a while and you should definitely listen to it.  I don't know much of their stuff past the Ten Thousand Fists album, but I still really enjoyed them. 

To be honest, and I am ready to be hated for this, I didn't think much of Iron Maiden. I had a brief Iron Maiden phase when I was a teenager, but I think I actually like the really cool artwork associated with them more than I like their music. I'm not one for insane guitar solos really. I mean, I can appreciate the technical ability and stuff, but I don't think I want to spend time actually listening to it. Also their lead singer (I feel like I should know his name, but I do not) reminded me of a dad when he first came on stage. It was weird watching this strange dad man rocking out to thousands of people. He did de-dad a little bit as time went on, but I still found the whole thing a bit cringey. Sorry.

It was quite evident that on the last night everyone had given up, The toilets were mega gross. I know portaloos at festivals are rarely nice, but this was something else. There were PILES coming over the top of many of them, so we gave up on that idea and went back to nature's ways instead. Lots of the lights weren't on, so everywhere was even darker than usual, which made everything even more difficult in the terrible mud. 

Goodbye, tentland

I had a most excellent time, but I am very glad to be back in civilisation where there is minimal mud and maximum bed comfort. 

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day 57 - download part 2: blowout

Saturday - the day of the wee jobby 

Saturday was the blowout day. We started drinking on the way to the arena and didn't really stop until bed time, so much of it is a bit of a blur. From what I remember I had a good time.

 I actually was brave did a stint in the mosh pit at Anti Flag since they filled me with drunken rage about the government and stuff. I forgot how good they are. 

I'd never heard Tesseract before, but I liked them so much that I'm listening to them while writing this post. The lead matey has a really nice voice and it made me have feelings.

Deftones were good. Another band I've not listened to for ages. Download is really just a huge culmination of my fave bands from my teenage years and maybe early twenties. So much nostalgia. 

I don't actually remember much of Black Sabbath, but I do remember calling my mum and insisting I told my step dad that Ozzy was right there and that he should be jealous. 

My main memory of Saturday night is of meeting up with some dudes that Faffy knows from a previous Download, who just so happened to be from Scotland. I spent the rest of the night shouting about WEE JOBBIES, since I once had an incident with a wee jobby... (down south a "jobby" generally refers to a thingemyob or what whatdyoucallit, whereas up north it means a poo. This got confusing once when I sent an email to someone at work referencing the "jobby". They were northern.)

part 3 >>>

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day 56 - download festival part 1: the sun and the rain

If I were to sum up Download 2016 in three words it would be mud, nachos, and rain.

We arrived on Wednesday with a view to getting a good pitch and the most camping for our money. Turns out this was a very good idea, as the pitch we got was still miles from anything, and would have been even more miles from anything had we rocked up on Thursday. 

It became quickly evident that this year's Thing Everyone Shouts was "HOLD THE DOOOOOOR!" which is a Game of Thrones reference that I do not yet understand, and will not spend any time thinking about because I don't appreciate spoilers. 

Here is our nest before it got grass and mud in it: 

Thursday was sunny, so we drank and chilled out with our neighbours. They were very nice chaps, though they didn't stay our neighbours for very long because some other guys pitched their tents in our garden. To be fair, the space was massive so we kinda expected it. I was chuffed as nuts because I won cards against humanity. I also didn't get a sun burn despite being ginger and especially susceptible to being set on fire by the sun, and using sun cream that was a couple of years out of date. The answer, it seems, is to shelter beneath a big ol' pashmina for most of the day. 

Friday - the day of the rain

I was preoccupied for most of Friday with the peril of hypothermia, since this was the day the rains came and I got drenched pretty much as soon as we got to the arena. When I checked the weather it said 3% precipitation, so I got over confident and let the rain just kinda happen, until I was so bloody cold I couldn't actually catch my breath, and I realised that maybe the rain might also have a weekend ticket to the festival. I got my poncho out, but it was too late. I didn't die of hypothermia though so I guess everything turned out okay.

We saw Alien Ant Farm, Killswitch Engage, and Korn, all of which are bands that I know and love a couple of their most famous songs, but am not so familiar with the rest of their music. 

Rammstein were definitely in the top three bands I have ever seen live, if not the best. They are known for putting on amazing shows with FIRE, and they did not disappoint. The pyrotechnics were welcome seeing as I was still pretty chilly and damp, as well as you know, just being damn awesome. 

Oh my god the NACHOS. I wish I had a picture, my words are not going to do justice to how amazing the nacho bowl was. To put it simply, the nachos were inside an edible bowl made of a tortilla, and topped with all the best nacho things. It was HUGE and AMAZING and horribly unhealthy.

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day 1 - food and wine in Brighton.

It's my birthday in a week's time, I'm going to be 26! No longer a Young Person, I get to graduate to Regular Person.

Originally, I was going to go to Brighton with Emma for the weekend, but then we remembered that we are poor and couldn't quite afford to do that, so we went for the day instead.

Brighton is one of my favourite cities ever, and one day I would like to live there. It's got the sea on one side and the South Downs on the other, and a very vibrant and liberal culture. I love all those things.

Our general plan for the day was drink, eat, drink, beach, drink, eat, drink. We did quite well at sticking to this plan, starting with wine on the train, then wine and nachos at Yates, then wine on the beach, then we went to the arcade (slight deviation), then dinner and wine at Wetherspoons. All in all I would say a great success.

here we are on the train. Not featured: flask of wine.

fun on the beach!

We kept being sat at table 5 by complete coincidence.

Wine on the beach!

I love the sea.

The sky was kinda angry, but not enough to rain on us.

Brain, just in case.

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