It was the final festival of the year and we were heading for Cropredy – just down the motorway from Warwick. Cropredy has been a regular in my season for many years now, and steeped with memories of the variety of unconnected events that have kept drawing me back again and again.
Unfortunately one notable aspect of said festival is the long, long queues to get in. Generally you are reduced to a near static crawl close to Cropredy village and you normally have to be armed with amusement (music), drinking water, and the necessary equipment to quickly leap out and pee in a bush as necessary (i.e. the Y chromosome).
That said, my companion’s car had broken down so I was driving. This meant no CD player in the car and therefore nothing to get us through the two hour wait that we had from the motorway turn-off to eventually parking up. I knew and dreaded this as soon as we left, but to be honest once we were in it, it wasn’t so bad…I’m not sure exactly how we avoided getting fractious and bad tempered but somehow we did. Also, by just one car we missed being diverted to ‘field seven’ (aka the back of beyond – dreaded by all Cropredy festival goers) instead of the field we eventually wound up in. A bit of a shallow victory though perhaps, as we were placed in the furthest corner of said field and faced with a long walk to every facility available to us.
Boy it was busy! I’d never seen Cropredy quite like it. You normally get steered to your pitch by festival stewards and given a generous amount of space. This year though they were bunching people up really closely so as soon as the engine was turned off, we were all scurrying to get our tents up to establish our pitch (winner takes all and losers have to put up with flaccid half-assembled tents shoved into available gaps with no guy ropes a la WOMAD rules). Thankfully we were parked next to a couple whose last time in Cropredy was about 10 years ago so they were out of practise. Consequently we kicked their asses in terms of tent assembly speed and they were still arguing about their vestibule when we were tapping in our final guy ropes. The woman of the couple commented on our slickness, and all we could do was shrug nonchalantly and wipe the sweat from our brows.
After a hard morning of queues and tent assembly, it is traditional to calm down and get in the mood by going down ‘the village’ for a couple of bevies at The Brasenose Arms. Its always been a particularly cynical and exploitative pub, charging different rates for locals (high prices) versus festival goers (ludicrous prices), but this time it had opened its backyard to a mini music festival of its own and a local band was pumping out Dylan and Hendrix with an enthusiasm that belied their actual talent. The bar queues were tolerable but you needed to plan 20 minutes ahead to pee (if you were a girl). Despite this, we found ourselves a rock to squat on in the sun and sup, breathing in the heady fumes of hog roast and spilt ale. When my companion was at the bar, the occasional old rocker would stumble up and slur a complement to me about my colour scheme (canary yellow trousers with royal blue top) and I would politely thank them in return. Whilst I was at the bar, my companion would go previous-festival-t-shirt spotting and see which was the oldest he could find. After a pint or two of this, we finally started getting in the mood.
Mojo thus recovered, we trawled over to our tent to get all the necessary stuff for an evenings pitch. Cropredy is a very static event. You tend to haul all your stuff over to the field in the morning and not return to your tent until midnight. This means you have to take everything with you for a baking summer’s day (sunscreen, shorts, sunhats, sunglasses etc), take contingent for if it rains suddenly (raincoat, wellys, brolly) something to keep you warm when the temperature plummets after sunset (big jumpers, warm socks, woolly hat, gloves etc) and then the rest (seat, table, ground sheet, night lights, silver tankard, etc etc). The only alternative tactic is to go on the field with absolutely none of this nonsense and get so drunk that you don’t care by the end of it that you’re squatting on the ground in the dark in other peoples discarded fast food dinners, and dew is forming on your skin because its near freezing and you are just wearing Hawaiian shorts and a tie died shirt. These are usually the same people you find sleeping in a hedge bottom the following morning with suspicious stains around the groin area of their trousers. I have never been one of them.
There is always a lot of kit envy at festivals too, but I think Cropredy is particularly bad because of its static nature and large amount of required on-field kit. Wheelbarrow and cart envy is also unique to Cropredy, I believe. People’s pitches can be embellished with tea lights, little fences, solar lights, flags, you name it. All these things need to be hauled from the camping fields to the main field and the most innovative transportation always obtains plaudits from the crowd. Flags are also a big feature, and actually a necessity because it’s pretty difficult to find your companions in a big crowd, even if they are all seated and not milling about. You either bring your own flag (as I have been meaning to for years) or feed off others. We, for instance, picked someone else’s flag and pitched near them then navigated by that.
The field was the most crowded I have ever seen…rumours were circulating that the festival was sold out (a first!) but it was only just starting to become clear it was true. There was a huge throng near the stage, even though it was just the first act, and everywhere that normally had queues now had BIG queues…you had to change your expectations radically to expect a 20 minute delay in anything you wanted to do.
We lounged at a safe distance – about as near as we could get to the stage without getting tramped and out of the ‘stand up zone’. We pitched near ‘the aliens’ – two inflatable aliens on a flag pole that we had seen year after year since coming to Cropredy. We supped the beer on offer this year - not the usual Somersault ale but something less hoppy - then left our chairs and edged as near as we could get to the stage for Jools Holland (which wasn’t very near at all). It was a bloody good session, predictably. Jools was looking a bit old IMHO (bald patch, paunch, legs a bit bandy) but who cares – his big band and choice of powerful singers, including Lulu, and he exercised his usual excellent taste in the run of this set. I really enjoyed the evening.
I returned to my tent with a spring in my step…until I realised I needed to go pee and there was a long queue. Endured this, then huddled desperately in my sleeping bag to try to regain some of the warmth I’d lost on the field. Didn’t work, so I added a blanket. Didn’t work, so rooted out all my large jumpers and layered them over me one by one like one of those expensive meals you can get where the meat is balanced on some potato and the veg is balanced on top of this in some precarious but artistically valid arrangement. Finally got to a place and a state where I was warm and reasonably comfortable…and then needed a pee again.
Decided to endure it and try to go to sleep…
