Camping #2 - The festival

I am sitting here revelling in my clean clothes, aseptic toilets, warm and cosy duvets and a healthy dose of real food after a weekend of going large at a festival in Kent for three days. I am pooped, shattered and generally knackered from camping, drinking, avoiding piles of puke and trying not to lose the children on the festival site or down the long drop loos. Yes, festival-ing with children is a whole different affair, very, very fun but a world away from those hedonistic Glastonbury days of the '90's.

Driving to the site the clouds looked darker and more menacing, on cue as we parked the car at the mud fest  the area already was, the rain started hammering down. Now, generally I am a happy and positive person, we were here to have a good time but it was extremely testing under the circumstances, the children started whining, he wanted to leave and the security guard threatened to take away my bottle of whisky - unless we decanted it into plastic - so off we went to pour half a bottle of scotch into P's pink princess water bottle - there was no way he was taking away my means of keeping warm at night.

The only way to enjoy the next few days was to dive right into the fun and entertainment that festivals are. After our first dirt-burger of the weekend, we found a kids cooking kitchen where they made Moroccan couscous, a folkey-dokey singer who we weren't quite sure was a he or a she, we watched a play, some comedy, played on the straw bales, drank some beer and watched the children slowly unwind, drink it all in and start to dance, have face paints, talk to clowns and jugglers. We were having a ball. And then the sun came out!

There is not a lot more fun than being at a festival in the sunshine, talking to strangers, listening to music and watching the plethora or revellers young and old. We may not have managed to watch the headline acts (we heard them from the tent though - who are 'The Wombats' anyway?) or dance until the wee small hours to strange and wonderful DJ's but we met the Zingzillas, got two decent nights sleep, didn't get trench foot or incur enormous hangovers and came home just in time to watch the end of the tennis.