V – Part Three

OK, so perhaps I should write a little bit more about V than I did yesterday. Maybe.

First of all, we didn’t do the camping thing. Definitely a sign of getting old, or something, but I just can’t be arsed to spend money/time sleeping in a tent. I did it when I was a kid, and fucking hated it then. I also did it for a couple of weeks back in ’97 until the place I was going to be renting became available. I fucking hated it then, too. OK, so it was Dorset, in March, but being constantly chilly and damp was no fun. I can’t see my attitude having become more charitable in the last nine years.

So we stayed in a local(ish) hotel, in sunny Telford. Again, somewhere I hadn’t visited in a good ten years – and even then only once – and was pleased to be leaving. In fairness to the town, though, it wasn’t horrific. It just also wasn’t somewhere I’d choose to go again. The hotel itself was OK, but I’ve written about that over at Wheres-Good.com rather than duplicating effort.

Oh, one other thing – when you’re going to an outdoor festival, in August – particularly when it’s supposed to be “the hottest August on record” – pack some waterproof clothing. Needless to say, I didn’t, and thus had to buy some having driven up through some seriously torrential rain.

As for the rest, I feel it’s best to remain tactful, and say nothing more about V itself than “Nope, never again.”

I’m just not a festival person any more.

Would I go for just a day? I don’t know. Even then I think the line-up would have to be pretty damn good, to be honest, and also it’d have to be of people who were doing one-off appearances, or where I couldn’t get to see them any other way. I just prefer gigs to events.