He wanted a glimpse of how the other half live – and this year he got it. CONOR POPEthrows financial caution to the wind in Stradbally
'I'M NOT STAYING in a tent again," I whine when the Ticket editor says she's sending me back to Electric Picnic. Last year I nearly developed trench foot as I fought with cold and mud and rain and my neighbours' loud late-night, er, frolicking and a man singing The Blower's Daughterfor seven hours straight. I know a repeat will break me.
Obviously, I want to stay in a fancy hotel with the rest of the Irish Timespicnickers (who wuss out each year and bale when the going gets cold and wet), but instead I am given the keys to a Wendy house on the festival site outside Stradbally. A step up from a tent, admittedly, but hardly an en-suite at the Heritage, where all the rock stars stay.
As I trudge along a dusty road to what I hope is the site of said Wendy house on Friday – some of the Electric Picnic staff, while lovely, seem clueless when it comes to directions – I find myself in the Jimi Hendrix campsite. The horror. The horror. Bodies are everywhere – cold, wet bodies struggling to find their tents in driving rain. Please, God, don’t let this be the place.
It isn’t. A couple – almost certainly the smuggest in the world, in fact – drive past on a golf buggy. Sipping champagne. They may as well be shouting “Let them eat cake” at the bedraggled campers who look on miserably.
I guess they are going to where I need to be: the beautiful-people camping area – or the boutique campsite, to give it its official name – so I race after them.
I’m right, and they lead me to my festival holy grail. It is how the other half lives. And it is amazing. At just over €500 for the three days, on top of the cost of the concert ticket, Boutique Camping Podpads are not cheap, but that hasn’t stopped them selling out. It’s easy to see why.
The houses are warm – well, warmish – and come with a double bed, a lockable door, heart-shaped windows, lights and a shelf. A shelf! In a tent! Who couldn’t love that? The boutique site also has the Pamper Palace, offering Indian head massages, elaborate facepainting, glue-on eyelashes and washes and blow-dries for €35.
The prices seem to deter few, and the salon is booked solid through the weekend – a sign, perhaps, that a lot of festivalgoers had decided to forget the recession, have some fun and spend some money. And by staying in this place, paying full price for a ticket and eating and drinking on site, you could easily spend more than €1,000 on a three-day blowout. Money well spent, if you have it.
The showers in other parts of the site are challenging, to say the least, but the beautiful people have only the best when it comes to washing, and their restaurant is gourmet everything. I know this because the word appears six times on the small menu – so often, in fact, that it starts to lose any meaning.
The campsite is a whole lot quieter than the common-people sites, too, although that’s not to say it is actually quiet: all through the night every night there’s a steady stream of drunken comings and goings as people stumble into their beds and fumble with unfamiliar locks.
And then there’s the couple who have a full-blown barney outside my Wendy house at 5am, about which of them was responsible for the disappearance of their cat, Spencer. It goes on so long and in so many ridiculous circles that I’m tempted to stick my head out and confess to its murder just so they’ll go to bed. Spencer, if you’re reading this, would you ever go home? You’re missed terribly and are causing a lot of strife.
ELECTRIC PICNIC has been eclectically put together, as usual. There’s a pop-up church, hosting weddings for €50 a pop, hot tubs in Body Soul, tambourines hanging from trees, mad sculptures, hundreds of bands and DJs, hundreds of food stalls – Saba wins the Bridgestone Food Guides publicly chosen Picnickers Award, narrowly defeating Pieminister and last year’s winner, Rathmullan House – and a whole lot more besides.
Masseuses are in the bar at 2am. Who could say no to that? Not me, certainly. They offer 10-minute back rubs for a pay-whatever-you-think-we’re-worth fee. Part of me wants to get the massage and then give the masseuse 20c – as a joke, like – but she’s a bit menacing, so I give her €20 instead.
And in case you’ve ever wondered, a pub late at night is not the best place to get a massage. Every drunk person will walk past at least once, give you a poke and say, “Ha! Getting a massage, eh?” Super relaxing.
On Saturday as the sun comes out a clown walks past, face streaked with make-up. He’s just one of many people in odd get-ups over the weekend. You may think a person who has gone to the trouble of finding and then wearing a clown suit to a festival would be a happy soul. Wrong. This clown is the grumpiest in the world. When I ask why he has chosen to spend the weekend wearing a not-particularly- comfortable-looking, and certainly not practical, red polka-dot nylon jumpsuit, he looks at me as if I’ve just offered him a cup of sick. He shrugs morosely and says, “Because it’s a festival, dude.” Fair enough.
He has put some planning into his clothes. Another couple I speak to clearly haven’t. “Definitely don’t identify me: we’re supposed to be at a wedding today and have just sent an excuse as to why we can’t make it,” says “John” from Dublin.
He and his missus had been heading to the wedding when they saw the signs for Electric Picnic, turned the car around and headed to Stradbally. “So now we have to keep a low profile,” he says. “We don’t even have a tent or cans or anything. Normally we don’t even make it out of the campsite, so it is a bit weird to be sitting in the main arena, watching bands, so early on. We’re going to have some fun, though. Sure, why wouldn’t you? You only live once.”
Jerry Martini, a founding member of The Family Stone, who played yesterday, was in love with Electric Picnic from the get-go. "It's like the original Woodstock here, and people are here to have a good time. It's wonderful," he tells The Irish Timesbefore, in an incredibly unlikely turn of events, inviting me on to the main stage, where I get to bop, badly, alongside the legendary band, as if I'm a stand-in Sly Stone. It's like a dream, only, you know, real.
Cut-price Picnics
Although it’s easy to spend a lot of money at Electric Picnic, it is not essential. We meet a whole lot of people who have managed to do the whole thing for less than €300 – and that includes the price of the ticket.
Cormac Mullan from Galway had to rely on the kindness of strangers when he arrived. He bought his ticket at the full price of €240, which does not include the Ticketmaster charge, and had €50 in his pocket when he walked through the gates.
When he went to the ATM on day two he got the dreaded insufficient-funds message. So he soldiered on. “You will always find someone to lend you the price of a cup of tea. The most expensive thing I have bought all weekend was a cup of chai tea. I have no idea what it was, and it cost me around €6, but it was the best six quid I have ever spent.”
DJ Trevor Dietz from Dublin got his ticket free, so he spent even less on his weekend despite splashing out €50 on a “wedding cert” for himself and his girlfriend late on Friday night, when he was, possibly, tired and emotional.
The ceremony is taking place in the pop-up church; he’ll be borrowing his wedding suit from its dressing-up box. “It’s definitely a shotgun wedding,” he says. “The weekend is definitely good value for money, and I have spent no more than €150. I have to go now: I need a beer before my wedding. Dutch courage, don’t you know.”
Niamh Corcoran from Ratoath, in Co Meath, also got her ticket free, as a birthday present. She turned 30 yesterday. It was her first festival, and she was super impressed. “I had €180 on me on Friday morning when we got here; I’ve still got €30 left, and I’ve not been particularly careful with my money.
“I wanted to stay up all night and go to the rave in the woods, but all my friends wanted to go to bed.”
She may be a newbie picnicker, but she is zealous in her love for it. “I’ll definitely be back again next year. It’s amazing. I love it.”
