15 things we learned at Secret Garden Party 2011
- Jul 27, 2011
Balloons to ball pits, badminton to bass - here are 15 things we learned at Secret Garden Party 2011...
15. Fire is a beautiful thing if it is used to destroy a floating dragonfly in the middle of a atmospherically illuminated lake, surrounded by gyrating, flaming hula-hoopers, and fireworks exploding in the sky around it. Fire is not so beautiful when it is used to ignite a sock-covered crutch-as-dancing-accessory in the middle of a crowded dancefloor.
14. A cardboard box adorned with ribbons and feathers with a bit of rope attached to it being pulled along the ground is apparently a perfectly acceptable method of transporting a small baby around a festival.
13. The balloon department at the local recycling factory should seriously consider taking on extra staff for a few days.
12. Allowing a two year old child into the middle of ball pit filled with a jumble of the limbs of extremely messed up people in a tent playing hardcore jungle at 2am is possibly demonstrative of dubious parenting skills. Said two year old should also not be the recipient of flying ball attacks in said ball pit. Not cool guys.
11. There is nothing endearing about an inebriated, stumbling, fully grown man half-dressed in an ironically cartoon-style animal suit. Ditto a fully grown woman. Ditto anyone, ever, and especially not about thirty percent of all festival-goers. No to animal suits. Children are excused.
10. Queuing for almost two hours can be very worth it, when the result of the queuing is the opportunity to dance with happy and friendly people on a dancefloor surrounded on three sides by sunset-dappled water, and to the best deep house the festival has to offer. It also gives one the right to request Jamie Jones’s remix of Azari & III’s ‘Hungry for the Power’ via a scribbled note on a torn piece of paper and have it played almost immediately. RESULT.
9. Martha Reeves is 70 years old! She is not 40 years old. She is not even 50 years old, or 60. She is 70 years old! Unable to ascertain exactly how this can be after watching her performance of ‘Heatwave’. Still wondering.
8. Festivals that don’t require a combination of buses, ferries, taxies and trains to return to the real world are definitely preferable to those that do. Kings Cross station arriving very, very suddenly, and being crushingly representative of what the real world looks like, is not such a positive thing on reflection.
7. It is possible to use a portaloo on the final day of a festival and find it to be equipped with paper and hand sanitizer and also be inoffensive enough to actually sit down on. Every other festival in the world should take note.
6. Rolling down a hill holding hands is the only real way to negotiate a hill at 4am. Anyone deciding to roll down hills thus should be sure to make sure iphones and Blackberries are secured on their person to prevent the inevitable distress of losing such devices.
5. No respectable festival in this day and age should legitimately be without a pillow-fighting tent.
4. A tent playing pounding psy-trance at midday on the hottest day of a festival is not the place to cure a hangover.
3. It is perfectly possible to conduct a successful game of badminton at opposite ends of a heaving, pulsating dancefloor by the waterside and not lose the shuttlecock. This is of course depending on your definition of ‘successful’.
2. The bicycle-riding postmen at Secret Postal Service are perhaps the only postmen in the world able to locate the intended recipient of their mail by such vaguely described addresses as ‘North Camp, by security thing, in-between pirate and smiley face flags …’
1. There is nothing else like Secret Garden Party, anywhere in the world. Everyone is advised to be excellent to each other, and they really are. In summary it would seem that the only applicable word is a very resounding YES.
We'll have a full review of Secret Garden Party up soon...
Pamela McIntyre
