All Tomorrow's Parties 4/4

We woke at 7:30 to clean the chalet, our minds and ourselves. Food and fuel was grabbed via the aforementioned Tescos. At was at this point that Rob became a granddad. Confused and agitated by the world, he explained that after I went to bed, he snaffled the remains of his pixie dust, ran off to the Crazy Horse and ended up in another Chalet where he wrote and recorded an off the cuff demo with some guys from Cornwall. He hadn't been to sleep at all and was still up. Very much up.

I whacked the CDs on again. Driving back was far worse than the drive down: a constant battle of heavy eye lids and Relentless Juiced Berry (seriously. endorsement.) The average speed cameras hit us harder this time. With so many roadworks along the stretches free of cameras, progress was slow and we all lost our minds to the cabin fever insanity. The pasta was now able to melt steel and fumes were probably intoxicating us off our collective faces. This required constant service stops so that we could find a large open space for screaming and bloodletting to keep us on the right side of crazed. If Rob had become the drug addled grandfather, Seymour was quickly becoming the child in need of tranquilisers. Powerful ones.

All Tomorrow's Parties 1/4

After Leeds and Bestival, ATP was my third festival this year. We (Maz, Seymour, Rob and myself) decided to wait until only seconds remained before we had to get down to Minehead before pondering the transport question, by which point trains, planes and buses had become very very expensive. Instead, we lied to a hire car company about driver details, essentially age and identity, and we swanned off in a tidy seat ibiza packing in the kids (Rob and Seymour) and the luggage in the back and boot. It was day one, friday, and we had a road trip on our hands.

Food was going to be expensive and I, an inhabitants of studentdom, copied Rob's seemingly amazing idea of cooking a shit load of pasta and throwing it in the biggest tupperware container known to man. This helped, at least at first. Other amazing money saving options included two home burnt mix cd's from yours truely and Seymour's audio bargin hunting (£2 for Fucked Up's latest and £6 for the best of the buzzcocks, the second of which is, looking back, terrible value but back then, caffeine had already made us it's bitch). Fucked Up, a band that wrestled my head with arguments aplenty. I initially heard about them more for their name, political imagery play and extra-musical activities, mostly revolving around jail time. I admit, it was all wikipedia's fault and i was romanced, as i always am, by open source information-gasms. My first taste of Fucked Up live left a shitty taste in my mouth. At Leeds fest, i was massively disappointed. To my ears they bombed so hard that all i could hear was dresden circa '45. It's funny how opinions can be turned by an album listen of attrition forced by the overplay of all other options; my mix cd's that were now into their 4th listen or the dreaded buzzcocks cd which was terrible. The chemistry of common life became an oasis for my ears.