Summer?

You have to admire the resilience of the Irish people. Or perhaps it's pure pigheadedness. We are a cursed race. Cursed with wind and rain. Weather that is unpredictable at best. We use the word Summer a little lightly sometimes but I think for us Summer if more about chronology than climate. We have to use the word summer so we can know where one winter ends and the next begins.

Yet despite this obvious handicap we still try to do things outdoors. We still try to have barbecues and go to the beach and most bizarrely of all we still try to have music festivals! I don't know if we ever had nice summers. I seem to remember some but I'm not sure if in hindsight I have created them in my imagination. I have memories form my childhood of days spent at the beach and sun drenched hay fields where the smell of diesel and freshly dried hay mingled to create an aroma which was carried on a warm breeze as big pots of tea and ham sandwiches were consumed.

I seem to remember in more recent years long summer evenings spent drinking cans by the Spanish Arch or getting annoyed with people who put meat on the vegetarian side of the barbecue. Surely summers gone by aren't a figment of my imagination? As I look outside now the sky is mostly blue, the sun seems to be shining and there is only a light breeze blowing but I will not allow myself to be lulled into a false sense of security! Only half an hour ago the heavens were open and I had pretty much written off having an opportunity to step outside the door without getting absoloutely soaked.

The irony is that I need to go outside to wash my car. I just know that if I start filling up basins of water and getting rags to wash it with and looking for a hosepipe as soon as I start the rain will start again. My car is caked in mud, it is pretty filthy on the inside too and the mats are covered with mud that came from the boots of weary and wet feet. It's sort of my own fault. I went to festival. Of course I should have known better, but we all should know better. Yet it's one of those things we still do.

The fact that the festival was badly organised has nothing to do with the weather. They couldn't have helped that. The festival was badly organised because it was organised by crusties, which is sort of a disability and you shouldn't really hold it against them. However I don't know which bright spark decided to put the carpark in the bog but they should have anticipated that this would inevitably lead to problems. They also could have thought about providing bins or running a hose up to the campsite. The organisers also could have communicated amongst themselves about the bands playing and the running order and let the bands and audience know who was on when. But crusties will be crusties I suppose.

Don't get me wrong certain things were well organised. They had tents and eventually on Saturday they had power. How was the music? I'm not sure. When we arrived on Saturday we were a bit later than expected. Let's put it this way, we now know that you don't get to Elphin from Galway via Sligo. They had trad on in two of the tents but apparently the generator had run out of diesel so it was all acoustic. We also heard the next morning that somebody had stolen the men's urinals and set fire to them. The crusties had decided on compost toilets of course and the men's urinals were actually small square bales of straw. Somebody stole them and used them as seats first. They were then set on fire and then beaten with sticks in an attempt to put them out.

We got to bed early enough on Friday night and the next morning had the pleasure of getting up and having to deal with people who were off their heads. Not being in such a state ourselves Fiona and I behaved like sensible adults and went for a drive to Lough Key Forest Park. Which is lovely and has a castle on an island. We arrived back on time to spend a good bit of the rest of the day hanging around watching bands set up. I generally steered clear of the tents with DJs in them and stuck around the main stage. I saw a couple of post rock bands. It seems all the young lads want to do these days is play post rock. During one of the bands Fiona asked me why they didn't have a singer. I told her that it was all the rage these days. She asked why and I was sort of stumped. Lack of aesthetics I suppose. Saw a dub outfit whose name and music I can't remember and then Intinn played. Crusties, complete fucking crusties. Not a bad band, but wouldn't be my thing at all. At this stage I ended up back at the tent and passed out.

Sunday was wet. Very wet. On Friday night some tool who I can only presume was hemped up on goofballs fell on our tent and broke one of the poles. It rained heavily on Saturday night and Sunday morning and water came in, a lot of water. A hell of a lot of water. My trousers had been bundled up in the corner and they and everything in my pockets was soaked. However there was no chance of hightailing it yet. We still had a gig to play and I was counting down the hours until I went on stage so I could get offstage and leave. We packed up our stuff and loaded the car and waited.

Things started off badly for Culture Vandals who had been on one list but not on another list but they got to play anyway. However they should have been on a bit later on the bill than they were. After them a bunch of local young lads were on playing covers. White stripes and that sort of shite. I made a bet with Mark at one point that the next song they played would be Kings of Leon. I won a fiver and he still hasn't paid me. Apparently when they finished up somebody through wet straw at them and told them they were shite. Which wasn't untrue but was unfair. Their Mammies and Daddies were there watching and they were only young lads after all. The next band had a guitarist wearing and AC/DC t-shirt and a bassist wearing a Rory Gallagher t-shirt. They were quite good but I'll leave what they sounded like up to your imagination.

Then at six o'clock we went on. The floor of the tent had gotten very wet and so straw was scattered everywhere giving it a nice cowshed feel. There were no more than fifteen people there to hear us as there had already been a mass evacuation due to flooding but those that were there seemed to love it. Which made it all worth while. We even got Ivan up to play fiddle on The Latest Craze but unfortunately it was a bit hard to hear him. Which was shame. The sound was otherwise really good and they had a decent PA and the sound man seemed to know his stuff although he didn't take kindly to Neil's use of Behringer equipment. In fact he seemed to hate Behringer gear. I reckon his wife must have run off with a v amp.

But we all had great craic. Even Brian who is not known for his fondness of the wet, outdoors or crusties. Even Neil who had shown up in beige pants and fancy shoes. And even Mark who had postponed his holiday to play to just over a dozen people. But as somebody pointed out, 'Just look at Woodstock. It pissed rain there too.' 'Yes but there were half a million people there.' 'Not on the last day when Hendrix played.' Point taken. But still and all.

And so in our muddy boots and muddy pants we piled into our muddy cars and with an awful lot of revving I managed to sail mine out of the bog without getting stuck and didn't stop until Fi and I arrived back at our nice comfy house and a dog who was glad to see us. Now we just have to clean the mud off everything.