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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To be at a festival and wish everyone would just grow up!?

180 replies

bumbleclat · 26/08/2016 03:03

Each year I'm 'lucky' enough to be given free tickets to a very well known music festival which runs over four days (live nearby so organisers give local residents tickets to keep them sweet).

It's your usual hippy fest with lots of workshops, vege food, healing yurts and a variety of music.

Each year I go, I become more bored of the cliche hippydom, for example faces full of glitter, posh white youths wearing ironic vintage clothes, dub beats in the background, overpriced drinks, pious recycling regimes, home educated children called 'Oak' and 'Cloud' being wheeled around in metal wagons with fairy lights around the edges at 3am, the constant wondering from tent to tent, the illusion of freedom and the naive art work everywhere.

I must be getting old but these events just don't do it for me anymore, I see men and women in their fifties and sixties wearing fairy outfits and elf ears and it just gives me this, 'oh just grow up' reaction inside.

I dislike this judgemental threatened Katie Hopkins like beast that seems to rise up inside me each time, but I think next year I will just sell my much coveted ticket to a more appreciative visitor.

I am BU aren't I!?

OP posts:
pictish · 26/08/2016 07:45

I'm not a dress-up person myself, but I don't mind that other people do. It makes the whole thing more colourful for me to see.

springwaters · 26/08/2016 07:47

It has been raining heavily In leeds for 24 hours- so wouldn't like to be at leeds fest. Lot so girls in wells, short shorts and crop tops on their way their yesterday. I assume they had come from the warm south as it has been grim up North all week.

EnglishGirlApproximately · 26/08/2016 07:49

Yadnbu op. I used to live festivals but gave up when they became overrun with people posing for selfies in hunter wellies and hair flowers going to get on telly, not giving a shit about the music. I don't really see them as decent music events any more, it's more about celebrities, fashion and media coverage.

cathyandclare · 26/08/2016 07:58

Have got a house full of muddy, glittery girls who staggered back from Leeds in the early hours. Clearly too wet for camping! It gorgeous this morning so hoping it'll dry out a little.

Wellywife · 26/08/2016 07:59

Went to Glastonbury twice in my teens/twenties and took my little sis. (I'm sure it wasn't that expensive then). Had a great time but wouldn't want to do it again. Same as I don't get the urge to go see bands anymore. Things change!

Agree with PPs, OP. Give your tickets to some local sixth formers!

herecomesthsun · 26/08/2016 08:12

I think that if my kids want face paint/ wings/ fancy dress, I can just provide my own and some music and they can dance round the garden. Although we will have been to a couple of festivals this year.

multivac · 26/08/2016 08:19

Andys records

Ha! That places you.... Wink

EnglishGirlApproximately · 26/08/2016 08:21

Ha, does it? ShockGrin I have no idea if they were a chain or not! It definitely ages me though ....

TinyTear · 26/08/2016 08:22

Festivals for me only the good old ATP in Butlins...

Forgetmenotblue · 26/08/2016 08:23

Yanbu Op. I also grew up in a hippy town in the West Country and cannot abide all the festival bullshit or anything new age ish. It's really tiresome.

Also don't like Disney, cuddly toys or theme parks or cruises.

multivac · 26/08/2016 08:23

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andys_Records

ghostyslovesheep · 26/08/2016 08:26

Mushroom Hmm giving a baby a name in oppressive as it implies ownership you awful person!

I'll give u festivals op - cornbury was a hysterical social experiment filled to the brim with trustafarians called Tarquil and toties trying to be cool

Teds on the bed though 🙁 I have one - he's 50 and I have loved him all my life

EarthboundMisfit · 26/08/2016 08:29

I've not fancied a festival since my early 20s.

celeste83 · 26/08/2016 08:31

Fesitvals are a melting pot for hipsters. There is a fesitval in the village i grew up. It started out as a village festival ten years ago but has escalated into an overly expensive festival that locals can no longer afford (this year they apparently doubled the price of villagers ticket prices) and it now seems to attract mainly an affluent crowd from London instead. Hipsters wearing slogan shirts, straw trilby hats, sitting on towls sipping champange. Just try and not let others distract you and just try to enjoy yourself.

SoupDragon · 26/08/2016 08:31

clearly the OPs definition of "grow up” means "become a dull fucker"

Lifeisontheup2 · 26/08/2016 08:32

I went to my first festival last weekend aged 50+, ok it was rewind but still.... I had a fabulous time but I did take a chair, waterproofs, warm clothes and paid for posh loos.
It was always the loos that put me off aged 18 so I was obviously middle aged even then.Smile
What I did judge was the women pulling bags of wine out of their knickers where they'd smuggled it in. None too clean either so I wouldn't have fancied drinking it.
All of us in my group were a bit judgey about that, you can obviously afford the ticket so don't sneak drinks in and getting so pissed you fall on top of complete strangers does get less and less attractive the older you get.

HobnailsandTaffeta · 26/08/2016 08:41

Violet are you in Byron Bay, or the weed Mecca near there?

I had a lovely naked massage by an ageing hippy there who afterwards informed me he was actually a plumber for his main job.

allnewredfairy · 26/08/2016 08:41

If it's Reading you're on about OP I'd be flogging my tickets to someone else. Dsis has gone this year so I took a look at who was playing and hardly recognised any of them. Misses point completely and shows age

CombineBananaFister · 26/08/2016 08:45

Andys Records!!! Grin awesome.

I'm sort of with you OP but not because I have anything against oldies like me being hippies, its just the fakeness now and the genuine music fans being priced out by those just wanting to be seen in the 'right place at the right time'.

Some of these flower-farieywing wearing newbies who are 'at one with nature and their fellow human being' are the very same twunts, who come Monday morning, put their objections into the council about a Homeless Help centre being built in their leafy district and would trample over you for the last spot on the swim team for their offspring. Not all, but some.

Be a Hippy but BE one, don't just look the part Wink

Birdsgottafly · 26/08/2016 08:47

""It has been raining heavily In leeds for 24 hours- so wouldn't like to be at leeds fest. Lot so girls in wells, short shorts and crop tops on their way their yesterday. I assume they had come from the warm south as it has been grim up North all week.""

My DDs and their friends/children 16-40 years old, went the V, last weekend. All with shorts/makeup, but see-through poncho's, last week, it didn't matter that it rained.

My middle DD was never interested in festivals, but went because she's had a break up, she now wants to do Tomorrow Land.

I'd love to go, but at 48, I'd stand out. I'm jealous that they got to see Faithless and Example, in the same day.

I've done 'festivally days out', this year, eg the African Oye, because I haven't been well. They're a great day out. We dressed my GC up as Pebbles, from the Flinstones.

OP don't go again, you probably bring down the mood. There's always a few people who you wonder why the hell they're there.

I've watched the complete series of Monkey life, whilst being seriously ill since November. I'd like to go, when I'm well. I've watched them grow up on the television, their backstories, births, deaths etc. Do I really need a child to drag (spoil) the day, after paying to travel from Liverpool to Dorset and a B&B?

It's very sad people who do all this judging and closed thinking.

tootsietoo · 26/08/2016 08:47

It's the over-commercialisation that gets me. I went to Carfest a few years ago (I grant you, perhaps not quite like some of the music festivals) but I felt like a battery chicken herded into a shed to have my purse emptied (sorry metaphors not quite working) - the ticket price and the vintage cafes and the jamie's takeaway and so on.

Birdsgottafly · 26/08/2016 08:49

""What I did judge was the women pulling bags of wine out of their knickers where they'd smuggled it in""

Luckily my boobs are big enough that I can tuck mini bottles of rum under them.

Tinklewinkle · 26/08/2016 08:49

I live near a festival and I love it.

But the desperate attempts to be quirky in glow in the dark face paint, shorts, wellies and garlands of flowers is a bit sad.

I just go for the bits I like, then go home. Never in a million years would I camp up there

FoxesOnSocks · 26/08/2016 08:58

Mushroom hmm giving a baby a name in oppressive as it implies ownership you awful person!

You're right. Sorry. They don't have a surname though.

Hold on: Andy's Records was a chain Shock.

mumandgran61 · 26/08/2016 08:59

once, the sensible, middle class woman with a hippie heart is a perfect description of how I feel (if you add older to the list). And I'm off to a festival today - can't wait! No wings, glitter or elf ears, but the temptation to get them today is great just to royally piss off the 'killjoy ' OP Grin