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

[bumbleclat]

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!?

I reserve the right to smirk at enormous adults queueing up to drive a pretend car around a track. I get child free adults going on the big rides, parades, characters but that to me was odd. Sorry fresh in mind as went to Disneyland yesterday. Dh and I were not that keen went for kids but it was fantastic!

I think there are different "degrees" of 'not growing up'. Some people maybe could not afford festivals/theme parks and stuff in their youth. For others its nostalgia.
But when i see grown-ups with tattoos of Sponge Bob or Super Mario

Festivals are for those morons that didn't grow out of this shit when they were 12. Surely that's what you expect when you attend one?

Toga how bloody rude are you. And using disablist comments too? Classy.

YABU for being surprised there was no loo roll but YANBU in general. I was at Leeds fest yesterday and it was dire. I'm 30 now and went loads in my early 20s/late teens but not been for about six years but it just was not worth it. Spent about £100 each on drinks and food, fell over in the mud, and then people started throwing pint pots of piss about. I enjoyed a couple of the bands but think that will be my last time!

Oh and I also saw at least a dozen people openly piss on the floor, throw up or collapse.

Alpaca for us better than Disney, as adults, would probably be a tour around Europe - Berlin, Prague, Rome etc - different strokes for different folks.

Although we are looking to take the kids with us to Berlin next Easter.

Exactly 18 us too. We took ours to Berlin in May it was fantastic. Try to go when it's warmer Berlin has brilliant outdoor swimming pools - we would swim in morning then explore city in the afternoon. Kids 9 and 7 still talk about the trip.

Kerala - what did they like? What do they talk about?

Yes indeed why go to Disneyland as an adult when you can not go and be frightfully sneery about people who like different things from you

I was lucky to be young in the lovely cheap days. I "worked" Reading for 3 years in 88,89, and 90. Got a caravan to kip in, decent backstage loos, and scheduled stops in working to see the bands I wanted in the security pit right at the front. See some amazing bands. Even got to tell the Pixies it was time to go on and got swore at. Managed to get huge amounts of beer money litter picking the empty arena after each nights last act finished. Snogged lots of roadies. Got paid a pittance. It was marvellous.

Went to one Big Chill as an adult. It sucked.

I am totally with you on this. Just grow the fuck up and put your kids to bed!!

Pffft. My first festival was Reading 90 when I was 17 and was instantly hooked. I reckon I've done another 80 since, all over this country and across Europe. I'm now 43 and will be heading off to my fifth and final festival of the year next weekend. Obviously I don't go to the same festivals anymore, and have upgraded from the tiniest leaky tent in the world to my beloved VW camper plus awning, but seeing brilliant musicians in beautiful surroundings under the stars is still my favourite way to spend a summer weekend.

I don't have kids, elf ears or wings. I feel no need to grow up.

Just grow the fuck up and put your kids to bed!!

Whilst I don't do festivals or wear fairy wings, I am SO glad I am not this boring. The day I grow up is the day they bury me :)

Iv been to two festivals when pregnant. Cannot get my head around you not taking your own toilet roll and sitting on the seat when pregnant.....or at all for that matter.

I think its the cliche that gets tiring. I used to do a fair bit of backpacking but kept seeing the same people doing the same things and everyone trying to outdo each other having a unique experience. It just felt a bit crap so stopped doing it for a while. I think wearing elf ears as a sign that you are oh so quirky and different when loads of others are doing the same thing, it seems a bit lame. People that are just into the music and having a good time, i think thats great. People that go and spend a fortune trying to look the part, its boring. I do cringe at adults wearing fairy wings and animal ears. I love Disney though and dressed up as Anna for my daughters birthday party and had fun. I really dont care if people judge me for it. If its done for yourself rather than to show people that you are someone who you arent, if that makes sense.

I am quite cross actually about the one I was at. It wasn't really a " family festival" it was themed money making event.Everything was available as a "bolt on" prices. £60 for a days waggon hire anyone.
There was no cover at all when the rain came down. Really heavy with lightening meaning the stages were cleared. Of course if you had VIP tickets (£150 on top of the £300 weekend ticket) you could use the VIP tent adjacent to the stage. And watch the proles run round trying to save themselves.

I overheard an upset teen with two small siblings on her mobile..She'd been waiting ages at the front of the queue outside to get into the festival and therefore was first in this morning with the children. However because the festival let the VIP's walk in 10 minutes early there was already a massive queue for the children's act which she probably wouldn't make the front of. So basically you had to spend a fortune or have your face rubbed in it.

Horrible commercialism. Makes the hippy ones sound great.

Come on folks, name and shame the festivals you've been at! Then us eternal Peter Pans can avoid them. A VIP tent??? At a festival? Seems to go against the whole hippy ethos surely?

I take my family to Beautiful Days and we all love it. Not overpriced or commercial at all, and you can take your own alcohol in.

I avoid the dressing up thing, but like people-watching those who do dress up. Unfortunately I'm now at an age where I prefer comfort to style anyway, sob.

I will never, I repeat never, grow up! What's so great about growing up anyway?

My son thinks festivals are shit. So do his friends.

You're not alone, OP.... I would rather chew off my own leg than be amongst twits like that!

Floisme - oh well it must be true then, if your son says so.

I only go to them because I get paid to do so. But I barely have to experience the festivals that I go to because I spend the whole time in the VIP area with clean loos, free food and champagne and then I get driven to my hotel I always feel sorry for campers, especially when the weather is shite.

I wonder if DH will let me put Cloud on our list of possible names for DC2...

Floisme - oh well it must be true then, if your son says so.
Eh?

We took the kids to Legoland in June, stayed in the hotel...at breakfast there were so many couples without kids. Why? Two nights at Legoland or a week abroad? I know which I would pick.