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It's been a while since I updated this, due to the awkwardness of my 56k modem. The situation is this: Usually, the cable for the modem leads to my brother's computer in the room next to mine, but occasionally I can steal it and plug it in to my laptop, which is getting on a bit and only occasionally works when connected to the Internet via its modem. In fact I'm typing this up in Notepad and I'll copy it across tomorrow morning, not that that's important as you'll be reading this far after that anyway. So in other words, does anyone care? No. Huge update coming up. I could LJ-cut it, but it's all plain text and I've decided to irritate you by taking up most of the space on your Friends pages instead. So here's the account of the trip to Donington - thanks to Paul for the transport and organisation of it.
On Friday morning, Paul and I packed our limited supplies in to his car and left at ten o'clock. Paul picked up more at his house, then we went on to pick up Ailsa where we had filled rolls for lunch - the healthiest thing I would eat for ages. The three of us were on the road for about nine hours after that, with a couple of stops (where I demonstrated my skill at Silent Scope), finally arriving at Donington Park and finding that the Campsite Plus was literally about a mile away from where the car was parked. We got our wristbands, or the Mark(s) of the Beast as I call them, allowing entry to improved bathroom facilities, but we ended up camping in the normal site due to space restrictions. After failing to find the instructions for putting up my tent, we got both of them erected anyway and trekked to the car to bring the rest of the supplies.
Yes, we got lost, and we made a good job of it. In our defence, the campsite looked completely different in the dark, and anyway, all grass looks the same. We had no map, either - it was a bit like The Blair Witch Project, but with fewer trees. We asked a few people the way back, and learned that we'd travelled to just about the opposite corner of the park from where the car was parked. We did get there in the end, though, as you can tell from the fact that you're reading this. Collapsed in to bed - well, a groundsheet and sleeping bag. Even Hall beds are an improvement on that.
The heatwave began on Saturday. Remember, if you're going camping, don't go to England. It would have been unbearable had it not been for the cold water taps to stick our respective heads under. Fortunately I could retreat to the reflective shininess of my tent, listening to the nu-metal nonsense drifting over from the stage. How anyone can possibly enjoy people pretending to be tough, torturing guitars and retching in to microphones, I'll never know.
Just before the performances that mattered started, we had a brief discussion on Satanism, mostly thanks to Ailsa. The idea that people can do whatever they want as long as it doesn't harm others seems to fit in almost perfectly with my attitude to the world at the moment, which just served to confuse me even further, I'm afraid.
The moment we had all been waiting for, then - Marilyn Manson and Iron Maiden, one after the other. Massive amounts of bottles were thrown during them, but fortunately we were too far back to risk being BOTTLED! for the most part. I'm not a huge Marilyn Manson fan, but his music is tolerable enough. The band look like something out of The Young Ones, though. After that... Iron Maiden! Now, forgive me if you're not in to them, but I'm going to witter on about this for ages, so you might want to skip the next two paragraphs if anorakiness is against your principles.
Opening with Number of the Beast, the rest of the setlist as far as I remember it was: The Trooper, Die With Your Boots On, Hallowed Be Thy Name, 22 Acacia Avenue, Revelations, Wildest Dreams, The Clairvoyant, The Clansman, Wicker Man, Fear of the Dark, Heaven Can Wait, Iron Maiden. During Heaven Can Wait they got a whole lot of people up on the stage to sing along, including a group of children that looked more like they should have been at an S Club performance. Still, good for them. Now, any Maiden fans reading this will have noticed something unfamiliar in there - Wildest Dreams. It's the single from the new album "Dance of Death", 11 tracks in 70 minutes, so about 6min 20sec a song, which seems fairly typical of them (I did warn you). Anyway, Wildest Dreams was pretty good, it sounded like it could have been from the Somewhere In Time album, so hopefully they're evolving backwards and getting to the classic Powerslave era again.
After a lengthy pause (just long enough to make you think it really was all over), they came back for an encore. As Bruce Dickinson said, "We have a curfew tonight, so we don't wake the aeroplanes up next door. That's the bad news. The good news is that we don't give a s--t about the curfew!" - and that's gone down as #79 in my Quotebook. The encore was composed of Bring Your Daughter, Two Minutes to Midnight and Run to the Hills. The best bit was at the start of Bring Your Daughter, where Bruce managed to hold a note that honestly lasted about thirty or forty seconds. He's not human. Or he must have cybernetically enhanced lungs, at least. Strangely enough he reminds me of Ian Allan, my driving instructor. I think it's the staring eyes that do it. Also, Eddie now looks like the stop-motion Terminator from the first film, and has had his brain put back in. That might be significant, I don't know.
I had the cunning plan of going to the cash machine right after Iron Maiden had finished, so we hurried out to the accompaniment of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", only to find that it had run out of money. By this time I only had about £10 left, but it wasn't exactly desperate as I had food in the tent.
Sunday was much cooler, the weather was actually bearable. We sat and played cards rather than just sleeping all day, which was an improvement. I spent two fun-filled hours in the queue for the cash machine, only to have it break down when I was three fences away from it. It wasn't that bad, though, I got talking to a few people, and it passed the time.
We saw Less Than Jake at six. I'm a fan of their music, as is![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amaunet, but I was really disappointed by the lead singer's attitude - just the same as a nu-metal band, constant swearing and no real signs of intelligence at all. They did play "All My Best Friends are Metalheads", though, known to me as The "Incredible Crisis" Song.
We abandoned the plan of seeing Audioslave in favour of seeing the hilarity that is the South Park film in the makeshift cinema, as the rain was beginning to come down by then. And it must have been saving it up all weekend - it poured. The film would have been enjoyable, but quite near the end of the film the roof burst, soaking sections of the audience. Soon after that, the projector stopped working, but I don't know if there was any connection. We hurried back to the tents, which thankfully were very well waterproofed.
However, that night I was kept awake by a party going on right next to me, and of course tents have literally paper-thin walls, so I could hear everything. They couldn't have been more irritating if they had been firing rockets at my tent - which they practically were, with the fireworks screaming all night. The performance of "Living on a Prayer" was impressive, though, seeing as most of them were completely stoned and it was unaccompanied.
I had just managed to get half-asleep when the tent was hit by a football. Have you any idea how frightening that is when you're just about to get to sleep? I almost thought that I had been struck by lightning and my tent flung halfway across the field... which would have been quite entertaining to watch, come to think of it.
After that, Monday morning was spent packing up, and we managed to defy the laws of physics and indeed logic by squeezing the sleeping bags and tents in to those tiny bags again. I think on the journey up I was beginning to hallucinate with my ears, if that's possible. I kept on hearing Celtic music and that noise a phone makes when you leave it off the hook for too long. Also, I seem to remember being referred to as a "sponge" at some point during the weekend, but I can't remember why.
Finally arriving back at Paul's house and having some difficulties with the mobile phones despite me having learned how to use mine during the weekend, we walked up to the Dunblane Hydro and met my dad and my German, who I have on loan for a month, give or take a couple of weeks. His name is Justus, and I've already begun educating him about Britain - explaining neds to him, and he was very surprised when he was informed that Mars bars could be deep fried. Also, he's been introduced to Strong Bad and Red Dwarf. We got home after a chip shop meal in Stonehaven, and I collapsed in to bed almost immediately. Which I'm about to do just now, in fact. Good night, all.
On Friday morning, Paul and I packed our limited supplies in to his car and left at ten o'clock. Paul picked up more at his house, then we went on to pick up Ailsa where we had filled rolls for lunch - the healthiest thing I would eat for ages. The three of us were on the road for about nine hours after that, with a couple of stops (where I demonstrated my skill at Silent Scope), finally arriving at Donington Park and finding that the Campsite Plus was literally about a mile away from where the car was parked. We got our wristbands, or the Mark(s) of the Beast as I call them, allowing entry to improved bathroom facilities, but we ended up camping in the normal site due to space restrictions. After failing to find the instructions for putting up my tent, we got both of them erected anyway and trekked to the car to bring the rest of the supplies.
Yes, we got lost, and we made a good job of it. In our defence, the campsite looked completely different in the dark, and anyway, all grass looks the same. We had no map, either - it was a bit like The Blair Witch Project, but with fewer trees. We asked a few people the way back, and learned that we'd travelled to just about the opposite corner of the park from where the car was parked. We did get there in the end, though, as you can tell from the fact that you're reading this. Collapsed in to bed - well, a groundsheet and sleeping bag. Even Hall beds are an improvement on that.
The heatwave began on Saturday. Remember, if you're going camping, don't go to England. It would have been unbearable had it not been for the cold water taps to stick our respective heads under. Fortunately I could retreat to the reflective shininess of my tent, listening to the nu-metal nonsense drifting over from the stage. How anyone can possibly enjoy people pretending to be tough, torturing guitars and retching in to microphones, I'll never know.
Just before the performances that mattered started, we had a brief discussion on Satanism, mostly thanks to Ailsa. The idea that people can do whatever they want as long as it doesn't harm others seems to fit in almost perfectly with my attitude to the world at the moment, which just served to confuse me even further, I'm afraid.
The moment we had all been waiting for, then - Marilyn Manson and Iron Maiden, one after the other. Massive amounts of bottles were thrown during them, but fortunately we were too far back to risk being BOTTLED! for the most part. I'm not a huge Marilyn Manson fan, but his music is tolerable enough. The band look like something out of The Young Ones, though. After that... Iron Maiden! Now, forgive me if you're not in to them, but I'm going to witter on about this for ages, so you might want to skip the next two paragraphs if anorakiness is against your principles.
Opening with Number of the Beast, the rest of the setlist as far as I remember it was: The Trooper, Die With Your Boots On, Hallowed Be Thy Name, 22 Acacia Avenue, Revelations, Wildest Dreams, The Clairvoyant, The Clansman, Wicker Man, Fear of the Dark, Heaven Can Wait, Iron Maiden. During Heaven Can Wait they got a whole lot of people up on the stage to sing along, including a group of children that looked more like they should have been at an S Club performance. Still, good for them. Now, any Maiden fans reading this will have noticed something unfamiliar in there - Wildest Dreams. It's the single from the new album "Dance of Death", 11 tracks in 70 minutes, so about 6min 20sec a song, which seems fairly typical of them (I did warn you). Anyway, Wildest Dreams was pretty good, it sounded like it could have been from the Somewhere In Time album, so hopefully they're evolving backwards and getting to the classic Powerslave era again.
After a lengthy pause (just long enough to make you think it really was all over), they came back for an encore. As Bruce Dickinson said, "We have a curfew tonight, so we don't wake the aeroplanes up next door. That's the bad news. The good news is that we don't give a s--t about the curfew!" - and that's gone down as #79 in my Quotebook. The encore was composed of Bring Your Daughter, Two Minutes to Midnight and Run to the Hills. The best bit was at the start of Bring Your Daughter, where Bruce managed to hold a note that honestly lasted about thirty or forty seconds. He's not human. Or he must have cybernetically enhanced lungs, at least. Strangely enough he reminds me of Ian Allan, my driving instructor. I think it's the staring eyes that do it. Also, Eddie now looks like the stop-motion Terminator from the first film, and has had his brain put back in. That might be significant, I don't know.
I had the cunning plan of going to the cash machine right after Iron Maiden had finished, so we hurried out to the accompaniment of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life", only to find that it had run out of money. By this time I only had about £10 left, but it wasn't exactly desperate as I had food in the tent.
Sunday was much cooler, the weather was actually bearable. We sat and played cards rather than just sleeping all day, which was an improvement. I spent two fun-filled hours in the queue for the cash machine, only to have it break down when I was three fences away from it. It wasn't that bad, though, I got talking to a few people, and it passed the time.
We saw Less Than Jake at six. I'm a fan of their music, as is
amaunet, but I was really disappointed by the lead singer's attitude - just the same as a nu-metal band, constant swearing and no real signs of intelligence at all. They did play "All My Best Friends are Metalheads", though, known to me as The "Incredible Crisis" Song.We abandoned the plan of seeing Audioslave in favour of seeing the hilarity that is the South Park film in the makeshift cinema, as the rain was beginning to come down by then. And it must have been saving it up all weekend - it poured. The film would have been enjoyable, but quite near the end of the film the roof burst, soaking sections of the audience. Soon after that, the projector stopped working, but I don't know if there was any connection. We hurried back to the tents, which thankfully were very well waterproofed.
However, that night I was kept awake by a party going on right next to me, and of course tents have literally paper-thin walls, so I could hear everything. They couldn't have been more irritating if they had been firing rockets at my tent - which they practically were, with the fireworks screaming all night. The performance of "Living on a Prayer" was impressive, though, seeing as most of them were completely stoned and it was unaccompanied.
I had just managed to get half-asleep when the tent was hit by a football. Have you any idea how frightening that is when you're just about to get to sleep? I almost thought that I had been struck by lightning and my tent flung halfway across the field... which would have been quite entertaining to watch, come to think of it.
After that, Monday morning was spent packing up, and we managed to defy the laws of physics and indeed logic by squeezing the sleeping bags and tents in to those tiny bags again. I think on the journey up I was beginning to hallucinate with my ears, if that's possible. I kept on hearing Celtic music and that noise a phone makes when you leave it off the hook for too long. Also, I seem to remember being referred to as a "sponge" at some point during the weekend, but I can't remember why.
Finally arriving back at Paul's house and having some difficulties with the mobile phones despite me having learned how to use mine during the weekend, we walked up to the Dunblane Hydro and met my dad and my German, who I have on loan for a month, give or take a couple of weeks. His name is Justus, and I've already begun educating him about Britain - explaining neds to him, and he was very surprised when he was informed that Mars bars could be deep fried. Also, he's been introduced to Strong Bad and Red Dwarf. We got home after a chip shop meal in Stonehaven, and I collapsed in to bed almost immediately. Which I'm about to do just now, in fact. Good night, all.
