Secret garden party is an eclectic, ridiculous boutique festival where imagination laughs in the face of reality and should spit on his shoe should the two ever meet. The glorious media tent resembles more of a high class shed, while many a skinny jeaned front man patrol the grounds unnoticed by heavily costumed punters safe in the knowledy they’ll be no dodgy photo opportunities and everything runs about an hour behind schedule. An exclusively anti-corporate not for profit bash staged in a landscaped garden where all the necessary tools for creative debauchary are set out for you and bananas hang from trees like edible symbols of opportunity, only duck taped to a twig.
For many, yours truly included, the party provides the ultimate big kids playground where one can smother herself in glitter, revel in the ‘security guards’ relaxed behaviour (hell one instructed my mate who was running the “Bubble Wrap Ballroom” to cover his supervisors car in the gratifying packaging) and catch a few z’s on a haystack. But inbetween bouncing to new Mancunian band Kid British (you can check them out here http://www.myspace.com/kidbritishmusic) perform an impromptu gig and marvelling at a cast of beer clutching actors perform scenes of Hamlet around the 100 acre site, I couldn’t help but notice a reoccurring trait in the majority of my fellow party people…Many were aging lunatics.
They had come in droves out of pure necessity to forget about rising fuel prices and potential in-laws; the literal cream of the ‘mortgage-rocking’ crop could finally release their inner joker that had been so cruelly suppressed behind an air-conditioned desk since New Year’s Eve.
Example one. Take this fellow named “Courage”, a wonderful gentleman of companionable nature and affable heart (ok I see you might not get that from the eye rolling, but work with me here…). He considerably aided my pal and me in turning our sail-in-a-borrowed-dinghy mission into a reality, and relished to tell all that the green embroidered blanket he carried (not pictured unfortunately) had been by his trusty side since birth.
...He’s a PHARMACUTICAL SALESMAN!
helpful equipment for our mission. Not nearly so aesthetically humorous but perhaps more indicative of what the average ‘camping lunatic’ we were dealing with looks like on a day-to-day basis. She tickled us with anecdotes of her flat mates blasé reaction at been having found to be related to the discovery of a used condom (oh the larks!), and tales of past employment at ‘The Disney Store’ to the point I just wanted to squeeze her tight and take her home. What’s the poor love do now?
Works in ADMIN at CUSTOMS & EXCISE!
Although physically less than a hundred miles from home, there was something about the place that seemed to have been tailor made to mentally transport this breed much further into realms of pure escapism than any last minute deal to Majorca could promise. Amongst others I found were an acid tripping city banker and poem spouting I.T executive…was it the smug knowledge of a reduced carbon footprint that drew them here? Or the power of a large group of frustrated spirits, let loose in a dressing up box and all on a comfortable monthly payroll? Many like this chap attired himself overtly to ‘shock’:
Suggesting this weekend was merely to postpone that midlife crisis. Of course not everyone shared this brothers enthusiasm for toilet paper, a light cluttering of gay lords overdosed on bottles of two percent fizzy pop meandered on the grassy banks; some dickheads even attempting to sabotage our dinghy with the glass remainders.
Gotta hand it to the loons, they knew where to party. This guy sums it up quite nicely...
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