Festival etiquette

I’ve been to a few music festivals in my time, some of which I even remember, but Easter’s Bluesfest had me questioning the sanity of a fair proportion of ticket-holders.

Firstly: people with newborn babies.

What are you doing at a music festival? Your baby doesn’t like wet weather, cold nights, loud noises, people smoking, people being unpredictable or rain. If you can’t be apart from your little darling for a few hours, here’s an idea: don’t come to a music festival. If you can’t find a baby-sitter for a few hours here’s an idea: don’t bring your baby to a music festival. I want to hear blues guitars wailing, not your baby; I want to hear tortured roots singers screaming, not your baby; I want to snigger at young adults throwing up, not your baby – and I don’t want to move up off the ground for your huge, oversized, pram that cost more than my car and doesn’t fit through the aisles. It doesn’t fit and it’s difficult to push them because music festivals weren’t designed for prams. I judge you people who bring babies to festivals. I saw one parent who encouraged their toddler to play with the completely off-their-head eccy-ed out space traveller who had just been practising ninja moves with a lit cigarette. There are many places where I feel immense sympathy for parents of young babies: planes, any form of public transport, supermarkets, weddings. But not music festivals. If you can’t see that taking a newborn to an outdoor festival where there are going to be lots of people drinking and smoking is going to cause trouble for yourself, have a thought for everyone else; people have paid good money to listen to music, not young children who are justifiably upset at being somewhere unsuitable. Yummy mummys bugger off – I can deal with you looking fabulous at cafes while your offspring sticks its filthy fingers in my butter but festivals should be one last bastion of baby-free space.

People who wear thongs or any other type of open-toed shoe including Birkenstocks.

I know it’s impossible to be warm and sexy but thongs aren’t sexy anyway. Why would you want to wear open-toed shoes to an outdoor venue where there’s complete certainty that someone who isn’t wearing thongs is going to be next to you and try out their funky moves on your feet? Also there’s going to be mud. Even if it doesn’t rain, people spill drinks (expensive drinks) and drunk blokes empty their bladders wherever they feel like it – do you really want that on your toes? Rank amateurs. Just because it’s a tea tree farm, it doesn’t make you immune from fungus, and quite frankly you deserve any festy thing you pick up.

People who take photos of every single bloody thing with their mobile phones or who talk really loudly on their phones and give you dirty looks for listening.

We’ve all taken dud photos but are you really ever going to look at pictures of the sky again? Yes, I know part of it is people who have taken mind-altering substances finding the beauty in ordinary things (like gravel) but do they have to stand for hours in the way? And if you spend more time on your phone boasting to your friends that ‘Washington is like, the awesomest performer, like you’ve ever seen’, you’re missing the performance and being a poser.