Firetop

So the weekend was a bit of a heavy one with VIP tickets to the annual dance festival ‘Global Gathering’ to be enjoyed on Saturday. Now in its sixth year, ‘Global’ takes place annually just outside of Stratford-on-Avon, at an old airfield near the village of Long Marston. As luck would have it, there are some Pesketts in that neck of the woods, so ‘Suzie_Q’ and I had somewhere local to stay (Bidford), and marvellous hosts my Aunt and Uncle were too; even insisting on picking us up from Global at whatever time of the morning we liked - which turned out to be the slightly earlier 2:30am (it rained). Thank god we didn’t choose to walk.

We arrived at ‘Global‘ at about 6pm on Saturday, nobody searched my bag which I found a bit odd because I, and many others, could have carried anything in there. Apparently the sniffer dogs are trained not to pick up on Sausage Rolls and bottles of water though, with a copper choosing to detain a man with no bags at all - he was licking his lips and acting oddly which is a good enough reason to suspect him of dabbling in illegal substances. Not sure they were overly effective, plenty of blokes wandering around talking about Charlie (who maybe just became separated from all his friends?) people have their ways of getting stuff in – most toilets had evidence of that.

I would have preferred not have been given a PINK arm bracelet to signify our VIP ticket holder status but there we go. VIP tickets weren’t really ‘VIP’ but they gave certain privileges such as jumping the queue on arrival and a ‘beach party’ area with dedicated bar (with Bulleit!), tent and toilets. It was an extra £25 a ticket to get there and was worth every penny just to escape to somewhere relatively normal and less crammed. Some strange guys there dressed as refuse collectors with ‘Ave it large’ written in marker in the back of their luminous yellow jackets, and a Mr T look-a-like. Kept bumping into the same guy in the queue for the toilets (an Iranian IT guy called Reza from London) bit weird. Hed Kandi were playing in the VIP area, quite funky house, very enjoyable, always like their nights down in Brighton at the Honey Club.

Spent much of the evening in the God’s Kitchen tent dancing to the likes of Ferry Corsten and Paul Oakenfold. Was a bit disappointed by Paul, didn’t really give me anything to get uplifted about, mainly banging house without the vocal build ups we crave. Suzie_Q and I both enjoyed the last time we saw him at Heaven a couple of years back, left half way through his set this time to discover the heavens had opened outside. Thank god for waterproofs and being sensible old folk… had to feel sorry for the bikini clad girls with fluffy boots getting drenched (well, a bit sorry but not much…).

My best memory was dancing to some Jungle in the ‘Radio One Extra’ arena (because it was too small to be called a tent). A fantastic MC accompanying DJ Flight (she was great too), only around fifty or a hundred people dancing there but everybody was loving the old skool – takes you right back. A couple of guys (pictured) had even gone to the trouble of putting luminous orange and green hand prints on the t-shirts and shorts (with matching laces and head bands of course) - they really had to be seen to be believed! Preferred DJ Flight to DJ Hype who was the last ‘big name’ act we saw that evening.

The only thing worse than the smell of Amyl Nitrate which pervaded every single tent we went to (among with other smells which I don’t detest quite so much), was the traffic we had to put up with that weekend. On Friday night the M25, M40 and A34 were both screwed requiring a fifty mile detour and resulting in a five hour journey to Bidford that is normally half that. Wasn’t much better on Sunday night coming back – another four hours after more detours to avoid the M40 and M25 yet again

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