As a perimenopausal woman who still goes to music festivals, here are my rules for surviving the weekend

Tanya Sweeney

‘In a bid to stave off hypothermia, my friend and I were forced to wear several pairs of underwear on our heads’

June 17 2022 06:00 AM

Well, I have made it home from my first music festival in about four years. I’ve checked, and all 10 fingers and 10 toes are still intact. I’m at once exhausted and recharged. On my return home, a friend brought a tweet to my attention: “People over the age of 35 (and that’s pushing it) attending music festivals don’t realise they’re ruining the vibe and weirding everyone out,” it read. “You might think you’re living your best life but you’re actually living your most embarrassing life. Try a real ale festival instead.”

To which the only sane response is: swap out Caribou and Nick Cave for headliners like IPA and Premium Pale? No chance. At last count, I’ve been going to music festivals for (eek) more than a quarter of a century, and it looks likely that I’ll continue to weird others out and/or live my most embarrassing life.

I was too young for the infamous Trip to Tipp for Féile in the early 1990s, and the absence of this seminal rite of passage from my teenage life probably explains why I am still going to these events as a perimenopausal woman. By 1995, I had managed to make my way into the Reading Festival in the UK along with a school friend. We kipped on the floor of a flat belonging to a friend of a friend in Paddington beforehand and, after making the journey from Blanchardstown, thought ourselves as nothing less than globetrotting sophisticates. Seeing a cluster of beloved bands in quick succession within touching distance was the most intoxicating thing that had ever happened in my life, apart from the confirmation money. It didn’t even matter to us that we were eating cold chips, brushing our teeth from water bottles and sleeping on cold, hard earth.

Fast forward via time’s giant wheel to a couple of decades later, and far from developing a proverbial callus for the vagaries of the festival experience, the ‘traditional’ set up fills me with dread. A couple of years ago, I was lured to a UK festival under false pretences with the word ‘glamping’. This merely means that your tent is big enough so that you don’t have to get dressed while lying down, but too roomy to be warm at night. In a bid to stave off hypothermia, my friend and I were forced to empty out our luggage and wear several pairs of underwear on our heads.

I’ve wised up a lot since then. You wouldn’t get me into a festival tent now even if Jason Momoa himself was in there. I shell out for the nearest hotel, which may give your bank account a swift one in the gonads, but is utterly priceless in terms of saving heartache and footwear. Last weekend, at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona, we traipsed out of the site at 5am, after criss-crossing the site for 12 hours, and across the road to our hotel room. No queues, no taxis, no subways. There’s no money I wouldn’t pay for that, even if it does mean penury for months afterwards.

Now that I’m back in the saddle, I’ve been reminded of a few other fail-safe festival rules. Firstly, do as the Germans do, which is to remember that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. Pack a poncho, because you will either (a) need it or (b) won’t need it, and in the case of the latter, you can at least look at it from time to time and know that you’re the type of person that might pack a poncho. The next sensible thing to do is have a good carb-loading breakfast as though you are prepping to run a marathon, because you will effectively be walking a marathon, albeit in Doc Martens.

Speaking of sensible, there’s only one way to drink at a festival, and that’s to keep off the pints. Otherwise, you will be spending more time in the Portaloo queue than anywhere else. Bar queues are at their worst on the first afternoon, and right before a headline act. I often take off midway through a band’s last song to avoid the crowds, and it works.

Another thing to keep in mind — I say this with love, and as someone who lived to regret wearing suede heels to see Kraftwerk at a very muddy IMMA site — is to dress for comfort. High-octane glamour is too try-hard. The jumpsuit, professional smoky eye and tonged hair combo is with O’Leary in the grave.

It also goes without saying that you will have a very different festival experience if you decide to bring small children. I lost count of the number of little ones I saw last weekend, screeching and wild-eyed at 2am, in an environment full of people, cigarette smoke and noise that would overwhelm most adults. Sure, you want to tell the world (and yourself) that you essentially haven’t changed since the arrival of babies. Besides, most Irish festivals now purport to be ‘family-friendly’. Yet the truth is that navigating a vast festival site and keeping yourself fed, watered and your bladder empty takes on a whole other layer of complication/grimness when you’re also doing it for a toddler or baby. Besides, let them discover Caribou or Nick Cave on their own steam.