What to take?

Getting ready for a metal festival is not as easy as you might think. It's not enough to throw a few band t's into a bag with a pair of jeans and head off into the great blue yonder.

First off you have to make sure that the t's are the right t's. I'm wearing my favourite one this morning. I picked it up when Rammstein played Brixton Academy in 2001. (Yes it is 10 years old and yes I do still wear it... !). Anyway, it's not going with me because it's not the right kind of band. Rammstein are classified as industrial metal and that's not what's going on this weekend. So I need to work out which shirts to take. I've got a 1349 one somewhere... but where?

Then there's the footwear. I'm not sixteen anymore and I'm not daft enough to want to spend a weekend on my feet, in a potentially muddy field in the middle of England, wearing heels. I love the boots you see in the image, but there is no way, absolutely no way, that you'll get me into them for a gig like this. I neither have the desire to go around stumbling over slightly inebriated celebrants, stomping on someones hand as I pass by with extremely pointed metal heels nor do I fancy putting holes in the sodden grass as I try to make my way to the portaloos at the back. (Nice huh?). I don't want to spend the day removing lots of accumulated litter from the heels either. (Although this could be useful went around collecting used plastic beer glasses... in previous years kids have been seen running around picking them up so they can trade them in for beer tokens). So, I will not be taking these boots with me K. Don't ask!

Once that's all sorted out I need to think about cameras. There's no way I'm going to try and take in an SLR. I've had a camera taken off me on the way in to a gig before and although, I got it back at the end, I spent the whole time worrying about it. It all seems a bit daft in this day and age when compacts can are getting better and better, but I'm not going to complain too loudly about that one or they'll stop me taking the lumix in too. So I better spend part of today re-familiarising myself with that and making sure the batteries are fully charged.

We've got camping tickets, (it comes included with the full festival one), but I'm past the stage where I want to spend the night on the ground listening to the goings on in the tent next door. So will be sloping off to hotel each evening for a decent night's sleep. Does mean that there's nowhere to store much stuff on sight though. So I need to organise something to sit on. By Sunday there will lots of discarded chips and squidgy noodles lying amidst a blanket of half cooked onions and half eaten burger buns on the ground, so this really is important. It should be waterproof too. It may be dry, but torrential downpours have been known. Dual function means less to carry.

Trying to keep warm can be an issue too. Do I take hoodies or a fleece? Fleece is uncool but warm. Today, in the light of current events, hoodies seem even less cool. Last night I heard someone suggest that anyone wearing a hoody should be automatically arrested. Different kind of hoody though. Wonder if people can discriminate?

Anyway, had planned an early blip to give me time to do all this and now I've rabbited on for ages. Off to roll up some loo paper... the one thing I can be sure of is that there won't be any there!