Tales from T in the Park - Part 1

"T in the Park, you not too old for that?" was the most common question asked when I told people I was heading to Balado for 4 days.

The nay Sayers were full of "camping, you'll hate it . . . it will pour o' rain".

I've been before, in fact I went myself when I was having a midlife crisis and remember very little of it, except I enjoyed myself. So when nine of us headed off bright and early on the morning of Thursday 11th July in bright sunshine, I knew I'd made the right decision to go to the 20th year of T in the Park.

Truth be told it wasn't my idea, it was Jan's, who bought me it as part of my birthday present and I loved the idea so much I press ganged the kids and their boyfriends / girlfriends into coming too.

I also approached some of my pals and had an emphatic "no" from the Hanna's, a "sorry we can't make it" from the Blackstock's and a "I'm up for it" from Stevie Malcher, who eventually told Anne, once she'd had a few glasses of wine.

So here, in summary form as my highlights, observations and low points.

Highlights:

- My favourite performances were Deacon Blue, Arches, Earth Wind and Fire (who were unbelievably good) and The Killers, who totally and unexpectedly, blew me away. The boy Brandon, "done good" and owned the stage and the crowd with his enigmatic performance. I have to say there's nothing quite like a Scottish crowd to bring the best out in a performer.

- a great weekend with family and friends and a memory that goes straight into the top 20.

Observations:


- The most commonly worn t-shirt was The Ramones. I'm sure some of the people wearing them knew who they were.

- If I hear "hear we, hear we f'ing go" again, it will be too soon. I did learn however that it can be sung to ANY Calvin Harris song.

- To the organisers, why don't you have staggered arrival times? 30,000 people all arriving at once is chaos and a recipe for disaster.

- Do you really need to charge £4.20 for a beer T in the Park? Do you need to charge so much for your cans also? It's a great idea having a 'chill & collect" service, but with a captive market could it not be cheaper?

- One in three T in the Parkers have tattoos (that would be me then) One in five have more than one tattoo.

- if you want to get rich, own a chain of "charge your mobile device" vans at music festivals. At £5 for an hours charge it's serious money.

- David and Susan Donn get drunk, sorry soak up the atmosphere at every event they go to :-)

Low Points:

- People who throw objects, particularly lit flares into a packed are idiots of the highest order.

- People who urinate into pint cups and throw them into a packed crowd are disgusting and the lowest of the low in my opinion.

- I know it's camping, I know it's rough, but why do some people feel it's acceptable to drop their empty cans, pizza boxes, baby wipes everywhere? I was going to say it was like living in a Midden (good old Glasgow word), but living in a landfill would be more appropriate.

Despite the 'low points' I had an extremely good time, however I want to finish with two real low points.

The first was on the way to see Rhianna when I saw a girl in her late teens sitting curled up on the ground. She was clearly worse for ware and separated from her friends and was, bluntly, in a mess. The real horror story was that I wasn't the only one who had noticed this. As I stood there about twenty feet away, I watched what I first thought was a chancer go up to her and start to talk to her. However what he was really doing was "robbing" her.

At first I thought he was trying to just nick her lanyard with the bands line up on it, but it turned out that was just a tactic to let him see "how drunk she was" as when she offered no resistance, he took her phone and purse.

The second event or theft happened to me while I was watching Deacon Blue, as with Holly on my shoulders, some opportunist dipped my pocket and stole my wallet.

I've been fortunate enough never to have anything stolen before but I know people who have and they always say "it's not the money, it's the personal things I can't replace". In my case its wasn't the £110 I lost, nor was it the credit cards or driving license.

No it was was some very personal mementos of my wee Mum who died last year. You see I carry around a picture of her and a hand written note of all our families birthdays, which she used to make sure she didn't miss anyone's birthday.

It was that sense of loss and outrage which meant that when I saw Mr Chancher robbing a young, defenseless girl then before he could say "Here we, here we f'ing go" I had covered the twenty or so feet and was grabbing hold of Mr Chancer and making sure he didn't make off with what wasn't his.

As he handed his ill begotten gains over I was almost dumb founded when he said "well can I at least keep the event running list?" I'm sure you can imagine my answer.

Another woman had witnessed all of this so looked after her while I went and got hold of some medics.

I didn't do the above out of any sense of heroism, or bravery as I didn't realise at the time he was with about eight of his pals, so it could all have gone wrong. I did it because my wee Mum taught me right from wrong and to treat and help others, as you would like and treated.

Perhaps it was a case of one good turn deserves another, or Karma?

Either way my fortune changed when I received a phone call on Sunday afternoon.

The call came from my son, Scott's girlfriend Dad, also called Ian who called Sophie to say "I know where Ian's wallet is".

It turns out I still had Sophie's holiday insurance document in my wallet which had her Dad's mobile phone number, which meant Ally, who found my wallet had someone to call.

Ally, a wonderful BBC cameraman, was working at T in the Park and found my discarded wallet on the Saturday while filming and stuck it on top of a set of speakers on the main stage and thought "I'll sort that out tomorrow".

So while The Script and Rhianna were on stage, with my wallet, I and thousands of others stood there looking at my wallet. In fact I'm sure Rhianna used my credit card to buy her band their post gig meal from the local Nando's :-)

I was so mad on Saturday that I chose to rant on my personal Facebook page and I'm glad I did as I was overwhelmed and comforted by the messages received from my Facebook friends, who obviously understood the real reason I was upset.

Suffice to say when I got my wallet back on Sunday evening it was minus my cash, minus all my beer tokens, but I'm happy to say it had the two most treasured items in it and if you look closely at today's Blipfoto picture you'll see my wee Mum's bus pass with her picture on it.

Look out for T in the Park story two tomorrow as it turns out you're never too far from an Aila Coull supporter :-)