Could a beautiful flower of love bloom if planted in the mud of a sunny festival field, watered gently with booze? Louise Gray went to Glastonbury to find out
COVERED in mud, dressed in strange clothes and lacking several hours of sleep is not how you usually want to turn up for a first date. But love can blossom in the strangest and muddiest of places – even a music festival.
Just think about it. Since
Woodstock in 1969, music festivals have been the one place where everybody can really let their hair down. People are more open to meeting someone new and more able to be themselves. You are also likely to have things in common, even if it’s that you both like KT Tunstall or share a cavalier attitude to hygiene. Plus there’s usually the addition of at least a little alcohol to the mix to help relax inhibitions.
The more I considered the endless possibilities for finding a little festival love, the more it seemed to me to be very interesting idea. And so this summer I decided to head to the mother of all UK music festivals, Glastonbury, with a date (or three) lined up through an internet dating site.
Now, in the festival spirit of co-operation and sisterhood, I feel it is only fair to share with others what I learned. T in the Park will be happening this weekend, followed by The Wickerman later this month and the Hydro Connect “boutique festival” at Inverary Castle in August, so there’s no excuse not to try some festival dating for yourself.
That’s not to say that meeting a stranger in a muddy field is not fraught with complications. First there are the mobile phones which run out, fail to find a signal or get dropped in puddles. Then there is the general crowd which can distract you with fire breathers or an enticing new flavour of cider. Finally there is the lavatory situation which, without going into detail, can delay a girl in various terrible ways.
Still, though the path to true love never does run smooth I did a little groundwork. I drafted in the help of the internet, a loyal friend and offered a prayer that the British weather would for once be benevolent for at least some of the Glastonbury weekend (I shall do the same for T in the Park) and things went better than I’d imagined.
Much as I would have liked to arrange to date one of the performers playing at Glastonbury (if you happen to be reading this Mark Ronson, feel free to get in touch), I feared this was unlikely to happen. So, instead I decided to arrange my dates online. Anyway, it gave me a good excuse to try internet dating for the first time. I had always rejected the idea on the grounds it just wasn’t cool, but going online in order to meet someone at Glastonbury seemed to make the whole thing a bit more rock’n’roll. It was also a good way to weed out potential dates by musical preference and ensure that I was meeting a man who could at least put up a tent, even if he wasn’t strictly the outdoors type.
I signed up with dating website
match.com and filled out my profile with some decent photos. Soon I was congratulating myself on the killer combination of flirting and festival chat I’d developed. It meant that the guys who got in contact with me were up-to-date on decent bands and we immediately had something to chat about. It also gave me a focus for searching the hundreds of thousands of people on match.com. Within a few weeks I had set up three dates with a TV critic, a paramedic and a financial analyst.
I was on the road to romance! Well, almost. On the first night it rained so heavily that I ended up stuck in my tent with a girlfriend, a box of wine and a pot noodle wondering if I might as well be camping in the Highlands.
Thankfully we woke the next morning to sunny spells (and, yes, mud) and set out to explore. I had the mobile phone numbers of the dates I was meeting, but the very madness that makes a festival so wonderful also makes it impossible to plan your day. I saw Gossip and The Fratellis, and at some point towards the end of the night found myself dancing with some quite strange people dressed as fairies. It was not quite the perfect partner I had in mind, and perhaps more worryingly I hadn’t even managed to track down date No 1. I never did. My chances of love with the paramedic had become a casualty of festival chaos.
Drastic action was needed, so the next day I decided to make myself a little easier to spot. I told date No 2, the TV critic, to look out for the girl in a big blue hat. He turned up in an Indiana Jones-style fedora.
Luckily in the carnival that is Glastonbury, no-one even raised an eyebrow and I recommend silly hats and stupid flags to who anyone does not want to be lost for ever at T in the Park. Having found my date, we settled down on the by-now-dry ground for a chat.
Meeting someone for the first time through online dating is a little different from chatting someone up in a bar. You both know why you are there and what each other is looking for, so the conversation tends to be more straightforward. Meeting at a concert made it even easier because we immediately had a topic of conversation and almost a sense of camaraderie having “survived” the challenges of camping.
We got on well enough to watch Crowded House together and planned to meet later, but once again the day descended into the craziness that is bound to occur when you squeeze the population of a small town into a valley with no rules, endless booze and just over 2,800 lavatories.
By the final day it was all beginning to catch up with me and I arranged for my last date to happen in the more relaxed setting of Glastonbury’s “green fields”, where the hippies and environmentalists chill out away from the main stages. So I met the financial analyst in a solar-powered tent, while wearing wellies and a sun dress. Yes, I hadn’t washed for three days, but neither had he and we had plenty to talk about from the past 48 hours. Anyway, I can always surprise him with high heels if we ever go on a second date.
At festivals like Glastonbury or T in the Park, there is so much to experience you cannot fail to have a good time, which makes it the perfect place to meet someone new whether through the internet or in the mosh pit.
Yes, it might be tough organising the logistics but the atmosphere more than makes up for that. So have a good time watching the Verve, the Kooks and REM at T in the Park and good luck in meeting Mr Right in the crowd.
RULES OF THE LOVE FESTKATE TAYLOR, a relationships expert with Match.com, suggest how best to play the festival field…
PRACTISE YOUR OUTFITS BEFOREHAND IN THE middle of a muddy field, your sartorial tastes will rapidly dwindle to, “Is it dry and can most of the stains be rubbed off?” You will not be looking your best after the first night, so make your fashion decisions before you go.
Take three different outfits, that all interchange, so you can mix and match tops. Do something with your hair before you leave, too – men, that means wash it; girls, that means create a style that will survive three days without needing attention.
KEEP CHECKING YOUR APPEARANCESTRANGELY, festival security teams seem to take it badly when people walk around carrying lots of mirrors or bits of foil, but you will need some way to regularly check your look. I recommend taking photos of yourself on your mobile. But be subtle about it, obviously. Try to find a place to do it when you know you won’t be seen.
TALK TO STRANGERSDON’T go around all aloof until you find someone worthy of your attention – instead, be friendly and outgoing with everyone. Not only does it warm up your flirting mechanism and keep it running, but you never know who’ll be watching you. We’re all attracted to open, engaging people, so be nice, even if it kills you, OK?
BE DRINK-AWAREA COUPLE of ciders in the afternoon sunshine will raise your testosterone levels (you too, ladies) and make you more confident and better at chatting people up. However, 19 ciders will lower your standards, your co-ordination and your dignity. Be aware that alcohol over-consumption will increase your chances of waking up next to a heifer considerably.
ARRANGE DATES IN ADVANCEJOIN one of the major online dating sites and you’ll be able to find potential partners from all over the country, then use the festival as a place to meet them. This way you can turn the festival into one giant blind date, greatly increasing your chances of meeting someone lovely.
The full article contains 1583 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
