Thirteen things you’ll overhear at Wilderness Festival
It's back this weekend — the Cotswolds bacchanalia of unique renown
Wilderness is wild in the way that David Cameron is Dave. Sort of, but at the same time absolutely not in any way whatsoever, and quite right too. (This is not an entirely random reference, by the way — I have spotted DC at the festival on no less than three separate occasions, each time in his uniform of navy polo shirt and lobstered tan, always chuffing happily on a Marlboro Gold or twelve, often nodding along to Toploader with almost-convincing humanity.)
I mean this as a compliment, of course. There are aggressively named festivals on the continent where you return home with two new tattoos and neither of your eardrums; bizarre shamanic rituals in the desert at which money doesn’t exist but MDMA somehow still does; immersive projects on abandoned oil rigs where they give you a new name and take away all your clothes. But count me out. These days, I like my festivals to resemble overgrown village fetes, or tipsy school sports days, or the kind of 21st birthday party where the parents are somehow hippies and venture capitalists all at once, and the brother of someone who was once in Bombay Bicycle Club has brought his ABBA CDs along for the after party. Bicep at three AM, bacon sandwiches at four, and do say hello to your mother for me, Jamie, I hope she’s very well. That sort of thing.
Wilderness, which returns this weekend, is this dream in flesh and mud. And this is what it sounds like.
Image courtesy of Andrew Whitton/Fanatic
“This is usually a cracking partridge drive”
“Is hip hop karaoke still cultural appropriation if you were actually pretty classic at school?” — Somebody called Marcus who knows a great deal of the first verse to Biggie Smalls’s Juicy
“We should 100 percent start a podcast together mate”
“We’re sleeping at the main house, actually.”
“Do you have Naive by the Kooks?”
“Don’t mind them, they’ll sleep right through”, — a saucer-eyed father of two dragging his ironically-middle-named toddlers up an embankment in a repurposed garden cart, before asking for some tap water again
“Hi mate, sorry to interrupt — but I think we’ve just followed each other on LinkedIn”
“Is it still a silent disco if my shirt is this bloody loud?”
Photo by Andrew Whitton for Fanatic
“We were going to do a festival at our place, actually, but they’re still shooting that bloody period drama”
“Can you take that one again, Poppy’s eyes are in the back of her head.”
“And Olivia tells me you’re starting up your own rosé?”
“Do please sanitise the Banham after use, old boy.”
“Thanks, it’s from Sir Plus.”
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