Oxegen Festival Survival Guide

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This post was originally written for a competition in Hotpress Magazine. I was a runner up – along with 15 others behind the 4 winners  –  and was published in the magazine. We got to go up to Dublin for my prize. I’m pretty sure my parents were away so I drove the Jeep up to Dublin to get there without telling them. I probably wasn’t allowed on the motorway with my provisional license. The prize was 100 euro. The diesel and parking probably cost more. 

The writing was, frankly, not good. The “win” was pretty much by default because there were only 3,000 entries. The competition was split between 2nd and 3rd level and there was a runner up from each province at each level. I was Secondary School runner up for Connacht, the province with about 10% of the population and probably closer to 5% of entries because we’re not all fancy folk like the ones in Dublin and have cows to milk. I don’t know for certain but I suspect competition wasn’t exactly fierce.

Having said all of that, this competition was crucial in developing my love for writing and giving me the confidence to think that someone somewhere might enjoy reading what I write. After all, if the guy who wrote My Lovely Horse, or the guy who created Ross O’Carroll Kelly thought my piece was worthy of 100 euro, I must have the stuff.

I have no idea who the other guy in the picture below is – and I never did.

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These aren’t so much reasons, as experiences from last year to help twist your arm if you’re half thinking about going this year… 

1. Crowd surfing – Everyone around is concentrating on you. If you get dropped though you’re on your own!
2. The food – My god is it shit but how else would you get away with drinking yourself into a stupor for a whole three days, spending two hundred euro on food, not taking a shit all weekend and still come back a stone lighter. You can’t argue with results like that.
3. The randomers – One guy from The Isle Of Mann stayed for 2 hours before disappearing. We didn’t see him again until Monday morning and he was supposed to be in the tent beside us.
4. The Bacardi bar – 7.50 for a drink but what a place. Trained pros behind the bar juggling, spinning, and throwing bottles as well as tossing ice onto the packed dance floor. Has to be seen to be understood.
5. The music – It wouldn’t be a music festival without the music. And in fairness it was there in spades. I was in the arena listening to top quality music for 12 hours on the Sunday.

….And the tips from my Oxegen festival survival guide!

1. Bring a wheelbarrow – Yes you’re reading it properly but if you had to lug around crates of beer for two hours before you get to put up a tent at all you’d understand.
2. Rain-gear and old clothes – I went with two sets of clothes and no rain-gear  Ended up wearing my Saturday clothes home again on Monday because of my stupidity. And they were still wet.
3. Don’t set tents on fire – We… I mean some people got in a lot of trouble (and had a lot of fun for this reason). The campsite was like a war zone in the early hours of Monday morning.
4. Pace yourself – You’re not going to manage to keep a permanent state of drunkenness so take it handy on the Friday night. And don’t drink in the arena. It’s a rip off.
5. Join an angry mob – They just go around chanting “angry mob” and generally look threatening. They last all of 4 minutes before security comes over and everyone scatters. Harmless fun.