Download 2012

The day before (Tuesday)


It was the day before Download 2012, Steve picked me up and we went to Tash's where she was finishing getting ready. After that we went onto Tesco's where Steve and Tash bought lots of Porridge, something I found hilarious as it just makes me think of period blood, (an in-joke from Sonisphere 2011). In tesco we ran into Jenna & Emma & Rob and I decided to get in the cereal shelf, there was great disagreement on my value, though. Later Jenna & Emma joined us for a movie night, where we watched Team America - this resulted in us attempting to walk around like puppets, poking each other in the eye and saying 'shush'. We also decided our official camp greeting would be the Team America distress signal.

We eventually went to bed, all excited about the next morning and the road trip to Download.

Day 1 (Wednesday)


We left nice and early, Picking up Alice at the train station on the way ~ I'm not so sure she appreciated my shouting with the megaphone at 8.30 - we crammed her stuff in the car and it was so tightly packed we could hardly all fit in, me & Alice were tightly packed in under everything. We arrived at Thickthorn at 9 where we met Rob, and eventually arranged to meet the rest of the convoy in Thetford- after Thetford we had a 5 car convoy, awesome music, stuff to munch and we were on our way to DOWNLOAD, excited, singing and hopeful that the weather would hold out, as we could see some sun. I had also gotten Emma to write the 'Honk if your Horny for download' Sign across my boobs, similar to the sign in the car, but more fun. We had also liberated helium balloons from McDonalds, which made the megaphone all the more fun. Shouting 'Cumknuckles' with a lungful was hilarious. Alice had a sleep in the car and Tash decided the megaphone would be the best way to wake her up when we were close to Donnington, singing the middle bits to 'My Sharona'.  When we parked the weather finally gave out and the rain started in earnest. Getting in was easy, finding a camp not so much ~ running into Scott & Ralph I discovered they were in green and it was full, (I also took the opportunity to introduce them to Steven, who was adamant I had made them up from 2010). Luke text me from red, where there was some room but not enough for our 15 odd people. We asked the stewards to open Brown camp, but they refused til morning - at this point we sent scouts to the managers office to ask him to ask the stewards to open brown,  while this was going on me ad Alice went to scout other camps, where we found a steward who told us that white would open very soon (and to keep this quiet) ~ we reported back to the group, and started to make our way to White (when it was announced very loudly that White had been opened). When we got there it was a massive free for all run for land ~ but we found space for all of us and started to set up a circle for our group. This is when it pissed down (resulting in my purple hair running and giving me a purple face), the rain washed off my 'honk if your horny for Download sign too. Setting my tent up (which took me & Luke 20 mins at Soni) took 6 -7 people and 2 attempts, Only we could make such a cock up of something sooooo simple! After a while and with my tent pretty much sorted, I looked out to find 2 strange lads randomly camped in the middle of our circle, I tried to be nice, y'know, asking if they were lesbians, if they were douches or friendly, and so on ~ I don't think they liked me, and eventually we looked to discover they had gone, so I made a start on making friends with some new people camping near us (I was nicer to these ones, but they were not in the middle of our camp). Then came the gazebo, a task which may have been simpler if me and James didn't start sword fighting with the poles, (I won, drawing first blood) and gaining disapproving looks from people who were actually trying to be useful.

Anyway, finally pitched it was time to buy donuts and make a run to the car for essentials like beer, Jager and megaphones! Collecting these I saw Ralph again ~ who wanted to hear 'IT', So I held my arm in the air and played the pre-recorded ''CUMKNUCKES''  several times over, he shouted it back to me. We both walked away with big smiles. That was the last time I saw Ralph & the last time I used the mega-phone ~ sad times!

This is how it happened, I had 20 mins to get from the parking lot to the doghouse to meet Sammy & Luke, so off I went ahead of everyone, walked straight through the front entrance (megaphone in hand), straight past all the security & stewards in the village (megaphone in hand) and met the guys ~ who took me through the mire that was the easiest way to red camp - which is where I was approached by 2 stewards and my megaphone (sitting innocently under my arm - at that) was taken! The first one, she was reasonable ~ said she would try to get it back to me, the second ~ she was a bit of a cunt (and not the lovely kind, either) getting the rule book out and all that shit. I begged for it, I explained that we had gone through soooooo much for that megaphone, but it was useless ~ I knew we would never see it again! Sad sad times! I hope something she loves is taken from her. (nah, I'm not bitter or spiteful, honest). Anyway, arriving at red camp, and a meeting with little John & big John, we soon set off  again for the village and white camp, on our way there I met a girl who said no one would hug her, so I did - she was pretty damn hot, covered in mud and wasted :D, she told me she loved me and kissed me! That was me in a good mood for a while and some of the lads quite gutted that I got to kiss the first hot chick! After that I hugged several muddy people, including a guy who made a comment that caused quite an awkward moment.....

We got to our camp in white, chilled a bit, had some drinks and went off to the village to meet Dukes. On the way I saw a very very drunk Tom, who was struggling to stand up in the mud ~ I actually ended up holding him up for sometime, while he told me how much he ''fucking loves me sweetheart, and should contact me more'' several times over, (He didn't remember any of this the next day). The rest of the night was a blur of eating noodles  (which did not taste very good - and therefore ended in Luke nagging me like a wench, about eating *rolls eyes* (Sorry, love). Mooching about with Luke, Sam, Dukes and Limara and of course, the waltzers (this was my one and only trip on the waltzers this year, which is a rare thing). We also met this awesome guy, who was adamant he was clean and sober, but was completely tripping over some green laser lights, outside a store. He was pretty funny and promised to take me away from all my friends, put his arm around me and started walking off, but then he seemed to be worried that kidnap was upsetting me, and took me back. Eventually we went back to Duke's tent for some beers, met a girl who made Maddie jokes, so I liked her instantly, also she was really funny to rip too because she was going on about he boyfriend so much! The night proved enjoyable until we were joined by a random drunk man, who had lost his tent, funny at first soon became kinda creepy and annoying. He was in fact so bad, the 3 of us bailed, leaving Dukes to deal with him (sorry Dukes) ~ it took bribery with a can of beer or 2 and about half an hour for Dukes to get rid of him. Luke and Sam left me at the edge of my camp and off they went. My intentions to crash diminished when I discovered Simon, James and Alice still sat in our camp, so I joined them and ended up talking movies, music and reminiscing with Simon about Download 2010 and Stone Sour and That moment.
I finally Crashed about 3am.

Day 2 (Thursday)

Thursday did not start well, I woke up to the sounds of rain, slept, and woke later to the same sound. I then finally moved and discovered that I had a leak in my tent and half my clothes were wet. I dug out something wearable and and laid the rest of my things out to dry (a big mistake). After my breakfast beer I made my way to the toilets with Tash, who had fallen over and asked me to do the honour of cleaning her ass, of course I obliged willingly, while Emma managed to get some charge in my phone. Later I went off to the village to meet Luke and Sam again, for further mooching, finding of people and socialising, I think I started the hunt for wellies at this point too, but being stubborn, I wanted cool ones ~ there were no cool ones left, and I definitely wasn't about to buy boring green ones or girly ones!!! After a while the lads went back to their tent and I think I hung for a little while with Limara and Dukes. When I got back to camp I received the news that my tent had 'camp aids', I tried to patch it with gaffer tape and Dukes's spare army tarps, I then went back to the village with Curtis and purchased boring plain (black though, not green) wellies ( the best £15 I spent all week). I also ran into Tom, (Again greeting him with my chosen shout of  ''Tom, you beautiful bearded bastard'' who was drunk, and had no memory of loving me so much the day before (Damn heartbreaker).

By the time I returned to the camp the tarps was off and my tent had an indoor pool (high class, there) and the reports of 70mph winds were coming in. James said I could stay in his sisters tent for the night, and I would crash with Joho the next night, however James's spare tent had a flood too. Luke offered me a space with them for the night, so again I met them in the village and they came back to my camp to help me move, during this I also discovered that all my clothes were soaked and ruined, so luckily the move pretty much consisted of my sleeping bag (thankfully un-affected) and beer, I got sympathetic hugs from everyone and off I went. Arriving back at red camp, we started on the beer, Ben came to join us ~ apparently he had stolen Frenhie's rum & Dandilion&Burdock, something he told us several times. Ben was pretty much the entertainment for the night, although he would be in trouble with the little lady for half of it, some of this lead us to the invention of the song ''Ben's kid'' an emotional rendition of the short life-span of his foetus.

''We'll be on our way back home when Ben's kids dead, we'll be on our way back home when Ben's kids dead, We'll be on our way back home, well be on our way back home, We'll be on our way back home when Ben's kids dead - Of an abortion''

We should write more lyrics! This may seem harsh, but its ok, because Ben is going to make his missus a cup of tea, when everything is done. He also came out with legendary lines such as ''You haven't met welsh Steve, have you?'' ''Well, you probably don't know him then'' ~ and grabbed my boobies, jiggled them and then just laid back down. Honestly, it may not seem much written down, but we were in tears! I decided at this point that I was going to make us all a Download highlights CD when I got home and send them each a copy, everyone thought this was a great idea (except for Luke, who can't be arsed with such things) and decided they would do the same...(ok, Luke said he would, but we all know he won''t be arsed, right!?) I have no idea what time we went to sleep, but we were excited about the next days music. Also, the 70mph winds had kicked in and it was soooo very cold, we all squished in together as much as possible, which made my fidgeting a very difficult thing to do!!! Every time I turned over, it was like doing a 6 point turn, haha!

Day 3 (Friday)


We woke up late, and I had to walk forever to the gold camp toilets, (where I did yet another bright orange poo. Sexy, right?) but today was the day the music would start, it was also the day I promised I would help Fred sneak in....

Firstly, though ~ I had to meet Joho, not easy as we were at different burger vans in the camp, however I finally saw him ~ and he was really close to our white camp site. I leapt him, Luke hugged him and he mocked Luke's beard, mocking which lead to Joho calling Luke 'Half-beard' for the rest of the festival. Having shown him where we were camping and making quick introductions to the guys in the camp, I had to leave to meet Fred.

We had grabbed Luke's ticket as we left camp, so we wandered down to the entrance, where I was already slightly late to meet Fred. On meeting him we discovered the news that the arena would open 2 hours late due to ''unstable sight conditions'' ~ we are still not sure what this means, as they did nothing at that point to make the ground any better. Our first worry, however, was getting Fred in ~ the scam was simple. Fred would take Luke's ticket to the box office, stating he had been camping since Wednesday, and that somehow his wristband had been ripped off. To work this scam, Fred needed to look like he had been there a while, so we swapped his jacket for my muddy hoodie, he took my poncho and awesome hat, and then ~ Luke, Sam and myself spent a few minutes rubbing the mud from our wellies all over Fred. 10 minutes later he returned, having blagged his way through several questions, with a weekend camping wristband (win, right ~ no, he had to give up Luke's ticket in order to get it, Luke was displeased by this ~ however, I promised him mine ~ a situation which was resolved finally without having to give it up). We still had about an hour to go before the opening of the arena, so Luke got the worlds biggest burger ~ luckily he has a pretty large mouth! I got my cup of tea,with 6 sugars ~ enough to keep me buzzing without food for a decent length of time, and we made our way to the arena entrance, where ~ awesomely I saw a very beautiful man, complete with Picachu hat and Hawaiian shirt, time to rape Joho (and stash his Ameretti and coke in my bewbs, as Is my usual technique for getting alcohol into the arena) while waiting to get in ~ good start to the day!
After quite the wait and the first few bands being cancelled, we were in ~ I made a beeline for the 2nd stage to watch 'absoulote power', losing Joho in the process, as he had gone to the Pepsi max stage, where they were actually playing. The end of 'the quireboys' sounded ok though and I stayed put for 'Terrorvision' ~ Seriously, I can't watch them enough times, they are always great. Then on to 'NOFX', by this time Fred was half a bottle of vodka down, I still had Joho's Ameretti and coke and 'NOFX' were killing it. Fred introduced me to his friend Tim, whom I greeted with ''Oh, is this the guy who needs to man the fuck up?'' ~ Always a charmer, me. (explanation, this guy had been to worried about getting in trouble to help Fred sneak in).

It was  around this time I saw my first cripple, and shouted instantly ''Crip'' (I nailed the Crip game this year ~ even spotting a couple that gave me double points)

From there we saw 'Billy Talent', I was supposed to leave halfway through to catch 'Little angels', however I was enjoying Talent's set to much (up until they gave a slot of their time to the 'Cancer bat's, whom I dislike) to leave. They were much better than when I had last seen them, but i was disappointed that they did not sing 'Pins and needles'. Next came 'Machine head' who played an awesome set, by this time I was well in the festival mood and very happy where I was. Although I was also pretty cold and wishing I had my gloves. I went off on my own for a while afterwards, to the Pepsi max stage to watch 'Soil', who had the marquee jumping around like crazy, also at the beginning of their set, a dude climbed up the side of the marquee and was running around on its roof, kinda cool. Then it was back to the second stage for 'Slash & Miles Kennedy' (amazing in 2010, watching them transported me right back to the sunny afternoon when I had last seen them) ~ This is a gig I recommend to all. Even though it was an incredible gig I was starting to get really cold and I was wondering if I could continue to enjoy it as much, and just when my doubts kicked in, those un-mistakable chords came in - and they rocked 'Sweet child o'mine', I instantly forgot the cold and sang as loud as I could ( sorry to those who could hear me).

I had time to kill after Slash, so I decided to have a mooch around the stores while everyone else watched the prodigy. I hunted for gloves (I lost my fingerless ones at the football ~ Football is clearly a very bad man) ~ and eventually bought my 2nd best festival buy, a pair of long socks, the woman at the store provided me with scissors and I made them into full arm length gloves with thumb holes. Much warmer, I went to the ice cream van where we had all agreed to meet, as had everyone at the damn festival! It wasn't the best idea we had. Luke couldn't even remember which van it was, Sam found me though and we made our way back to the camp. We were pretty anti-social with everyone, as it was so cold and wet. The 3 of us got in our sleeping bags to get warm and sang along to Sam's ipod, taking it in turns to pick songs til we fell asleep ~ yeah, we are hardcore! Also, everyone outside seemed pretty mad at someone called Charlie ~ Sammy found this pretty funny and kept telling me to stop pissing everyone off. It became a weekend long thing, apparently Charlie really isn't that popular.

Day 4 (Saturday)

I woke up Saturday to the sound of rain ~ it had become a familiar sound, and in all honesty, my heart was no longer sinking when I heard it (especially after I had bogarted a poncho from Ben ~ yay for dryness).
We again got ready for the trek through the mud and made our way to the village (where we bought important supplies, like jaffa cakes) and found that the race track was open for us to walk to the arena (No Carlube signs this year). Making our way along the track, we saw green grass for the first time in days. I can't lie - it was a shock to the system, having lived in a brown world for the last few days. We got to the arena, 3 beers stuffed in my bra (my tits cold as hell) and made our way to catch the end of Halestorm on the 2nd stage. After Halestorm we hit the vodafone tent up for Sammy, where I ran into James & Rob ~ I decided to leave with them for a while to see Ginger Wildheart. I chose Trivium over Turbonegro (Although they were good, this is a decision I now regret), before meeting up with Luke & Sam again for the epic set performed by Steel Panther. Amazing, that is all ~ There were bewbies a-plenty, a naked man crowd surfing and they sang Community Property ( I was soooo chuffed, singing this with 70/80 thousand people ~ amazing) and THEN ~ they only went and got Corey Taylor on stage with them, to sing 'Death to all but metal' ~ oh my days. I couldn't be much of a happier man.  This awesomeness, was greatly followed by 'Tenacious D' ~ who had a giant cock on stage (their fenix), a metal off with the Satan and again joining that many people singing 'Fuck her gently' and 'tribute' is a definite highlight. We also met these 3 funny as hell Scottish guys, who quickly became obsessed with Luke's cock (I think this started because of his height?) ~ one them even text the screen ''Shout if you think Luke should get his walloper out'', (sadly ~ this didn't actually appear) they were great, could have spent more time with them. The day got better than ever when I saw what was, for me the best set of the day ~ pepsi max stage, crammed into the tent, hardly able to see a thing ~ and I have literally never seen so much adoration for a man as I did when Corey Taylor came on to do his own set. Everyone was fist pumping, shouting his name over and over. Corey opened with 'Bother' (those of you from 2010 know the significance of this, and although it wasn't as emotionally charged as it had been then, it was still amazing). We got treated to a new song from Stone Sour (Taciturn), previously unheard outside the band and stunning covers of 'Comfortably numb' and 'Down in a hole', as well as expected classics like 'Snuff' and 'through the glass', he had his crowd hoping on 1 leg to 'Spit it out' ~ even in the mud, and wellies, pretty much everyone joined in. And when you thought it couldn't be anymore incredible Andy Coping comes on with some dude from Metal Hammer to present Corey with a Golden Gods award for being the singularly BEST act (for Slipknot) in 10 years of Download! Corey accepted this with the expected mixture of emotion, humbleness and humour and the marquee went insane, chanting for him well after he left. I have clearly lingered on this longer than other bands, but it really was my highlight, and Corey Taylor NEVER fails to deliver something amazing, even when he is not expecting it!

Well, after that how else could a day finish ~ other than by watching the mighty Metallica? (with a li'll Killswitch engage between ~ during which time we had a high five line, the 4 of us trying to get as many people to high five us in a row as possible). Even after I had seen Metallica play a 3 hour set last year, they were still incredible, opening with 'Master of puppets', working their way through the entire 'black' album and moving onto finish with 'one', 'battery' and 'seek and destroy'. So many people had made their way to the front, we were pretty far back and there was a sea of people on all side's of us, when they sang 'Nothing else matters' all I could see before me was a field of lighters and phone screens, and somewhere around 100 thousand people singing along ~ there are not words for it. Sadly, during this time Luke was clearly not enjoying Metallica as much as I was and for a while he was all I could hear, so I had to move away for a while, in order to enjoy the band that originally started my love of metal. I was also sad that I had to text Drew ''IFLUHDNEM'', as he was not there to see this amazing moment with us, AND THEN I discovered that Jonboy was there ~ however he was watching 'you me at six' with his girlfriend, I suspect they were the only 2 people at the 2nd stage. During this time, Luke was also amoosing himself trying to convince Sam's missus that someone from 'you me at six' had died, after Sam had commented that he felt sorry for them.
I had suggested to meet Joho after, and as we were trying to get out of the arena, Luke had made plans to meet people in the village and when I said I would go back and meet them all later, Luke totally ''Did a Jacob'' and stormed off, leaving me, Sam and Ben ~ in my attempt to go after him and check to see if Joho was there, I got smashed in the face with a camp chair, to find neither of them at the meet point. I got back to Sam & Ben and we left to go back to the camp site, on the way back we sang 'Ben's kid', got a decent Buttscratcher & Spartans chant going and had a group sing of Spongebob ~ I think this was possibly the most sociable and fun walk back of the week, everyone was in good spirits, having watched an amazing night of music. Ben wanted to go to the shop and buy Tampax for Luke, an idea inspired by my insistence on referring to his 'Doing a Jacob' as having a rag on, but although it would have been funny, we decided against it. After such a high, I was sad to receive a phone call from Steve, saying his tent had been stolen from, and we would be leaving straight after Sabbath the next night, I was truly gutted, I may have been borderline to 'doing a mini-jacob', however I restrained myself. As expected, Luke was back in the tent looking mardy as fuck, a situation not helped by my instant bluntness. I ranted and said I'd be out of his way the next night, he said 'whatever' and we sat all shirty at each other for a moment, with Sam looking uncomfortable (Sorry Sammy). However, when Luke found out I was leaving and not storming off in a piss to camp elsewhere, everything calmed down as we all realised it would be our last night camping together. Again it was too cold to be sociable and me & Sam had taken our wellies off and didn't want to put them on again (so hardcore)! So we sat in the tent, drinking and talking (and warm), entertained by the guys next to us ~ who were singing loudly and badly til around 4am and still mad at Charlie (whoever Charlie is). We eventually fell asleep curled up together. When I woke up the next day Sam was halfway down the tent, his face (sadly for him) near my arse, I was still curled up with Luke and realised that I had farted in Sam's face, I felt bad for a moment ~ then I did it 4 more times, as I noticed that it hadn't disturbed him in the slightest (again, sorry Sammy. And I did confess to him).

Day 5 (Sunday)

My first mission Sunday was to gather my things from Sam & Luke's tent and head back to White camp to rescue what I could of my things and load the car up. So much of our camp had been decimated that I could hardy recognise what was left of it. My tent was completely down, having tried to eat Emma's tent, and getting people thrown into it etc, the gazebo had joined it in a slow and painful death. But I found my way back easily enough and bogarted a breakfast beer. I snuck into Joho's tent to rape him, but to my horror he was not there. This made me terribly sad, and I set about gathering my stuff (which stank, due to having gotten soaked). Joho returned, freshly showered, so I jumped him and made him all muddy again. There were some signs of blue sky and sun, so I dug my sunglasses (given to me by Luke last download) out and slipped them in my belt. Then Steven and I, made our way, loaded up to the car, as we reached the exit of White camp I (for the first time, somehow) got my shoe so badly stuck in the mud, that I fell ~ something plenty of people saw and no one helped with, so it was up to the pure power of my leg muscles to lift me back up. I then had to take my foot out of my welly and yank like hell to get it out of the mud. This meant my sock was muddy and I removed it, before carrying on ~ by the time we got back to the car I could feel the pain in my foot, when I took my welly off there was blood everywhere. So I stole a sock off of Steven and we loaded all of our stinky shit into the car. When I got back to camp Luke and Sam were awake and sat around watching Ben, who was cooking bacon ~ such a horrible smell. And we started to plan our days bands and things, before making our way to the arena. That was the last time I was at our camp. Sad times.

Sammy wanted to see 'We are the ocean' and I wanted to catch 'Heaven's basement, this did not go to plan, as on the way to the arena Luke decided it was time have a comfy (and expensive) poo ~ heading to Blue camp there was an insane cue for the luxury loo's, so we headed off to pootopia, the eco loo (£1.00 cheaper, btw) ~ Where Luke had his poo, accompanied by a guy with a megaphone, offering encouragement to the poopers ~ cue good memories of Jacob at Red camp toilets last year. After his poo, Luke wanted a breakfast bap, I'm not sure he ever got it...?

I managed to get to the Arena in time to catch the very end of  the 'Heaven's basement' set, which sounded like it would have been great. However I was in time for 'Reckless love' ~ where I ran into Joho. Where do I start? Olli took his shirt off, and I have to say the room temp raised some, me & Joho agreed that it should be illegal for them to play without a fainting couch! They were sooooo good. I came out after Reckless finished and joined Luke & Sam who were sitting outside ~ Joho stayed in and sent his regards to 'Half-beard' (A nickname he was really hoping would stick to Luke), I sat outside with them and enjoyed the first bit of sun we had seen in days, whilst listening to 'Edguy' (another really good set). Next came 'Black label society' and then I left everyone watching 'Lamb of god' while I went off to watch a fantastic set by 'Ugly kid joe' ~ of course they played 'Cats in the cradle' and 'I hate everything about you', however, I was  pretty much chuffed as hell when they Played 'God-damn devil' (I need to see them again).

Then it was time for more festival milkshake (dime bar and crunchie ~ bloody lovely), and re-meeting the guys (where Sammy says ''you haven't got much time left, have you ~ Cheers for that love)  for a somewhat disappointing set by 'Shinedown' ~ to much from the new album, didn't play the 1 song I wanted to hear. Although this is a relief in certain aspects. 'Refused' next, don't particularly them them, but everyone else did, and I had no-where better to be at the time. Somewhere between Shinedown & Refused I had gotten food and was eating my chicken / salad wrap (I know, not festival food, right? But my festival fav, the giant Yorkshire pudding stand was sooooo far away). Then off to 'Soundgarden', who played a great set, that I was sadly not in the right mood for ~ in hindsight I was in more of a Dropkick Murphys mood but ~ Well, its Soundgarden, you know! Then back to Rise against (so much better than when I saw them at the UEA. Then the main event of the night ~ Black sabbath baby!!! I had missed the beginning and was hoping I had not missed War pigs, to my delight they played it right after I got there, and I was screaming! To be honest ,I had low expectations, Ozzy has done alot of damage to himself, he barely stands up these days and none of them are in the great shape that AC/DC are, for a band of their age. However, oh my god! Fan-fucking-tastic! So much better than I could have hoped for, and I loved every second of it, the songs, the presence, the chanting for Tony ~ not gonna lie, I felt slightly emotional! At one point I just stood there, my hand in Luke's, watching this legend prove that he still had what it takes to rock Donnington. It was over waaay to soon, I had to pee and meet Steve & Tash and leave the only place I have ever felt like I can be myself for another year. So against the crowd we linked hands and made for the far-end (and therefore least busy) toilets. We were halfway there when the fireworks started, and we stood, the 3 of us, hand in hand ~ faces to the sky, watching them (nice way to say goodbye, don't you think?).

This really lovely moment nearly cost me my pee, as the stewards were cordoning off the portaloo's, so we ran at them, and just made it, had to climb under the cordons to get out. I pointed out that this time a year ago, we were on our way to kidnap Jamie, before sitting in my tent drinking all night, and that we (at that time) would have no idea how close we would all be, a year on. Yeah, I'm kinda sentimental, sometimes.
It was a strange walk back to the meeting point, sad. No one seemed to be chanting, or happy or any of what you expect. I said goodbye to some stewards, who looked pretty much terrified, and I thanked some random people for 'Downing my load' with me, they were not appreciative of me! Finally we made it to the meeting point and there was no sign of Steve & Tash, who were actually right in front of us! Emotional goodbyes were had and off I went to the car. It took us an hour to get out of the parking lot, Steve had to get out and push the car in front of us out of the mud, and then I said I wasn't going to sleep ~ I don't think I made it out of Donnington, I came too at a gas station, got some water and passed out for what felt like a half hour doze.  When I woke up, we were pulling up at my house and it was 4am, having been determined all night that I would not get in my bed before I showered, I went straight to bed. I woke up a few hours later, in my lovely warm bed, to make a cup of tea, pee in a flushing toilet and a enjoy my (hot) Donnington black shower ~ And oh my days did I miss the tent, the lads, the mud, the atmosphere ~ in fact, everything, already!

After

Something I have not previously noted in my blog, but I feel I must, was my only real contact with the outside world. My daily handovers from Amber, which involved Zombies, inappropriateness and necrophilia (of a sort). These were a constant source of hilarity and I thank her for them! They made me cry, happy happy tears.
In the days following I have re-adjusted to reality, I have hated it, as I always do. I have drank more, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?
I have, however paid my deposit on next year and started my annoying countdown.... (current count 361 days to go).....
Also, I have learned, no-where is as fun without mud. I miss my Download friends possibly more than I miss most (of course there are exceptions, and you probably know who you are) of my regular friends, because we share something awesome. What-ever is happening in the world, when Corey Taylor tells you to hop on one leg you do it.  No amount of wind, rain and cold can ruin my spirits. I really don't care who I piss in front of and Ben should steal Frenchie's drink more often! I am sad as hell for the death of Buttscratcher and I disapprove of the new chant of 'yes! yes! yes!' ~ It's just plain lazy!
And 20 <3, still, always!

And one last note, as requested by Sammy, the 2nd verse to Ben's kid, I came up with the other day....

''We've made a cup of tea, now Ben's kids dead. We've made a cup of tea now Ben's kids dead. We've made a cup of tea, yeah, we've made a cup of tea, yeah we've made a cup of tea, now Ben's kids dead''

Also, Luke may rule the plane game, but I am king of the crip game! Right, now I'm off to make my Download highlights CD's for those bootiful men I spent the week with! <3