With mud nearing knee-height, flooded camping fields and leaking tents, it was highly unlikely that anyone would pray for more rain this year at Glastonbury. But one person did; and that person was me – despite the fact that, thanks to the rain, my tent had already leaked, I had fallen over face-first in a huge mud swamp (whilst piggybacking my son) and we already had a long muddy trek from our tent to the pyramid stage and Kidz Field. But there was decent logic behind my will for more rain at 4am on Saturday morning, and that was to drown out the porn show from the neighbouring tent…
Now I’m far from a prude – I may have become asexual and have no current want for a relationship, I may even be so rusty that I’ve forgotten how to do the business, but I have had a good innings in my past and I have at times jumped two feet into the promiscuous camp. However, this performance of copulation made me somewhat uncomfortable, given that it was louder than the Muse gig we’d seen 5 hours earlier. And it was as descriptive as a David Attenborough documentary.
Had the couple been liaising in a beautiful French accent, or even with the silky tones of someone like Joanne Lumley, then perhaps it would have been a little more tolerable, but this was parallel to the script of Deep Throat and was delivered in a thick scouse accent (and I say this with Liverpudlian friends, and as a huge fan of Margi Clarke and the Good Sex Guide she fronted). But the shrill noises made it sound like a Brookside gang bang – with shrieks aligned with the discovery of Trevor Jordash’s body under the patio. You shouldn’t have sex like that in a semi-detached house, never mind a tent. In fact, I’m surprised he wasn’t semi -detached by the end of it.
So pray for more rain, I did. And thankfully, it hammered it down so that the percussion on our tent was sufficient to drown out most of the commentary; and thankfully my five-year-old didn’t wake up. My son knows about sex – he asked and I explained, but my talk hadn’t gone past the ‘two people who love each other, fitting together like a jigsaw’ and into this arena of sex talk (I’m saving that chat until he’s six). Had he woken up, my game plan was to sing the Postman Pat theme tune at the top of my voice – this would have confused him terribly, but less so than what the drunken lady was saying to her boyfriend and why she was making a noise like a wolf.
I had attempted to avoid this scenario a day earlier, through the subtle visit to local campers with the donation of a couple of my son’s glow sticks, which was a gesture of “ok, I know I’m gate-crashing a ravers’ camping field with a child, but please accept some of his glow sticks in exchange for not having sex like you’re auditioning for ‘Fucked by a Horse’, or falling through my tent wall onto my sleeping child when you come back wasted.”
One out of two wasn’t bad I guess.
It’s not even that the family field would have been any better in terms of avoiding the soundtrack to someone’s ‘how’s ya father’ session – last year there was an attempt at a discreet romp by the neighbouring camper and his wife (well I assume it was her…), right next to our tent, but with the oblivion to the fact that sleeping bags rustle very loudly. I just wanted to shout “Mate! You’ve got four kids in there – and if I can hear you then I bet you a pulled-pork bap that your kids can…”
Given that people in relationships are deemed amorous if they get jiggy twice a week, even those people would surely want to pick two days when they weren’t in the grubbiest, muddiest, sweatiest state that Glastonbury dictates? Aside from that, the floor is bloody hard (maybe she was yelping in pain…? Or because his body fumes were stinging her eyes…). And dare I even ask what you do with the aftermath…? The showers were a good 40 minutes walk away.
If you have the energy to bonk then you have the energy to get out your tent and go and find a bush. Even up against the Glastonbury letters, or on the roof of the West Holts stage – the place is bloody massive – you don’t need to have sex right next to another family. Even knock on, unzip my tent and ask to borrow a poncho to lie on, take my roll mat if you like, hey, I’ll even pass you my son’s blow-up Minion bed if it spares his ears from hearing something that would even make Ron Jeremy cringe. But please not up against my tent. It’s just not nice.
Next year I may campaign for a new initiative: they currently have ‘piss patrol’ workers, who shout down megaphones and bang drums at anyone who ‘pees on the land’, well I think they should have sex patrollers too. If you are heard having sex by the naked ear then out comes the drum and tanhoy – “stop having sex near these innocent bystanders you filthy animals!” **bang of drum, blow of penny whistle, perhaps an old fashioned car horn in there somewhere.
So, whilst the answer to the question: ‘what was your festival highlight?’ would be “a toss-up between Skepta, Muse and Mr Fish”, my answer to: ‘what was your most memorable Glastonbury moment?’ would be: “two scousers having sex next to my tent”.
Re-enactment of Wicked Sensations aside, I will not be deterred from returning to the happiest, most magical place my little boy and I have yet to experience; roll on next year’s purchase of earplugs, and the sex patrol initiative…
Millionaire Waitress 