It’s 8am and I have had four hours sleep. My head has a small man running around in it with a jackhammer and my mouth is worse than an abandoned birdcage. There is a small redhead child outside my tent demanding (in a very LOUD voice) to know when everyone is going down to the river. I open my eyes to blue skies and remember where I am. Up the Creek. It’s Saturday morning and we are SO going down to the river…
The river is THE place to be on Saturday and if you are not there you miss out on a whole lot of action. Bikini action for the lads and six-pack ab action for the girls, Actually that’s wishful thinking. Make that mostly beer belly action. And moobs! My God, there were a lot of moobs. I remember glancing across the sand and thinking “Oh, there’s a chick topless tanning”. Only to discover it was a man. It took me about half an hour to recover.
There are also a LOT of brightly coloured floating thingies, ranging from small boats to whales and sharks (thankfully the only Breede River sharks I saw). The inventive ones bring down their inflatable mattresses straight from their tent and the clever (alcoholic) ones have floating bars. In amongst all this bobbing stuff you will find pirates, Vikings, flower children, surfers, kids and a lot of brollies. There is also an oil slick on the water and I reckon a whole lot of pee in it too. But let’s not think about that. Always swim with your mouth closed my mother told me. The sun is shining and everyone is either swimming, floating, tanning or ogling at people’s bits. All this going on whilst copius amounts of liquor are being consumed and vaguely known bands and a comedian do their bit to entertain the masses. This could be Swellendam’s answer to heaven.
After all this a nap was in order. Four hours sleep and a whole lot of sun and alcohol catches up eventually. For the first time in all the years that I have been going to the Creek I decided to take a shower. Would have been more successful at having a bath under a tap than attempting to remove shampoo under that trickle. How dare they run out of water? There’s a whole river of it 500m away! Perhaps it was the suntan lotion clogging the pipes.
That evening I saw the “R50 000 for half hour performance” Jack Parow swear at everyone whilst girls in the crowd almost threw their panties at him. WTF!! This man can’t sing, isn’t good looking and he dresses funny. To top it off, he threw up on stage. Ooooh, how very rock in roll. Even Ozzy Osbourne eating a bats head on stage is sexier than watching ol’ Jack spew his brandy and coke everywhere. Things changed for the better when Boo! took to the stage. Now it was my turn to consider some panty throwing. Chris Chameleon has to be the hottest glam rocker in eyeliner and sparkly spandex this country has ever seen. Phhwaar!! Everyone rocked out to Taxi Violence, even
Party Partner and
Lunchbox who are not huge fans. Flash Republic downright brought the tent down. That Tamara Dey is quite the rock chick and she’s not a skinny chick either which is good for us gals. Viva rock chicks who bring tents down and actually eat.
After all that excitement I hit the main bar and watched the Southern Gypsy Queens perform with the legendary Albert Frost. And bumped into
Party Animal, the sibling of
The Monster From the Blog. She was a little disappointed that
Tequila Tart wasn’t diving off the stage and rampaging through the bar, but that’s what happens when you choose to go to Faithless and arrive a day too late for all the shenanigans! What is it about the second day of partying? You can consume just as much liquor and still feel sober. There must be a science to it.
Black Cat Bones caught my attention too, but by this stage too many blue drinks had been consumed and it was time for us to zig zag our way back to our tents. Actually I could have stayed a while longer but
Party Partner had consumed litres of Titanic (the blue juice that tastes so good, gives you memory failure and stains your mouth if you drink enough of it) that there was no way he would have made it back to the campsite without tearing half the tents down en-route and getting tangled up in barbed wire. Barbed wire is not sexy, unless it's on Pamela Anderson.
By Sunday everyone has that “festivalled out” look and the queues for the egg and bacon “breakfast of champions with hangovers” outnumber the queues for the loos. After having a catch up session with
The Chick With The Boobs we headed down to the river for the last time. It wasn’t quite the same as Saturday and we had run out of money for booze so it was time to go home. My car overheated twice on the dirt road which resulted in
Party Partner,
Lunchbox and a
Tequila Tart waiting by the car for it to cool down whilst people drove past handing us bottles of water and then covering us in dust. Rockin’ end to a wicked weekend.
Til next year Creekers!
Memorable moments (otherwise known as flashbacks)
- As we turn onto the dirt road Party Partner turns to me with a Black Label in his hand and says “We’ve hit the dirt road now. I am sure it is OK for you to drink and drive”.
- Discovering that my blue “media pass” wristband was the same as the wrist bands for kids. How fitting.
- Fighting with the backstage bouncer demanding to be allowed backstage. Apparently the blue band did not entitle me to backstage privileges. Clearly it only entitled me to behave like a kid. Eventually boucer got tired of me making a scene and allowed me in. I thought I was quite clever until I realized that it was past midnight and most of the bands had left for the evening.
- Running around the festival on the Friday night swinging a bottle of tequila above my head offering it to men of my choice and asking random people to hold it whilst lighting a cigarette and telling them NOT to have any. One must be selective at all times. Perhaps I should have offered it to the backstage bouncer. Hang on, I am sure I did.
- Being labeled as Party Partner’s girlfriend by his nephew. This went down well, especially when Party Partner was passed out in my tent on Sunday morning. Try explaining that to a seven year old.
- The case of the doobious dufflebag… only at a festivals do you get a strange man going round to all the tents on a Saturday morning peddling dope and shrooms from a dufflebag. Even better was watching people pretend not to know him later in the evening.
- Rockstars are known for bad behavior and throwing up is one of them. Jack Parow threw up on stage and George from Taxi Violence apparently puked on Elvis Blue. But the most rockstar puke of them all wasn’t by a band member. The Bike Mechanic (brother of The Genie) couldn’t get out of his van fast enough on Friday night and brought up the evening’s festivities in their stocked cooler box. Needless to say we didn’t see him until Saturday evening.
- Herding a crew of small boys back to their tent at the start of the aKing set. In the dark and after copius amounts of liquor. How we got through the barbed wire fence beats me. One minute we were on the one side, next minute through it. Harry Potter has nothing on me.
- Watching some of the parents I was camping with run amok after eating some home-baked cookies. Parents rock like that … they bring the entire pantry camping with them, including (ahem) tea-time snacks.
- Driving down the dirt road like a rally driver after my car had overheated twice. I think the lads were quite impressed. The car is not so impressed. It is now staying at home until the end of the month when I can afford to replace the various bits that have come adrift.
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| The dirt road is a good place to crack open your first beer. |
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| Camping at Up the Creek |
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| The river on a Saturday morning |
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| The reason women go to the river on Saturday morning |
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| There's something pornographic about this picture |
