Fun-Fest at the IAStival
The weekend of 9th to 11th September was here at last – it was time for the IAStival down in Englandshire. A Fifth Ring posse of party-goers from the Aberdeen office packed their (many) bags and squeezed themselves onto the first of what was to be seven eventful but fun-filled train journeys at Aberdeen’s station. Mr Potter and his sidekick Asa got on at Stonehaven (I think it was platform 9¾) and all eight of us were now on board and very much in the mood to party.
Having survived the journey down, we played the ‘how much can you fit into two cars?’ game at Macclesfield station and somehow made it to the festival site itself – and what a site it was too. One huge field, several marquees including our favourite food and drink specific ones, a big stage for the bands with all it’s electronics and lighting, tent town, portaloo corner, sand covered cow ‘presents’, a load of IAS’ers (some who had obviously been there a while – if you know what I mean) and a generally great vibe. In short, everything you’d expect at any of the top festivals.
Once we’d all been labelled with our colour-coded wristbands we set off to tent town and pitched our tents. William cheated however by bringing with him a pop-up one – I think it took him longer to unpack his travel chair, but the rest of us were to have the last laugh as he tried, and failed, to fold it back down to it’s original size and shape when the weekend was over.
Wellies on, and the first stop on our ‘lets check the place out’ walk was the drinks tent (don’t act surprised) and we got mingling with the locals who were all extremely welcoming and seemed genuinely happy that we’d made the journey down south. The first of what seemed to be an endless weekend’s worth of excellent bands plucked their first guitar strings and this, interspersed with some excellent DJ’s pumping out the beats, kept things going. It was a party atmosphere that Russ Abbot would have been proud of (one for the oldies among us).
I think it’s fair to say that the eight of us got into the mood pretty quickly (the free drinks vouchers may have helped) and we partied late into both nights – the ‘silent disco’ being an obvious highlight as we went into the early hours so as not to disturb the neighbours (this essentially involved everyone wearing headphones and dancing like maniacs next to the bar).
There were also dodgems, an ice-cream van, the hula-hoop guy (love his ‘Lord of the Rings’ business card) and even a free cocktail bar (thanks to our BBN friends for that one) – what more could we want!
There are obviously many stories that I could not possibly publish on here in a ‘what happened at the IAStival stays at the IAStival’ kind of way – but they were all perfectly harmless I promise you. Dog toys, a monkey suit, Kenny the mad neighbour, the rude Scotsman (none of us), gel mouth spray, fluorescent pink bands, straw cowboy hats, ceilidh dancing to hardcore dance music, annoying couple on our train seats who got ‘removed’ (eventually), a bouncy castle, Zara Vaughan’s missing bag (with strapless bra), Percy Pigs and loads more all played their part towards an excellent weekend and I will leave it to you to use your imagination as to how.
It wouldn’t be right to not say a final, and very big thanks to all our friends at IAS and to everyone who organised it. It was a very successful and memorable event that we wont forget in a hurry – in spite of our alcohol intake.
Let’s hope they do another one – they’d better as I found a stray ‘free drink voucher’ that I need to use up and there’s no expiry date.
Andy 'Monkey Suit' Wainwright
