so one of my absolute highlights of the new years festival was my wife… no, but above and beyond the usual reasons for loving and liking her – two moments stand out:

the first is the moment of new years when we were backstage and sitting next to slash behind a giant speaker box semi trying to avoid the whole run-around-and-hug-perfect-strangers (perfect sweaty rained upon strangers who have been partying it up since 7 hours ago to be more precise) vibe and just watching people (as we like to do in a very non-stalkery way) and then suddenly val got up and when i realised what she was doing i quickly followed – she walked across to this middle-aged black lady security guard who was manning (womanning?) the backstage tent entrance (and i imagine in the midst of a very largely white and predominantly young school/student crowd feeling pretty lonely and out of place and just doing her job) and gave her a huge Happy New Year hug which i was able to follow.

the second moment was maybe an hour or so later when an electro band called ‘The Kiffness’ (wot a name) had been playing and the beautiful val and i had been right in the middle of the crowd action dancing it up, going completely off until she had this idea to start sandwiching people so firstly we went up to the band organiser Tyron and his girlfriend Lucy who were vibing and started techno dancing right on either side of them just going off – then we moved onto Vestman and did the same to him and then val spotted these okes at the back of the crowd who were just watching and not vibing and so we headed over and techno-sandwiched them and then did i think one more group of people (all who started vibing it up after we left which was great) and so i was completely finished and just trying to breathe and val looks around and comes up to me and says “do you have one more in you?” (i didn’t really, but i knew this would be an important one so i asked who) and she indicated the four black security guards sitting just inside the back of the tent (we talking 3000 people capacity tent so quite a vibe) and she added “they keep breaking out these little half moves so i know they want to dance so let’s go do it” – so i agreed and we ‘innocently’ mosied on up to them and each took one end of the line of chairs and just started going off

[to be honest there was a second of panic as i gave my guy such a fright he jumped back and in hindsight i am quite glad he didn’t pull a gun on me or kung fu me to the ground breaking two ribs in the process, but it passed quickly]

and so one by one we vibed the guys and they were semi amped and then we got them to stand and then they started dancing with us and the one dude pulled up the other guy and they had a bit of a dance party at the back – it was super rad

always on the lookout for the lost and lonely and unjusticed and excluded… that’s my girl, and those two fairly brief moments were some of my absolute favourite highlights from the two day music event…