Field of dreams
From fearful teen to free-spirited at 50-ish, Sarah Moolla on her love of festivals, fields and friends
I’d love to tell you I started my festival life as a devilmay-care, stilt-walking, fairy-winged child who slept under the stars, battled her way to the front, and knew all the words to every song. But that’s not how it happened. I was 18, at Glastonbury and scared witless. My pal and I had caught the bus there, paid tuppence to get in, and then I spent the next two days wide-eyed and terri ed.
I’d never seen the like. Cars raced randomly across the fields, with police on horseback galloping alongside. I could barely sleep in my tiny tent convinced my head was going to be run over.
Some people wore very few clothes. Others oered us acid. The food was mainly burger vans. And the loos… Oh my God, the loos! We queued for hours in the stinking mud, desperate to get in there. And then instead of relief – repulsion when we did. People left the loos, retching…
No matter what band or act we went to see, it felt like the crowds jostled, jeered and randomly threw bottles of what was hopefully water. A fair bit of the time I quaked at the back, wanted to cry and yes, to be honest, I wanted to go home.
But once back to solid walls and flushing loos, the trauma subsided. My mind kept running over it. Wow, did I really see Gil Scott Heron and Madness and Billy Bragg in one weekend? I’d survived the nights, endured the loos, and now instead of fear, I realised I was pretty thrilled. I’d been let into what felt like an exclusive, privileged world.
And so it began my 40-year love aair with festivals… WOMAD ( World of Music Arts and Dance), Reading, Glastonbury again and again. With each visit I became acclimatised. I learnt how to make it work. Don’t camp near a walkway, bring wellies whatever the forecast, wear layers, layers, and more layers, carry a bottle of citrussy perfume at all times and bring a proper pillow.
As the years have rolled by, many a summer is spent in the rolling hills of a countryside setting, and over that time I’ve found my fabulous festivalling tribe – including marrying a man who’d been to Glastonbury in 1986 as well…
Me: ‘I was there that year too! What a coincidence!’ Him: ‘60,000 people were there.’ Fair point. Turns out it was his fourth time. So husband, tick. And friends, festival friends are a special breed. A bit like holiday friends, except you see them again and again!
You find your tribe. Share wonderful musical moments, laughs, and the odd flood. For some they only know festival Sarah, not the mumof-two who works at a desk, loves Coronation Street and early nights.
There are 10 of us who have been going to Green Man (the Welsh Glastonbury) for nearly 15 years now.
Plus there’s the disco-y Shindig (sadly, the last ever this year), the teachers’ last hooray of the summer
known as the End of the Road, the eclectic and ultra friendly WOMAD, along with the more populist and foodie orientated Valley Fest, and we’re all trying We Out Here this year for the first time. So many festivals, and not enough weekends.
Nearly 40 years on for me, and it’s fascinating to look back at how festivals have evolved – book shops, banquets, glamping yurts, comedy workshops, artisan shops, and proper loos – the 21st century list of additions is endless. And how I have changed! From that newbie, to a seasoned ol’ timer!
It’s good for my marriage too – a shared interest. Mark and I have never encouraged our sons to join us (they are 18 and 19).
These events are our time, our friends’ time, basically grown-up time. Not to do anything crazy like get naked and take acid (this isn’t Glastonbury ‘86 you know…), but to chill, wander, see where the festival flow takes us, have a 4pm red wine if I fancy, eat at 11pm if that suits, and get up at 11am if I want to. You could see it as a cost-eective mini-break – thanks to amazing grandparents who loved having them for a long weekend, and provided a restorative shot in the arm for our marriage.
We love camping as a family, and once, just once, prompted through guilt at those ‘what?! You don’t take the kids?! But they’d love it surely!’ comments (nearly always said by people who didn’t go to festivals) we took them to Green Man, aged just five and six.
Well the mud was too claggy, the crowds too crowd-y, and there weren’t enough chips on sale to keep them happy. We all vowed never again...
Even now I shudder when I see families trying to turn a festival into some sort of happy holiday excursion for all. Exhausted parents battling with buggies...
As the boys have got older they decided for themselves about festivals. The youngest is turning into an absolute festival head – already having secured one Reading Festival, three Glastonburys and a couple of Boardmasters under his belt. While the eldest is a hard pass,
THE JOY THEN WAS ABOUT BEING IN THE MOMENT
never, no thank you, which makes me all the more relieved we didn’t try and force the whole ‘we’re so cool and trendy’ family festival vibe on them when they were little.
One thing that is kind of a shame, but also makes me glad, is that I literally have zero photos of my early festival life – a time when I probably looked like Kate Moss in knock-o Hunters and slightly longer shorts. Of course we all know that’s not true, but there’s no evidence to the contrary, so I can rewrite history and erase the memories of short frizzy fringes and soggy combats.
The joy then was about being in the moment – we didn’t Snapchat, we lounged about chatting, we didn’t TikTok, we talked, we weren’t on the ’Gram, we were grooving down the front – our festival time was, and still is, about real Face Time.
These days I belong to three group chats for fellow festivalling friends full of chatter about gazebos, group tickets and sequins.
We’re all in our 50s, some of us nudging our 60s… and we know how lucky we are.
We can see it in these untagged, not social-media’d group shots we share only with each other – greying hair, huge smiles and happy hearts somewhere in a field, waiting for the next band to come on…