ILLUSTRATION BY GRAHAM SAMUELS

the morning after vip

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may 2012 [[1R]]

The prep is all part of the fun. Bestival’s fancy dress theme announcement brings creative hedonism that hasn’t emerged in some since they made a pasta picture at primary school. Then there’s the camping gear to get – the trip to Blacks and hours on eBay where our inner gadget freak spends all our beer money on wind-up mobile phone chargers, boil-in-the-bag beans and sausages, LED torches bright enough to fry a badger at 100 yards, and oh look, a telescopic fork for those hilarious sausage and campfire moments that never fucking happen because we’re all actually off our tits in a field of lasers like we should be.

But while the build up can end up being one of the best bits, make sure you don’t peak too early. When you’ve been looking forward to an event for months, the excitement can be impossible to contain. Not a year’s gone by when a mate telling me “I’m definitely going to get some early nights in and save myself for the weekend,” hasn’t translated into rinsing half their stash whilst packing their rucksack, bedroom-raving to all the music they’ve just paid £150 to see live the next night, then turning up late for a lift without their ticket.

Just don’t scuttle the ship before it sails. Like one guy I saw at a huge dance fest in 2008 who was stuck in the K-hole and a two inch deep dry puddle at the same time. He literally couldn’t get out, and they hadn’t even opened the main doors from the campsite. Then there’s the friend of my mate Tom, who once got so shitfaced on their 5am mini-bus ride to Creamfields that by 1 o’clock on the first night he’d lost his mates and his tent, cabbed it to manchester and was back in his girlfriend’s bedroom in London – basically paying £250 for a sightseeing tour of the London to Daresbury travel infrastructure.

On the other hand even the most carefully laid festival plans can be scuppered by chaos. Like in 2006 when bomb threats stranded my mate Seb at Heathrow, desperately re-planning his journey to join us on a festival island in the middle of Europe. None of us were prepared for that. Nor were we prepared for the sheer euphoria of seeing Seb’s huge smile as he walked though the turnstile eight hours later to be greeted with a hi five and an ice-cold beer. The festival had only just begun and here we were, celebrating the moment amid a magical forest of music, lasers, lagers and lanterns. a moment we realised, there and then, that we had been enjoying since the warm-up began.

It’s time to start preparing for festival season. Just make sure you don’t peak too early…

OLympIaNS arEN’T the only people training this summer. as dedicated rave athletes, building muscle in our pint arms, sprinting for night buses, doping our urine

samples, enduring marathon all-nighters and making ourselves hoarse through endless three-day-events is the way we roll. We are prepping for festival season, and a strong warm-up will lead us to glory.

Sure, subscribing to @GlastoCountdown on twitter – reliably informing me that there are exactly “433 Days, 14 Hours and 59 minutes until Glastonbury 2013” – is arguably insane, but just one glance conjures up tremendous anticipation. a reminder that in just 431 days’ time I will be whooping for joy as the campervan radio picks up the first, crackly airwaves of Worthy Fm just past Stonehenge – a ceremonial point in my warm-up that’s almost as exciting as being there. Sure it’s just traffic

reports and a presenter intent on licking the microphone like a west-country ice cream, but it fills me with uncontrollable happiness – just three more hours of tailbacks to go!

There’s a new trend among festivals to broaden their brand and unleash the party vibes months in advance, making the warm-up an integral part of the experience. Outlook were at it as early as January with a pre-party in a London car park while Snowbombing have organised a road trip challenging festi-goers to complete random tasks en route before a triumphant parade in the austrian alps. Elsewhere, Sziget festival have laid on a UK party bus that stops in munich for a halfway rave-up, and even our publisher is cycling the ‘Tour de Latitude’ – 113 miles from Hackney to the Suffolk festival – raising money for charity and helping the environment. Better still, all these brilliant schemes kick off your festival with tons of new friends and more tales of high-jinx than Bilbo Baggins.

“You kick off Your festival with more tales of high jinx than bilbo baggins”

It’s warming up…

pHIL dUdMAN...is Mixmag’s Clubs Editor. He’s been camping in his garden since Christmas. Follow him on Twitter: @phildudman