[The Square Festival 2009]

I so agree with you guys. This was a big bag of shit. First bubble was burst by waiting 2 hours to get a wrist band...for 5000 capacity festival??? You dont get this at Beatherder. The 4 cans per person rule was ridiculous...this was 4 cans onto the campsite, not necc into the arena! This meant those who had struggled with a 12 pack by train would lose two-thirds of their beer before their festival started. With a seafront Spar a mere 6 mins away from the site, this stupid and unexpected rule only served to provide party supplies for security, not increase onsite alcohol sales as they probably hoped. I can understand the no glass on site rule, but there was no provision (ie. empty milk cartons for sale) for those who didnt know about this rule and so got further caught out and lost all their spirits/wine (and perfume/aftershave). The website is very pretty but a complete unorganised mess when It comes to clear information (ie. no glass etc) ....hang on..that sounds just like the festival, and brings me to my next point.....

Information. Ok, we paid our money, we turned up, we followed the rules. Unfortunately we forgot to pack our crystal ball (would have been confiscated anyway...), which would have come in very handy when trying to find out who and what was on where and when. Yes...a festival with no programme. Fri night was a case of lucky dip. Stewards, security, police, staff.....no-one knew what the fk was going on! Saturday we trudged past the security point to the wristband exchange (all of 50 yrds away) and found a piece of A4 sellotaped to the back of their hut with band times on. Wrote them down and then had to go through another bloody bag search etc on the way back in. Was this really neccesary at a festival of this size?

My next gripe: security. The rules changed all the time, by Sunday night they had us emptying our pockets on the table on the way back in.....from a walk on the beach at 1am! We're a couple in our 30s for fks sake! We were scared to bring in a half litre of Bells (in a plastic bottle) in case they tried to work out how many units it may represent! The website indicated that there had been complaints about heavy handed security last year and this year it would be all loved up....how wrong they were. It seemed that everytime we saw someone having fun in a way that drew attention to themselves, security stepped in and stopped it. The bloke on his stag do for example. At the mercy of his mates he started the day in a pink dress and covered in make-up. by teatime we saw him in front of the main stage in a Hannibal Lecter mask with a bin-liner skirt, strip of black tape across his nipples and his bare bum peeking out at the back..and horribly sunburnt too. Of course people were reacting to him, he looked pure comedy; even the professional photographers were getting him to pose. Offended by this, along came security with a pair of hawiian shorts and bullied him into putting them on! I was outraged! they should have been focusing on the gangs who were robbing tents like an SAS mission (see my other posts).

The festival site was far too big for what was in it. This gave the impression that it was half empty and somewhat killed the atmosphere at times. There were around 20 stalls in the whole festival, none selling anything you might actually need for a festival, though it was only minutes from the sea front. the food stalls were generally impersonal and overpriced. £3.50 for a pasty....c'mon! I saw none of the 'extra' things advertised on the website that give a festival a fun and 'get-involved' feeling.

On the sunday night we got talking to the Steward organiser. He told me that him and his team had been bullied by security who were trying to exercise authority over them. The worse thing i heard was that security had been 'tipped off' that Welfare were selling heroin! Thats one hell of a service! They were all arrested and searched by security, the Welfare tent turned over and their vehicles too. Nothing was found but 4 of the Welfare team were kicked off site because of their 'attitude'. Horrific.

Dont get me wrong, we still had a ball; found some ace new bands (Guile), my ribs ache from laughing....but thats not from the entertainment provided!! This festival felt like its trying to be V or Reading or T in the Park, its trying to run before it can walk, it needs to be looking towards festivals like Beatherder where customers are treated with respect, and youre dealing with the organisers who are accessible too.

Diatribe over....for now. Wont be going back there.

[Tent Robbers]

We spent the weekend at Square Fest in Wales. The head of stewards told us that a led team of tent robbers were systematically robbing tents. They had two-way radios and the head scumbag was listening to security on one channel then accordingly instructing his team which areas to rob on another channel depending on how security were responding. Apparently they were running security ragged.

Luckily we didnt get hit. People need to realise that a festival is just a microcosm of society, there'll always be scum who see others as soft targets.