Infestation

14h30
45 MINUTES POST-DROP

My jaws were starting to hurt. A rictus-like grin stretched across my skin. The sun was hot, uber-hot and the mud didn’t taste good. And where was Nici? Stumbled back to camp, probably. Time to get everyone up, I suppose. Had been parking at the Black Label Stage for a looong while. Up, up, come Tarra, the day is young! We are seven, aren’t we? After losing Riaan, Otto and Hannelie during Slugs of War, well, I wasn’t quite sure anymore. It didn’t help that Tinus had helped himself to pizza out of a dustbin, protesting that it “must be okay ‘cos it’s still warm”. Telling him that it had most likely lain in the sun for the last two days was not a deterrent.
“Is this salami?”

DAMAGE CONTROL

I don’t know how we took the fence out (and it’s accompanying poles). It could have been the fact that Tarra, Tinus and Steven were trying, at least, to support each other. Unsuccessfully, I might add, and considering that Steven can’t see Jack Shit, it was very much a case of the stupid and drunk leading the blind. We finally got them off their asses and the fence when Tarra decided it was about time for a dot dump. Now everyone knows that those porta-potties are usually quite sturdy and maybe it was just ill luck sent by the gods, but after about twenty minutes of pleading with him to get out of the loo, he finally did…in the wrong direction. The massive green thing rocked dangerously as if protesting to the treatment and came crashing down on its side. When he finally did emerge, it was fucking gross – the shit that came out of it did not look human, man!
Rushing as harshly as I was then, you can imagine, the scene didn’t go down too well.


THE CHAIRMAN

Prodding Annelie in her ribs. “Hey, doesn’t that look like Riaan from the back?” Pointing at a man bent under one of the taps…good ass. And, oh my God, it is the boyfriend, very obviously fried out of his mind. He grips me in a bear hug. “I almost died, babe…” Turns out while we were pissing off dogs and their security guards with refuse abuse he had taken Otto up the hill to the jazz stage. After a couple of pints had decided to come down in Otto’s chair. Gravity sucks, dude. He learnt the hard way. Had come flying down the concrete walkway like a bat out of hell, people throwing tents, etc to try slow him down – compassion still existed then – and obviously were quite fucked off to realize that he was perfectly healthy (well, physically, at least) when he got to the bottom, stood up (more shakily than he wanted to admit) and hollered:
” IT’S A MIRACLE!”


THE MISADVENTURES OF A CHALLENGED MIND

His fingers rolled over my face, squidging mud into my nostrils, my eyes, my laughing mouth. I lunged for Riaan, slipped, fell into Oppikoppi’s red mud. A thorn here and there most definitely. And as always spiking into the most uncomfortable of places!
I turned, a mad grin, saw adults, total abandonment seeping out through their every pore, covered, from their dilated pupils to the beers in their hands down to the many bouncing soles, mud everywhere, flying.

Sunshine and blue sky, a man with crazy hair and a bong…

It seemed like the bakkie came out of nowhere. Trundled past us going like ten, fifteen kilometers an hour. A blur of Satan’s beard and Cannibal Corpse shirt and Tinus was hanging on the back bumper, head bouncing, legs flying out behind him. Annelie cracked, her power puff eyes flitting, her smile dominating my line of vision. In the distance (OK, when you there a hundred meters is like the Comrades), I saw Tinus standing finally. He neared, a manic smile, his eyes brighter than the sun’s reflection off my beer.

Talking of beer, I felt thwacked on the head with one. I turned. Chella, a mischievous grin, she tried to run. “The camera!”
Before I was done thinking, “Fuck the camera, sweetie!” I had her into the ground, missing slightly. As luck would have it, a fellow pilgrim decided that his morning dalliance with three cases of beer was coming to an abrupt halt and piled unceremoniously, taking me out and squishing Chella’s head further into home turf.

16h30
I’LL JUST HAVE A SIP, I SWEAR


And there Nici sat. I realized that it had taken us just under two hours to walk the five hundred metres from the Black Label Stage to our camp. I laughed, and then Chella did, everyone did and we didn’t stop…for six hours.
Giggle gas in our sunshine!
The giraffe took us all by surprise. It came bounding through the grass wearing a straw hat and nauseously purple flares and clutching a bottle of butterscotch schnapps. His eyes alighted on the shirtless form of Tarra and, well to cut a fairly short story even shorter, Tarra was soon chasing him (Ferdi, Bertie, Willie, Whatever) through the bushveld with an enormous paplepel (the chairman’s, I think), cries of delight, lust? issuing every time a particularly hard shot connected him. They disappeared into the trees and moments later emerged, Tarra being chased by a very drunk, very armed (Whatever had somehow got hold of the death star) and very excited young fashion disaster.
LUCKILY, YOURS TRULY GOT TO HOLD THE SCHNAPPS…IT’S VILE, I KNOW BUT IT’S FREE!

20h00
BONFIRES, BLUNT AND BATTERY 9

“At least they’re being put to good use.”
Nici said watching Tinus grab the second camping chair, set it alight and start fire weaving. We were drawing a crowd, I noticed. It had started innocently, of course, as all our things do. The flames were blurring in the dark and I by then had come down quite gently, thank you, and was in the process of getting drunk on Tassies. We had a huge bonfire going and aside from Annelie setting herself alight someone was bound to do something.

Somehow I knew those chairs wouldn’t last to see next year’s festival.

In the following two hours he burnt ALL the chairs and anything else he could get his hands on and I was beginning to feel slightly pulled. Checked around me, my God, I’m alone!
No, not alone, just the only one awake. Feeling slightly lonely, I bugged people a little but after getting kicked with studded docs and a couple of uurrghs, I swore and left them alone. Dug out a 2l OBS, smoked myself a blunt. Was puffing away quite happily, when what’s that I hear? Oh yes, my friends, its Battery 9!
I jumped up, choking on my blow, tackled my friends in their tents, but after more injuries decided to give it up as a really bad job, tucked the OBS under one arm, a bit of joint under the other and I was off.
Needless to say it took me about 3 hours to find my camp in the wee hours of the next morning.

THANK YOU, OPPIKOPPI