diffrentcolours | Goths on a Field (Reply)

This weekend I went to Goths on a Field. It was a very chilled out event which was somewhere between a camping weekend and a music festival - nine bands on one stage across two days with about 50 attendees. It's been going for a few years - this is the fourth one. This year I decided to tag along. Sadly cosmolinguist couldn't join me; he had to stay home to look after the dog. The venue is a working stable farm, so there was a lovely smell of hay and horses around the place. The main stage was actually a barn. There were some tiny ponies and big cows in the next field. My wild swimming goth friends and I pitched our tents around a central gazebo we called the Officer's Mess - "we're not officers, but we are a mess".

Due to leaving late I missed most of the bands on the Friday night, because I wanted to pitch my tent before it got too dark, which is much harder single-handed. I did however catch Jo Carley And The Old Dry Skulls who were wonderfully theatrical, with a double bass with ribcage and pelvis, some foot-pedal drums from the guitarist and a washboard with finger cymbals! It was good creepy fun, though I did draw the line at white Brits selling "voodoo mojo bags" at their merch stall. As part of the small festival vibe (and local noise restrictions) the bands were finished by 11pm, long before most people wanted to go to bed. So we grabbed drinks and our camp chairs and headed to a large event shelter in the camping field which had been erected for this purpose. I sat and chatted to both friends I knew and strangers, and it was all rather lovely at first.

Unfortunately, I managed to drink rather too much. I don't remember much of the night, although I did managed to fetch myself some water to try and rehydrate. By the time I woke up on Saturday I was feeling very rough indeed, and missed the entire afternoon session in the barn. The DJ stage was outside the barn near the tents, so I did get to hear Duracell Bunny doing a Doof set while making some solid food. However the Saturday night bands were great, starting with Palindrones, followed by Holy Braille who did a really high energy set I was vibing to, and the trad goth rock stylings of Chaos Bleak who appear to be the latest incarnation of the Nightbreed Records House Band. I was still a bit too fragile to do more than sit and enjoy the music, but being to enjoy live music in a well-ventilated venue with lots of people around which made me really happy.

I didn't stay up as late as I'd like on the Saturday night either, probably due to not sleeping well the night before. But I got to chat to friends old and new about all kinds of silly nonsense. I got up reasonably early on the Sunday, as we were supposed to clear the campsite by noon. I was one of the last few on site, because I was moving slowly and taking my tent down single-handedly was a faff. But, much like EMF, the "everyone's a volunteer" ethos meant that the campsite was totally clear by the time we left, with no rubbish or tents left behind.

In summary, I didn't have quite as good a time as I'd hoped, but that was largely self-inflicted. I was on the periphery of the friends group there, which is based around the "Goths on a Bus" coach trips from the North of England to M'era Luna festival, which I've never done (and am unlikely to want to spend that many hours cooped up on a coach during a pandemic), but everyone I met was nice. I am looking forward to going again next year, and managing / pacing myself a bit better so I can enjoy more of the experience!