The Ultimate Checklist For Having The Best Ever Time At A Festival

A festival goer asleep or passed out on the floor

IT’S FESTIVAL SEASON!!! Summer starts here, as they say. But how do you make sure your weekend in a field goes down in history as the greatest three-to-five days of your life? Well we’ve got a 50-point plan for you to print and tick off as you go. Can you complete it all in one weekend? GO ON, WE DARE YOU!

▢ Buy a ticket… Otherwise you won’t be doing any of this WILL YOU?!
▢ Experience a fairground ride on a five beer minimum.
▢ Pose for a selfie with the most ‘wackily-dressed’ person you can find.
▢ Be so ‘wackily-dressed’ that people keep asking you to pose for a selfie with them.
▢ Purchase a crazy jester hat that you will only wear three days out of every year.
▢ Resist the urge to spend the whole day collecting empty beer cups… Seriously, who does that anyway?
▢ ‘Accidentally’ knock the guy filming all the bands’ phone into the mud.
▢ Sneak a bottle of spirits into the main arena in an old soft drink bottle. We’ve all done it!
▢ Concoct some exciting new meals with your leftover campsite food. Pasta shells in gravy? Pot Noodle sandwiches? Bon appetite!
▢ Get hit on the back by a flying bottle of urine… You don’t really have any say in doing this, but it’s gonna happen. Mark our words!
▢ Spend one day in fancy dress. Preferably as some sort of retro character from your youth. The Ultimate Warrior, Skeletor, Zippy from Rainbow… Any of these are fine.
▢ Spend at least an hour queueing up to charge your phone, so you can tweet about what a brilliant time you’re having.
▢ Have a campsite music battle with the nearest campers to you. If they insist on playing Arcade Fire at full volume, blast them with some Napalm Death until they relent.
▢ Ask a steward if you can wear their hi-vis jacket.
▢ Try to steal a steward’s hi-vis jacket.
▢ Give steward back his hi-vis jacket before you get kicked out. Just banter innit, mate!
▢ Shout ‘SLAAAAAAYYYYYYEEEERRRR!!’ at most passers by.
▢ High five the ones who shout ‘SLAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYEEEEERRRR!!’ back at you.
▢ Try and start a singalong with the whole campsite at 3am from inside your tent. May we suggest Bonnie Tyler’s classic power ballad Total Eclipse Of The Heart for the best chance of success.
▢ Set up a competitive beer bong league in your camp. With betting odds, ranking tables and the like. Serious shit!
▢ Point out to anyone offering free hugs that HUGS ARE FREE, YOU MORON!
▢ Lie back in the grass with the sun on your face and feel at one with the planet.
▢ Stand in the mud with the rain on your face and feel cold and miserable.
▢ Convince the person in the drinks queue in front of you to buy you a drink. Ladies, this should be a piece of piss for you, men are idiots!
▢ Go into the middle of a circle pit and vogue.
▢ Funky chicken into a wall of death.
▢ Find the most overpriced food stall and haggle (a-la Life Of Brian) with the person behind the counter.
▢ Find that guy playing his acoustic guitar in the campsite and deliberately sing out of tune to accompany his warbling. Only for one song mind. Don’t stifle his creativity, yeah?
▢ Start a circle pit at the furthest possible point back from the stage with, seemingly, disinterested punters. Once you start, they’ll join in. It’s like Field Of Dreams.
▢ Implore as many people as you can to ‘GET TO THE CHOPPER!’ And see if they follow you.
▢ Organise a mass shot with as many people as you can in memory of Dimebag.
▢ Have a dance-off in a circle with the most intimidating looking person you can find. We bet they’re a pussycat!
▢ Human pyramid. As big as you can round up. Anywhere. Anytime.
▢ Get someone to push you round in a shopping trolley for half an hour.
▢ Get a bum cheek signed by a famous person.
▢ Spot someone from a band on the bill out in the crowd. – they will be out there. Trust us.
▢ Try to remain in the portaloos on the last day for longer than a minute without vomiting.
▢ Put on a Jared Leto mask and wander backstage without a pass and then throw a diva strop when someone stops you.
▢ Ask the person at the noodle stall if the ingredients are organic and if you can have some information on nutritional value.
▢ Keep a tally of punters with Kiss face-paint to see which member is the most popular. Our money is not on the cat.
▢ See if you can hit the same note as Rob Halford’s highest one.
▢ Run through the legs of someone on stilts… Don’t knock them over though eh? Health and safety, innit.
▢ Use the public showers without getting someone else’s pubes on the soles of your feet. Harder than it might sound.
▢ Snog a wizard… Or the closest thing you can find to a wizard.
▢ Have a party inside your tent with a finger buffet and games and drinking… Mainly drinking.
▢ Wee someone else’s poo off of the side of the portaloo. Ewww! Gross!
▢ Make sure your tent is waterproof… Like, before you leave!
▢ If someone falls down pick em up.
▢ Be nice to everyone.
▢ Have a lovely time.

Stephen Hill

Since blagging his way onto the Hammer team a decade ago, Stephen has written countless features and reviews for the magazine, usually specialising in punk, hardcore and 90s metal, and still holds out the faint hope of one day getting his beloved U2 into the pages of the mag. He also regularly spouts his opinions on the Metal Hammer Podcast.