I had known about this event pretty much since we arrived in Edinburgh that happened last weekend. I kinda forgot about it, thought it would be too expensive etc etc, until the Thursday before when I went to go have a look at the website. It was a weekend festival but you could also buy tickets for each day. None of the other bands on the bill interested me much except for one band you may have heard me talk about over the last 10 years - Crowded House.
Yes, they have reformed and have started to play again, 10 years after the massive Farewell to the World Concert on the steps of the Sydney Opera House. Never really thought I'd see it happen (especially after Paul Hester died) and was quite happy with the fact that over the past few years I have seen Tim Finn, the Finn Brothers (twice), and Split Enz (twice).
So, two days before they were due to play, my friend Cheryl said she wanted to get out of Edinburgh for the weekend, so I proposed we go to the Outsider Festival. Easy. We just get on the train and get a lift home after. Easy, right?
Here's a story for you. We meet at the train station at 9am to catch the 9.25 train to Aviemore, about 3 hours north of Edinburgh. As we line up for the tickets, which I looked up online and would be about £12 one way, we're chatting and talking about what we could get for brekky. When we get to the ticket counter, we were told the cheapest tickets we would get were £35. £35! It would have been cheaper to hire a car (which we considered). But first, a wander up to the bus station proved fruitful when we found it would be just £15 each. I paid for Cheryl's fare as a thankyou for her cutting my hair the previous night. We had an hour before the first bus left so we wandered to have some breakfast and a very chocolatey hot chocolate from Chocolate Soup. Wow, there's a lot of chocolate in that sentence. On the bus, very pleasant ride - glad we are inside it for a few hours as it is raining quite a bit. It's nice looking at the scenery, very green - reminds me of New Zealand. Only takes a few minutes to be out of the "hustle" of the city and into the countryside.
Being Sunday, Mum rings me for a chat about noon my time. She tells me about the tour they are booking for when they come to Europe and it sounds fantastic. I say how we are on the way up to this festival and will see Crowded House, we have a laugh because she knows how I loved them. I let it slip that we don't really have any solid way of getting home after the festival and no accomodation and that we might have to sleep at the train station - she laughs it off but, being Mum, worries. I'm not worried, I'm thinking it'll all work out and if it doesn't then work knows that I might not be in Monday morning.
Off the phone and an hour and a half later (and one on board bus toilet experience - yuck) we arrive in Aviemore. Lovely highland town, very picturesque and has a lot of outdoor gear shops. Not much more than a main street (that I can see). We go to the service station and go to the toilet before walking to the festival site, which is about 15 minutes walk away from the town, at Rothiemurchus in Cairngorm National Park. Lots of people around in plastic pants, gumboots, waterproof everything. I start to feel kinda inadequate in my sneakers and wide leg pants. There's this pesky rain that not enough to put a brolly up but still there - and it's just hanging round.
After a few minutes, we arrive at the festival site, looking nice and shiny when we are confronted by...the mud! The site is covered in mud - deep, thick and boggy! I take a photo of my shoes as I know I won't see them this clean in a while and head in. Lots of Scottish bands playing, some rally nice sounds and I discover a new Glsgow band called Make Model. Hopefully I will see them play again. The rain doesn't stop and we grab some food - really yummy which is surprising for festival fare. I love the fact there are vans selling porridge at a festival - how sensible. After hours of being kept nice and dry, my feet finally start to freeze just before Crowded House come on the main stage about 9.15 pm. It finally stopped raining about that time as well! THANK GOD!
It was a great concert, was quite close to stage and having great fun singing along. It was sad not seeing them with Paul behind the drums, but the new drummer (plays in Beck's band too) is cheeky and has a lot of energy. They played a few new songs, quite good but of course it was lovely to hear the old stuff. Neil is a great frontman and really seemed to love having the crowd sing along. It would be nice to have 10000 people singing you your songs, funnily enough.
So Crowded House finish and the mad dash to try and get home begins. Most people are camping the night and leaving the next day, but with no tent and no accomodation we have other ideas. Our hope of a ride home was dashed when they left before Crowded House started, they'd had enough of the rain all weekend and just wanted to get home. They left us with a contact which was almost successful but room for only one in their car. So. We tried hitchhiking for a half and hour or so, but everyone's cars are packed full to the brim. We check out the backpackers - those that aren't closed up for the night are booked up completely. We try to bribe one YHA to let us sit in the dining room overnight for a few pounds but the guy behind the desk is a nerd who says that's a fire hazard. No joy.
Our new best friend has become the 24 hour service station. It's our bathroom and kitchen. Now we just need a place to sleep. I suggest the police station but we decide to just have a wander around and find a small apartment block whose door was open. That becomes our new home for the night, sleeping under the stairwell. It's freezing but at least we're out of the cold. When we can't stand the cold any longer we head back to the service station to fill cups with hot water and hold them in our hands. We chat with the lady behind the counter and learn a bit more about the place. We get to just after 7 am when we walk to the bus stop and wait for our first hope of getting home, a bus to Perth. It doesn't connect with an Edinburgh service and is £10 dearer. We grit our teeth to wait for the 9 am service to Edinburgh. We are wet, muddy and smelly after sleeping in what I think was the bin area of the apartment block. No where is open yet to have a coffee and we are over the service station jaunts. Cheryl tries our luck in a ritzy hotel where they invite us into their lobby and make us a plunger coffee. The coffee is awful but it's lovely surroundings and big comfy couches - we make that plunger last an hour and a half - they don't mind.
Finally the bus comes and we almost don't get on - it's too full but luckily we got the last seats. Even luckier considering we didn't prebook our tickets. As we are in line a girl recognises us from the Josh Pyke gig we went to in Glasgow a few weeks back. I really want to chat with her but the line was moving. Hopefully we will run into each other again. It was weird to be spotted in Aviemore where we knew no one, being recognised for something in Glasgow when you live in Edinburgh.
The bus ride is shocking, we are sleep deprived, smelly, and the bus driver doesn't know how to change gears. There are young Spanish girls behind us who talk and giggle, non stop. By the time we got to Edin we were ready to kill them. They were lucky.
Thank God I live in the city, I was so knackered I paid a cab driver £2 to take me up the hill to my place, then into shower and fill the washing machine with my clothes and shoes. Everything (including me) comes up a treat.
Monday night was closed with us housemates celebrating Marcos' birthday. Diana made burritos and we had a great, lazy time. It's Noni's birthday tonight and we are doing the same thing. Happy times!
Here's a few photos from the festival, will hopefully make my story make sense! The last photo I love - it's actually a small boy covered in a poncho and has garbage bags over his shoes that he'd just changed so he was nice and clean (his last lot of plastic was not so lucky). What a snazzy idea! This sums up the festival for me.
Here is a link for a writeup of the Outsider Festival:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/6235238.stm
link to news article
