I am not a VIP

This weekend, my good lady wife and I went to the Wireless Festival as a freebie from my work. It was meant to be a client schmooze-fest but as no-one can make my good lady wife schmooze our clients, I easily stayed well clear of it. Which was nice. Not as nice as being in the VIP section though!

Festivals to me have always been about slowly getting stinkier and skankier over 3 days until the musicians leave and everyone sobers up to the grim/magic reality of what they've done and goes home too. It's an epicly bonding experience, and anyone who has shared in the stinkiness you all created together that weekend will have a connection with you that others just won't. Being a VIP at a non-camping London festival however is not that experience. At all.

First of all, day festivals are just lengthy concerts in my opinion. Not that there is anything wrong with that, they're just not festivals, and I wish everyone would stop saying they are.

Second of all... VIP! I've never been a VIP before, so maybe (definitely) I just have no sense of perspective on the matter, but it was vaguely life changing. Not especially in a good way though.

What VIP meant in this specific event was that we had our own entrance, and then our own private section of Hyde Park to "chill out" in. It was basically a big, empty outdoor club, with some amount of class to it. There was also a free hot and cold buffet and a BBQ you could visit only once, as well as a massive bar, DJ, and clean toilets (which really were the highlight festival goers!).

The thing is the hot and cold buffet was basically unlimited free chicken and chips, strawberries and brownies, and cheese and meat selections. The chips and brownies were good, the chicken not so much. And the cheese and meats (which is what I decided to crazy on) were some crazy weaksauce bullshit. It was like someone was specifically trying to keep us all aware that VIP was a title we bought for this event, and not something we earned. The cheese was a massive gooey mess that was pretty impossible to serve yourself from, and the meats were folded in the strangest way so as to keep an almost frozen consistency even though it was pretty hot out there. I still ate shit loads of it though, don't worry. I learnt very clearly that day that as much as I love blue cheese, a mouthfull is too much.

And then there was the BBQ! The staff on it were clearly bored as fuck - they would do anything to engage you in conversation - which of course basically only amounted to them giving you extra food from the BBQ. If you can call an area with no flames in sight a BBQ. I luckily had a hotdog (with free extra chilli), which was about as good as I expected from a festival. Everyone else had burgers though, and as much as it amused the shit out of me, the fact that the buns were so stale they fell into little tiny pieces as soon as anyone bit into them was kinda not funny.

And then there was... the bla bla bla sucked... stupid slanted dancefloor..... bla bla bla unfair.

See what a snob I have become after just a half day in the VIP section? I swear that shit is contagious in a bad way - the couple times we ventured out into the festival we were confronted with a feeling of stinky scary people ruining our good times. I'm usually amongst the stinkiest, but for that Saturday, I was too good for regular folks it seems.

God forbid I ever go business class, I'll become a Posh cunt overnight I have no doubt.

Viva economy class