Cc: You in the Pit

Tag: festival

  • THE POST-FESTIVAL SURVIVAL GUIDE: How to Look Alive in the Office When You’re Dead Inside (and Outside)

    Image source: Clash Magazine

    So, you went to Download (or any other gloriously chaotic festival where deodorant is optional and pits are both metaphorical and literal). You screamed, you jumped, you lost your voice and your dignity somewhere between the circle pit and the portaloos. And now? You’re back at your desk, trying to remember your passwords and not visibly weep every time someone says, “Did you have a relaxing weekend?”

    Here’s how to survive the work week when your soul is still in a field screaming “Take me back to eden” with 10,000 other emotionally unstable adults.

    1. Hydrate Like You’re Apologising to Your Body

    You’ve replaced 60% of your blood with warm beer and adrenaline. It’s time to reverse the damage. Keep a water bottle on your desk like it’s your emotional support animal. Sip continuously. Refill frequently. Pretend it’s fixing you.

    2. Curate a “Functioning But Festive” Work Outfit

    You can’t wear your battle jacket to the office (unless your workplace is very cool or has no HR department). Opt for something monochrome to mask the emotional void, and maybe sneak a band tee under a blazer. Bonus points for looking “edgy professional” — minus the crowd-surfing bruises.

    3. Apply Concealer Like You’re Painting a New Identity

    Your under-eyes are telling a story. That story is “I haven’t slept since soundcheck.” Brighten them. Hide the existential dread. Use dry shampoo liberally. Pretend you woke up looking like this and not in a tent next to a stranger dressed like a human pineapple.

    4. Master the “Festival Flu Cough Mute”

    You’re still recovering from screaming to your heart’s content and inhaling mystery dust particles. Your lungs are staging a small rebellion. Use your meeting mute button like your life depends on it. Cough silently. Nod knowingly. If someone asks, just say, “hayfever,” and move on.

    5. Lower Your Brain Expectations

    You are not at full capacity. You are, at best, a shadow of your former self being powered by caffeine and vibes. Don’t try to innovate. Don’t volunteer for anything. Just ride out the week like the corporate ghost you are. You’ve earned it.

    6. Listen to Sad Music and Call It “Decompression”

    Your post-festival depression isn’t just a vibe—it’s a diagnosis (unofficially). Lean into it. Queue up the setlists. Cry a little. Call it “processing.” If anyone asks why you’re listening to Lorna Shore at 10am, just say, “Team culture.” They won’t question it.

    7. Avoid Group Chats Until You Emotionally Stabilise

    Everyone’s sending videos. Everyone looks alive and glowing. Meanwhile, you’re trying not to sneeze out confetti. Mute the group chat. Come back when your skin doesn’t feel like it’s made of sandpaper and regret.

    Final Thoughts

    Returning to work after a festival is like trying to merge onto a motorway in a car with three wheels and no windscreen. You will look weird. You will feel worse. But you will survive. And when someone dares say “You don’t look like someone who listens to that kind of music,” just smile, sip your water, and CC them.
    See you in the pit.

  • DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL 2025: Live from a Sunburnt Goblin Woman in a Yurt

    Image source: Ticketmaster Discover

    There comes a time in every woman’s life when she must ask herself: Is this how I die?

    For me, that moment came around 3:37pm on Saturday at Download Festival, somewhere between slipping in the mud outside my overpriced yurt (twice, back-to-back, like a cursed Pixar short) and realising I had sunburn so aggressive it had blistered my chest into what can only be described as a sizzling Wetherspoons gammon.

    Let’s rewind.

    The Descent Into Hell (Day 1)

    Friday started as all good metal weekends do: with hope, eyeliner, and absolutely no nutritional foundation. Within hours, I’d had four cans of lukewarm Neck Oil, two Percy pigs and a packet of squares (girl dinner), and the kind of dehydration that gives you weird dreams about having a meaningful chat with Corey Taylor.

    There were bands. There were vibes. I screamed. I headbanged. I used a portaloo that changed me, spiritually. Everything was great.

    Then came the rain.

    And not gentle, sexy festival rain. This was Biblical. It was Mötley Crüe’s drug phase levels of chaos. One minute I was dry and happy singing along to Green Day’s ‘Brain Stew’; the next I looked like someone had shoved me through a Whitesnake video shoot in a car wash once ‘When September Ends’ began. I became one with the sludge. Hair glued to my face. Fishnets sagging with moisture. And of course, a series of 40-year-old men in cargo shorts telling me, “You actually look kinda hot like that.”

    I did not.

    The Fall (Day 2)

    On Saturday, while attempting the very non-metal task of retrieving a jacket from my yurt (sentence sponsored by the Trust Fund Goth Society), I fell over twice in five minutes.

    Same patch of mud.
    Same knees.
    Two neat little offerings of flesh to the gods of Download.

    By the second fall, I was bleeding, limping, and being laughed at by a teen in a Lamb of God hoodie who shouted “Wooooah DOWN-load!” like it was the first time that joke had ever been made. I hope his vape explodes.

    The Sunstroke Era

    Once the rain gave up, the sun arrived like a mirage in the desert. I, in my infinite wisdom, had applied SPF “vaguely” and “only to the bits I could see while squinting into a tiny mirror.”

    Result: blistered cleavage, rogue tanlines, and a deep spiritual connection with a value pack of Dioralyte sachets I cradled like a newborn. By Sunday, my body was rejecting alcohol, water, and any solid food not shaped like a crisp. I was drinking gin purely for the placebo effect, but all it did was give me heartburn and emotional flashbacks to secondary school PE (the heartburn, not the gin drinking…that would’ve made PE way more fun).

    The Music Bit (Because Yes, There Were Bands)

    Despite the carnage of my knees and skin, the music lineup delivered big:

    • Green Day (Friday, Apex Stage): Punk-rock dads still going strong. Ripped through Dookie and American Idiot like it was 2005 and none of us had lower back pain. I screamed “Do you have the time” with the unhinged energy of someone who absolutely did not have the time. Or the electrolytes.
    • Sleep Token (Saturday, Apex Stage): Beautiful, culty chaos. Vessel looked like a haunted priest, the entire crowd looked like they were being baptised in emotional damage. Tears. Swooning. Possibly a religious awakening. I’m not convinced I didn’t join a cult.
    • Korn (Sunday, Apex Stage): Full tilt nu-metal nostalgia. Jonathan Davis brought the bagpipes and the trauma. “Freak on a Leash” hit like it always does; an anthem for anyone who’s ever screamed into a spreadsheet.
    • Malevolence (Secret Set, Dogtooth Stage): AND THEN. The secret set to end all secret sets. Sheffield’s finest, Malevolence, rolled in like the Avengers of riffs and absolutely decimated the tent. My fave band absolutely blew the roof off. If I’d had any remaining stability in my knees, it would’ve been gone by track three. They sounded tighter than my budget after payday. Crowd went feral. Grown men wept. I left with a mild concussion and no regrets.

    Lessons from the Trenches

    • Dioralyte is the true headliner.
    • Don’t trust the weather. Ever. It hates you.
    • There is no dignity in a yurt.
    • 30+ at a festival hits different: I can’t bounce back from three days on a diet of warm beer and no food like I used to. I can, however, develop a heat rash behind my knees and cry into a wet hoodie.

    Final Rating: 10/10 (Would Die Again)

    Was I physically ruined? Yes.
    Did I hallucinate a little on Sunday afternoon? Also yes.
    Was this the best festival I’ve been to in years? Fuck yes. As it is every year.

    Download 2025 broke my body but healed something weird in my soul. It reminded me that even in a corporate life filled with KPIs, slide decks, and passive-aggressive Teams messages, there’s still space to scream in a field with 100,000 other likeminded weirdos and feel completely, wildly alive.

    And that, my friends, is worth every blister, every bruise, and every unsolicited compliment from a damp man named Keith.

  • SLAM DUNK SOUTH 2025: Screaming, Singing & A Pair of Questionable Leggings

    Image source: When The Horn Blows | Copyright: James Kirkland Photography

    Let me set the scene: I’m two cans deep, neck-deep in Neck Deep, and halfway through a sweaty two-step when my waterproof flies off like it’s trying to escape the lifestyle. Fair. I clock it disappear into the pit…a tragic but noble end.

    But the gods of Slam Dunk giveth. Not long after, I spot it on the floor. Salvation! I rescue it from the mud like it’s a baby on the motorway. I cling to it. I parade it around. I make a scene.

    Except it’s not my waterproof. It’s a pair of damp, visibly soiled leggings.

    I had lovingly cradled someone’s abandoned festival trousers like they were a lost family heirloom. I’m not saying that moment changed me, but I haven’t known peace since.

    The Bands: Absolute Scenes

    Stray From the Path

    I love these guys. Hardcore fury in its purest form. No messing about. The crowd was one giant middle finger to the establishment and I was very much here for it. If you didn’t come out of that set angry at capitalism and nursing a minor injury, were you even there?

    Graphic Nature

    Like getting punched in the head and thanking them for it. Brutal, glitchy, delightfully unhinged. Crowd was small (due to some rather rude overrunning) energy was not. Felt like a therapy session for people who express feelings exclusively through walls of noise and elbowing strangers (if I could do this in the office, I would).

    Neck Deep

    They had us all by the throat within the first note. Pop-punk perfection. Every lyric hit like a punch in the teenage heart. Crowd was one big, beer-soaked therapy circle. By “December” I was crying in my pint and making plans to re-download MSN Messenger.

    Electric Callboy

    The musical equivalent of someone doing ket in a laser tag arena. They came out like Eurovision on bath salts and had the entire tent acting like they’d just freebased Monster Energy. Outfits, pyro, synth-core madness. Fully unhinged in the best way possible. You don’t just watch Electric Callboy, you experience them and emerge a changed person, possibly with glitter in your ears (or your arse crack). Bring on November.

    A Day to Remember

    Still the kings of making you cry, then immediately giving you whiplash. One minute I’m belting “All Signs Point to Lauderdale” with a grin, the next I’m having a full-blown emotional reckoning to “If It Means a Lot to You” in the middle of a mosh pit whilst pulling toilet paper out of my hair. Beautifully unhinged.

    Now, onto the waterproof incident…

    Let’s break this down:

    • Enter pit, full of optimism and IPA.
    • Waterproof yeets itself into the ether.
    • Spot what I think is it. Feel triumphant.
    • Clutch mystery item like it’s the One Ring.
    • Realise, 30 minutes later, I’ve been holding a damp, skid-marked pair of leggings.
    • Quietly discard it behind a bin and contemplate never speaking again.

    You think you’re tough until you’ve snogged the abyss and it smells like someone else’s arse.

    Slammy D-ebrief

    • Weather: Schizophrenic. Sunburnt at noon, damp goblin by 5.
    • Drinks: £8.90 for a pint of pisswater but I’d pay it again tomorrow.
    • Toilets: Post-apocalyptic. Genuinely saw a lad leave one and say “I’m a different man now.”
    • Food: None. Vibes? A-plenty.
    • Fashion report: Battle jackets, Crocs, one guy dressed as the Cookie Monster, me in shame.

    Final Thoughts

    Slam Dunk 2025 was loud, muddy, nostalgic, and mildly traumatising. A glorious mess of broken voices, skinned knees, and shared trauma set to the soundtrack of our collective youth. Exactly what the doctor ordered (if your doctor is also a Neck Deep fan with a nicotine addiction).

    Would I go again? Without question.
    Would I zip-tie my waterproof to my body next time? 100%.
    Would I still end up crying over pop-punk with mascara on my teeth? You bet.

    See you in the pit, 2026.