Don't worry, V happy

This weekend was blissful from start to finish. It began with post-work cocktails with one of my Australian friends on Friday. Happily we restrained ourselves to just a couple so I was home and enjoying an anchovy pizza by about 8pm (nice!). Then on Saturday, after a lazy morning and a pleasant lunch, K and I made our way to the V Festival in Sydney’s Centennial Park for an afternoon and evening of lazing in the sun, sipping beers and great music. Unlike the draconian nightmare that was Big Day Out in January, this time we were actually treated like adults at a music festival (how shocking!) and there were no “beer cages” to fence us in away from the stages. We caught the last few minutes of Duffy (singing Mercy, what else) then settled down to take in Elbow, Madness, Snow Patrol and, then finally, the headliners – the Killers. They were amazing! I haven’t enjoyed a live band so much since Muse (who are my favourite ever live act). They were everything a headline act should be – really energetic, packed full of stage presence and with a beautifully-constructed set that started with some old faves and then just kept on building – it was an hour and a half of brilliance.

Bizarrely it hadn’t sold out – I think the V brand is still quite low in Australia as almost all the voices we heard were British – which meant that although there was a decent crowd, it wasn’t overly packed, which was all very pleasant.

We finished off the night with a drink in our favourite bar in Surry Hills, the Trinity and then taxied home with the sounds of the day ringing in our ears.

On Sunday morning I was up fairly bright and breezy and went out for a run. I’d been a little bit slack during the week so thought I’d better put in a bit of an effort. There are loads of hills near our place so I slogged my way up one of them (with the Killers in my iPod giving me a bit of a boost!) and then rolled my way back down, feeling quite pleased with myself for clocking up 40 minutes of hard work.

K had organised the afternoon’s activities which involved nothing more strenuous than catching a ferry to Balmain, finding a spot with a view of the city and the Harbour Bridge, unpacking a picnic lunch and lounging about reading the paper in the afternoon sunshine. It’s a really lovely temperature here at the moment – not too humid and about 25 degrees, which is just perfect for sitting about in, especially when you get a bit of a cool Harbour breeze. Then we caught a ferry back to our neck of the woods, popped into The Deck for a sundowner, amused ourselves watching the speed-dating session that was going on in one half of the bar, ended up eating there and then, once it was dark, headed home for a Sunday evening of not much really.

Monday 26 January: Big Day Out

Based on a tip from Peter, my friend from my old temp job, we’d bought tickets for Big Day Out, a kind of Aussie version of T in the Park etc. The line-up was ‘eclectic’ to say the least – Neil Young was the headliner, preceded by the Arctic Monkeys and with the Prodigy on in another tent. We found out after we’d bought the tickets that Big Day Out is renowned for having quite a high “bogan” element (this is the Aussie equivalent of “chavs” or “neds” and is one of my favourite Aussie words, even though I know it’s wrong of me!). In the end, the audience was probably as diverse as the line-up and there was a fairly relaxed atmosphere – apart from the excessive nanny state-like security, that is. Firstly, drug sniffer dogs – come on guys, if young people can’t take a few drugs at music festivals, where can they!? (And note – a young girl died after taking 3 ecstasy tablets in one go after taking fright about getting caught when she saw the dogs coming). Secondly, ridiculous insistence that everyone under the age of about 50 has to wear an ID bracelet saying they’re old enough to drink – SO patronising!! Thirdly, not allowing people to take alcohol outside ‘gated areas’ so you couldn’t just get a beer and sit in the sun and watch a band. Fourthly, the complete stupidity of the ‘beer token’ system which meant that when they’d run out of light beer (one token) and we only had one token left, that we couldn’t just get a normal beer (two tokens) instead. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more patronised and treated like an infant since, well, I was at nursery school!! God knows how young Aussies survive when they go overseas and are actually treated like adults with a brain.

Apart from that though, it was a good day and we saw some reasonable music. And thankfully, although it was hot, it wasn’t as hot as it was last year when apparently they had to water bomb the crowd using the helicopters that normally get saved for putting out bush fires!