Walking on site Friday afternoon with my now off duty cook we are overwhelmed by the replacement of the past weeks tranquillity with the obvious excitement and hyperactivity a festival creates. The main arena is absolutely thrumming with music, laughter, people and fair rides. There are walking street performers, people snapping pictures all around the handsome proud Wickerman and of course the obligatory party police van – most amusing and great fun to dance along with.

We bump into one of the interactive crew workers. She has been sent away to rest but is rather weary and distraught. She still needs to hump her stuff onsite and set up her tent and there are problems on the wall. It turns out the uninformed VIP security won’t let our staff inside to get the refreshments I have left with the bar staff in a cool box. I roll my eyes at the sequence of miscommunication that unfolds. But a few sharp words from myself gets me and the team inside VIP. The crew outside are rewarded with their toilet breaks and cold cans of juice and continue to cope with the distributing of paint to palettes, supervising the use of stencils or freehand work and encourage people to sign the large scroll board with their name once they have finished.

The wall is already filling up. There are queues. I am proud. Proud of the concept that is working. Proud of the emerging collaborative mural. And proud of the team working so hard in the sun, for other people to have fun. They even keep a watchful eye on wandering parents and ensure that every child who has been rather irresponsibly left to take part alone, gets safely back to their rightful parents. A sign needed for the next day I feel – “This is not a crèche, please remain with your children.”

After a couple of stiff drinks in VIP and being congratulated by VIP regulars on the best VIP decor yet we head up the road to help my weathered and weary friend set up her tent. We ensure she knows exactly where it is by surrounding it with bunting and as we leave her to rest and recuperate I spray big golden arrows on the wooden bins so she can always find her way back. Although I do ponder, who may also follow the arrows and find themselves at a rather decorative small tent in the family camping field! Her problem though, not mine!

A quick gaze over to base camp as I pass and I can’t quite believe some of the troupes are still sitting inside the big pink sweaty camp tent. I swing into the middle of the tribe, into the middle of the conversations and drag the beer bucket outside into the shade, I drag the rug out, the arm chairs and then start corralling people out into the light. There is little protest and before you can say Maestro! Cook has her guitar in hand, the tribe are improvising with nearby objects for musical accompaniment and we all sing songs in the sunshine. It is a beautiful moment, if only for a short while and if only with half the team.

My happiness soon reduced somewhat as my creative genius, who up until now has been supervising the running of the interactive mural in the main arena, arrives around the corner with a face of thunder. My boss engaged gob asked her if everything was packed away ok, whereas my friend engaged mouth should have asked her if she was ok. She paused and I received the death stare. Then off she marched into her caravan.

Oops.

Turns out she had been calling and calling my mobile for ages, to ask about standing down the team. The wall was full of pictures and graffiti, no spaces left, the temperature had soared, it was too hot, too long for the teams to go on. I agreed. And then apologised for being out of contact for a while. I guess I took off my invisible but noticeable boss hat for a while there and almost got into the swing of being a punter.

We soon made friends after she had refreshed herself and accepted my apology. The work of her and the Friday team can be seen in all its splendour here:

Friday was to be my big blow out fun day. My all-nighter. Fun and frolics with all the crew. Saturday night would entail much needed sleep before a huge break down job that I knew would be harrowing on a hangover from an all-nighter. Being the only team member that has worked the Wickerman before, I seemed to be the only person aware of this fact.

Next plan was to meet everyone, including Saturday’s interactive staff (who now had nothing to actually do on Saturday) outside VIP at 7pm. We wanted to gather everyone for the last bands of the day. Everyone mostly looking forward to celebrating together and watching what madness Dizzee Rascal would bring to our needy disco dancing feet.

But as 7pm approached I received a host of frantic phone calls from a couple of members of Saturda'ys interactive crew having trouble getting in. Trying to take phone calls while standing right in front of the main stage has two main outcomes:

1 –You cannot hear a thing and have to shout instructions, hoping you are understood at the other end. Trying to confirm by follow up text, which due to the overload of the boosted signal connectivity kept crossing over and arriving in unhelpful random orders. My boss hat was seriously back on and I watched in despair as my tribe sat together in a huge group, smiling, drinking and getting firmly into party mode as I stressed out.

2 – You look like a right twazzock pacing about with your finger shoved in one ear, phone on the other. As if the festival isn’t even there.

One member of staff was unable to get in or get hold of me in real time, nor understand the frantic influx of instructions from both myself and the event production ticket organiser and after much disagreeing and complex blagging on her part, she got in and suddenly appeared at my side.

Partly delighted to see her stunning self and partly confused how this could happen, I was then left with the difficult conundrum of a member of staff in the main arena without any wrist bands what so ever. I now had to negotiate getting this member off site, to the production office to get this sorted and fast. Alabama 3 had started their set and the tribe were enjoying them in the setting sun.

Super confidence and bravado was needed to get this done without hassle and fast. Nodding enthusiastically as I outlined the plan, she stepped in line to follow my lead as we approached the gatekeeper staff of the production village. Thankfully it was someone who already knew me. We breezed through, stomped to production and were swiftly met by the production manager who was quick to tell me the mistake was with the staff at the main gate and my member of staffs pass was there all along!

Pass acquired in record time at the front gate and then hello! There’s my buggy friend! A quick lift back up onto the site meant we made it back to the tribe in time for a quick respite and much need treble swift drink for me as we prepared for Dizzee Rascal.

We found a great spot and as he came on and pumped out his baselines and verbal attack the team went berserk. This was it! This was our moment of unity, our reciprocity, our reward.

The core creative crew went wild, scaring away all partners of and the newly introduced crew members. We cut some incredible moves. We danced our socks off. We pulled hard core baseline junkie faces. We stomped and shoved each other into another space and time. At one point we were all dancing in a circle, shoulders shrugging, hands sliding around so close to the floor I did wonder what we were all looking for down there...

And finally it came. The moment everyone in the field was waiting for. BONKERS! And it was. The crowd was. And especially we was. Absolutely Bonkers. Huge heart pounding base line. Big overzealous dance moves and glitter rained from the sky.

And then the finale. Dizzees own rendition of “You’ve got the love.” I stood back from the tribe, my back to the stage and took them all in. I drank up every last grateful moment I felt to have them all here. To have them in front of me, right here, right now. And I was so thankful. I sang to them. My back to Dizzee the whole time. Individually pointing to each of them and replacing the word love with the appropriate word based on the skills and talents they had shown me throughout their input...

You’ve got the paint..

You’ve got the stars..

You’ve got the drills..

You’ve got the brushes..

You’ve got the BBQ..

You’ve got the beers..

You’ve got the love I need to see me through. Thank you. Bluetopia Creative Crew. Thank you.

You are the best and I hope you all know it.

I cried with glee. And was sad for the members of the team that had contributed so much but could not be there for this moment.

It was EPIC.

After that everything is one messed up hilarious blur. I remember getting back to my campervan expecting to fall into bed beside an already sleeping BF to find it full of BF and friends having a party of their own. Of which I enthusiastically joined in of course.

I remember the numbers dwindling to three of us and BF swinging open the van door to comment on something ridiculous we were doing. So we dragged the rug and armchairs over to the van doorway, made a front room style set up so he could languish in his quilt while we entertained him into (inset Scottish accent) the wee small hours.

I then remember the van door being sharply shut as our amusing factor went downhill and BF went to sleep. How the three of us giggled as though we had been sent to the naughty corner. We discussed at length moving away from the van so BF didn’t have to listen to our awesome chatter any more but we never quite got round to it.

A hilarious night of cold drinks and (insert Scottish accent again) pure guid banter was had but cannot specifically be recalled. I just recall much laughter and ridiculous antics, evidenced by the soreness of my cheeks from laughing and the roughness of my voice from talking.

Article: Lou Hyland