It was today that I went to the Field Day festival. Field day is a festival that I probably wouldn't have looked twice at thisyear due to a fairly average line up and my complete and total lack of money but when my friend Nicole phoned up a month or so back, telling me that she had won a pair of tickets and wondered if I wanted to go, I was as good as there.

The timing of the festival was not great considering it was the day after my mum and dad were going on holiday, so I said goodbye to them at 4 o'clock in the morning, then fell asleep and woke up again at about 9 in preperation for the day ahead - As I said 'It was today that I went to the Field Day festival' in my opening line it is now safe to guess that I am in fact very tired writing this blog but nevertheless I shall carry on. Anyway I woke up at 9 and got myself ready to leave at 10 to meet Nicole at Mile End station at 11 and that all just went swimmingly, we then walked down to Victoria park, picked up her free tickets and we were inside the festival gates no later than 11:30.

Unfortunately as with all festivals, the time between opening and any decent acts coming on is at least an hour, so we walked around, getting a bit of a feel for the festival. Largely it was what you expect of a festival field, a large main stage, a few smaller tents and a whole load of merchandise and food stands. This was not all though, for some reason there was a large 'sports day' field in the centre where people were partaking in various events such as the egg and spoon race and the tug of war. It provided a strangely high amount of amusement watching these people playing games. We then sat down in one of the tents and had a little relax before heading back down to the main stage to watch the first act of the day.

The first act we saw was Noah and the Whale, who were deffinitely on my list of must see bands of the day. I don't know all that many of their songs, just three in fact, but I do like them all, especially '5 years time' which has been getting a lot of air play as of late on radio 1. They played all the 3 songs that I knew plus a selection of others from their forth-coming debut album in their opening half hour slot and it was a most enjoyable start to the day.

By now the weather was already beginning to deteriorate and bringing it back to a point I made earlier about the not outstanding line up. We had very little to do between the end of Noah and the Whale at 1 and Laura Marling at 4. Our main aim was to find shelter and thus we found ourselves in the 'bugged out' tent for a lot of that time. In the afformentioned tent they mainly play hardcore electo type stuff which I don't mind in small doses but a whole set of it was a bit much. Nevertheless it was better than getting wet and so we stayed there with the druggies and the ravers, showing off our pristine dance moves.

During this lull of good music we also managed to have lunch at possibly the best value of the over priced food stands. I first looked at the pasta stand, trying to be healthy and all but when looking at the price of £5 for a small plate of pasta in pesto I decided to go for the much better value 'chunky chips in Wicked Dips' £3.50 for a large container of chips with a rather tasty chili salsa

Eventually 4 o'clock came about and Laura Marling took to the stage sporting a very boyish haircut. I wasn't too bothered by that because she is a bit of a genius. She was clearly a bit nervous at singing in front of quite a large crowd but she didn't let it bother her getting through several of the tracks from her album. Unfortunately she only had a half hour long set and so I didn't get to hear all the songs that I was hoping for but still it was very good.

The next band we saw on the main stage was the surprise highlight of the day, Of Montreal. A very camp five piece from across the pacific. Their performance was so much more than just the music which did sound enjoyable  but I doubt would have been so inspiring without the rest. They all came out in bright, garish costume, especially the lead singer who was wearing tights and what I can only describe as a fish net cardigan along with the customary bright blue eyeliner. NOT only this during the performance there were a number of people coming onto the stage in various guises doing odd little dances and also giant balloons filled with glitter were burst over the crowd - a large amount falling onto my head, really livening up my outfit. It was truly a mesmerising set due to its sheer oddness and thus easily my favourite part of the day.

As soon as that had finished we rushed straight off to the Adventure tent to see a band called Mae Shi who Nicole had seen before and had raved about but on seeing them I was less than impressed apart from when they sent a parachute into the crowd which was passed on around the tent but the songs were pretty average and of course the visual display had no chance of beeting what I had just seen, so all in all the Mae Shi were not that influential on my day.

We then rushed back over to the main stage to catch Lightspeed Champion who were another band that I really wanted to see and too they didn't dissapoint. Dev Hynes maybe a real emo but there is no doubting he has real character and stage presence which made the performance that much more enjoyable. Another added bonus of their set was the random playing of the entire star wars theme tune before their final song which was unexpected and exciting.

At this point we were beginning to get a bit tired and because of the atrocious weather we decided to call it a day and so we didn't catch the headliners Foals but having seen them last year I was not especially dissapointed. We left the arena and made our way back to Mile end station where we went our seperate ways along the central line and I was home by around 9ish. All in all field day was enjoyable but I deffinitely would have been a bit dissapointed had I actually paid to go to it. And that is the end for another blog. Au Revoir

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