CLUB . . . Redefining Our Parameters Since 2003

Met Rich & Dan in Barcelona where we went to the Summercase festival, on a great site which is really far huger than required for the size of the festival. There is an excellent outdoor auditorium there with seats/steps cut into a hemisphere around the stage, there are also wandering barmen with huge tanks of beer strapped to their backs so you often don't have to leave your seat to get a drink.

At Summercase I saw the end of Belle & Sebastian, New Order ( who were brilliant ), Daft Punk ( who weren't bad ), Happy Mondays ( good ) and some other people too I think. Walked back down the beach one morning just after dawn which was very nice. Too drunk the following night so staggered back through Barcelona since Rich & Dan had vanished.

After Summercase it was camping in Benicassim. Didn't get a good pitch for the tent, no shade and no where to really lie around outside the tent, consequently it was very hot.

The first night we "took easy" in the town convincing each other to buy more and more lagers.

2nd night Dan & I went to drink on the beach whilst Richard had a nice sleep and recharged his batteries.

3rd night we went to the beach again to watch the Ballet which Richard claims he loved but Dan & I thought was pointless and dull, although the actual music was nice. An amusing Spanish heckler caused some amusement for a while. Richard claimed he was drunk and wanted to go home but Dan & I forced him to drink more lager and swim in the sea, he will later claim we were constantly bullying him which is not true at all. Then we forced him to walk back to the campsite and spent the rest of the night until dawn wandering aimlessly around the campsite chatting to all the other people wandering aimlessly around the campsite.

4th Night was the opening night of the festival so we watched some bands, the Scissor Sisters were pretty awful. Can't remember who else we watched but there is a good chance it was boom boom boom dancy nonsense which I now hate. It turned out to be light when we left the last act which had been very good even if they did include a large element of dancy nonsense they also played the Ramones which is much more like it.

5th Night was the Pixies ( I think ), they were great even though there was such crowding at the front that they had to take a break for half an hour whilst people sorted themselves out and cooled down. After that they played rather more chilled out versions of their songs but they played them very well and were still brilliant. They didn't play a single song which was anything less than fantastic, I'd like to see them again. After that there was some more wandering around I expect, Dan & I saw the Strokes who were pretty good but I lost Dan when I went off to find some cigarettes and came back to find the strokes had finished. I was feeling somewhat drunk so had a sit down and something to eat, and then a short sleep before heading off to see if I could find something to do. I found Le Hammon Inferno featuring Nossie who was a weird kind of a chap who wanted to us to wake up the beat because it was sleeping. He would periodically take of items of clothing and cause immensly powerful waves of the bass to pulse out from the speakers - I could feel every bone in my body vibrating and my skin rippling and I had only been drinking beer. Once Nossie had got the crowd suitably warmed up the Inferno began and they played a sort of danceable music which was interesting to listen to and still great to dance to. A Spanish girl and her friends were probably commenting on my amazing dancing but since I don't know any Spanish, they didn't speak English and our mutal hand gestures were unitelligible neither of us were very clear what was being said. Then it was light again and I walked back to the campsite just in time for the sun to have become very hot and make sleeping a very tricky task indeed. Eventually I gave up and went to sleep in the park by the beach for the rest of the day which was nice, shady and relaxing.

6th Night, this was apparently Dance night. First of all we saw 2 Many DJs but I think had already seen 2 Many DJs and became somewhat bored of it despite certain measures we had taken to guard against boredom. None the less I left them to it and went to lie down for a while on the grass where I very much enjoyed to listening to some guitar band or another I could hear from a nearby tent. It was very lovely lying around but I went to see the band and watched a few songs before they ended. Then I wandered around more or less randomly in a sort of a vague search for Rich & Dan. I didn't find them but was enjoying wandering around so much time flew and soon it was beginning to get light. I was walking past the bus stop when the bus arrived and I was able to jump right on which I was very pleased about. On the way back from the bus to the campsite I managed to trip over a hidden trip wire whilst climbing through a gap in a fence and get a big gash on my hand. My already dirty clothes became, muddy, bloodstained and filthy and I spent the next while cleaning up the cut and trying to get bits of gravel out of it. Since it was already light I decided to bypass the annoying trying to sleep in the tent stage and decided to head off down to the beach immediately. Rich came back and said he'd lost Dan and wasn't going to come to the beach with me. I thought about going to the waterpark instead but for no good reason decided to stick to the beach. There weren't all that many people on the beach yet so I set up in what I thought might be a shady spot later on when the sun got hotter. It was OK until around midday when the crusties began to move in behind me and shout and cause their dogs to bark loudly. I moved onto a more shady but uncomfortable patch of gravel in the park where I dozed for a bit longer. Later I had a shower in one of the beach showers and went to get something to eat via the leisure centre where I had a bit more of asleep on the tarmac forecourt. For various reasons there was nothing to eat so I went back to the campsite.

7th Night. We got down to the festival in time to see Coldcut who were excellent, I had a resurgence of energy and seemed to become drunk after only a litre of booze. Then we saw the end of depeche mode and hung around the main stage for the rest of the evening. Dan wandered back and forth in search of adventure and I became gradually more and more tired. I left Rich & Dan to it and went back to the campsite where I arrived around half four and before it was even light. After a reasonably good sleep Rich and I went to the water park since Dan had taken to going straight to the beach for his daily sleeping. The waterpark is great, i should have gone there the previous day.