I’ve been a regular at music festivals for many years; to me they’re kind of a staggered summer holiday. I’m not one for going abroad to fry my skin whilst lay at the side of a pool for a fortnight. I’d much rather be at a festival enjoying the atmosphere and euphoria that comes from listening to my rock gods in a huge crowd of like minded people.
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Last year was something of a first for me because rather than just attending a festival, I worked at one too. Whilst attempting to book my ticket for the Bloodstock festival, I found a link asking for volunteers, which out of curiosity I followed. I was really pleased to find that they needed people to work as volunteers in the first aid tents. My first aid certificate was in date so I applied, and to my surprise was asked to work some shifts over the course of the weekend. If you’d like to find out more about volunteering for a festival and getting in free then check out the vInspired website.
I arrived on site on the Wednesday before the festival began. It was weird seeing such a mass of people all busily working on the structure of the stage, putting up crowd barriers and erecting more marquees than I could possibly count. It was like witnessing a load of worker ants all busily toiling away. After pitching my tent I joined the ant colony and was soon busy making ready the main first aid tent, which included helping put it up.
It was incredible just how much had been done by the end of the first day. By the following day, the site needed to be ready to welcome the first arrivals. There was much work to be done still, but seeing the incredible level of organisation and the amount of people on hand, I had no doubts that it was going to be ready on time.
It’s hard for me to describe just how much equipment was being ferried into the site. Even as we were relaxing after our days work, another shift of people had taken over and bringing in masses more equipment to be set up tomorrow.
Moving such heavy weight equipment like PA systems and the stage scaffold across fields has to be done by tractor and trailer. Anything else will just make a mess of the ground or get stuck. The festival had a small fleet of tractors that they had bought from a dealer in used tractors. I was told they’d have a secondary purpose of towing cars off the site if the weather turned the fields into a mud bath similar to last year’s Isle of Wight festival which became infamous for its problems – the report about the problems is still available to read on the BBC website.
My weekend was extremely busy in First Aid. It was good to be able to help some people that injured themselves. I did get to see some acts over the course of the weekend when I wasn’t on duty and even when I was working, I could still hear it perfectly. It didn’t look like there would be any cars getting towed out of the mud. Most of the cases in first aid involved people with sunburn and heatstroke. As for the most unusual casualty to present himself at first aid, I think I would do well to maintain patient confidentiality and say no more about his ‘injury’.
