Your typical Friday afternoon ordeal getting to the Electric Picnic from Dublin – the hours stuck in traffic, the trekking with heavy bags from a far-distant car park – was averted in my case this year by Sinead O’Connor’s need for a festival massage. My pal Gráine, a masseur, was invited to the festival to use her healing arts to help the diva unwind. Gráine needed transport for her massage table, and my car was her willing carriage.
We headed for Stradbally along secreted back-roads. A few moments at the wasp-infested artists’ entrance, some clearance by officials over walkie-talkies and we were in. I plunged into the ever-swelling masses, making the first of several futile attempts at getting my bearings (I never did find ‘em). Jaysus! Maybe it’s age or heightened psychic sensibilities, but at this year’s festival I really noticed how the energy of 32,500 people can affect your own energy field. I went thinking it’d be a great chance to catch up with friends, but with my brain downloading everyone else’s scattered thoughts, conversation proved virtually impossible, and the world distilled into a series of sensory impressions...
What a myriad of treatments, yoga classes and other good-for-you stuff were on offer at the Body & Soul! This year even featured seaweed baths and saunas. I headed for the Cultivate tent, where my environmental friends were running forums and films on climate change – a tough sell in hedonist heaven.
Later, I made tracks for the beautiful Temple Of Truth, the huge plywood sculpture built by US Burning Man artist David Best. I introduced myself to David, whom I’d interviewed over the phone for Hot Press. Before I know it David grabs me, says, “Do you mind if I embarrass you?”, gathers a crowd around and shouts, “Everyone! Listen up! Here’s a separated mum with two boys, one autistic! If she can survive, there’s hope for us all!” The crowd smiled at me in a ‘well done’ kind of way, and resumed writing momentoes to their lost and loved ones, leaving them on the pyre ready for burning in the early hours of Monday morning.
It’s always filled me with horror seeing parents struggling with the stress of looking after kids at Electric Picnic. However, a visit this year to the Green Crafts field and adjacent family camping area made me think again. Here, far from the big tents and main drag madness, is the gentlest sanctuary a frazzled soul could wish for. The good food, cleanliness, peace, creativity, fun workshops, beautiful mazes and ancient orchard ambience of the Green Crafts/family camping areas – these are what give parents the calm inner strength required to navigate the festival’s main throroughfares with children in tow.
In fact, seeing the Green Crafts area got me thinking that next year I’ll take my by then nine-year-old son to the Picnic. Apart from thrilling him, it might help me, too. For this year – I don’t know why – I felt a bit jaded. Maybe the extraordinary magic that I felt at my first two Picnics will return seeing the festival afresh through my child’s eyes.