Knowsley Hall Music Festival - Sunday

Colin and I went to the Knowsley Hall music festival on Sunday. We paid around £40 for the pleasure and got there full of excitement and anticipation

We got up there about noon but it was around 1.30pm before they let us park our car and then walk the long walk through several fields (at least a mile) before we got into the complex. It was already thick with water and mud but we had no idea what was still to come.

One of the first to arrive we bought a blow-up settee for £15 (a huge sum for a temporary item but it proved worth its weight in gold, which as I think about it, was probably itself less than £15, LOL). We found a relatively dry spot in front of the big stage and the big screen and for a few hours we were more or less on our own. But as the show wore on and the names playing got bigger, more and more people joined us.

The photo shows us about 4pm before the mud really got going but the rain had started.

They had refused to let us bring in food or drink, so we quickly quaffed our cans of coke at the entrance (thankfully we had not brought sandwiches otherwise things might have been a lot more aggressive at the gate as they made people throw food into bins before they came in). We did have a cheese burger each and a tray of chips to share at £9.50, and as a one-time Yorkshire dweller I could scarcely thole it, so we only had the one lot of food. Colin was drinking Stella, I was on water so I dont know what the bar bill was like but I suspect it was huge.

The mud crept on slowly, and by about 4pm there was not a blade of grass left on the site, and I kid you not, it became a mud bath.

The music was great, it started off well and got better and better as the day wore on, Madness were a particular triumph, the rain poured down and the ground disintegrated but the music was awesome, they even did the House of Fun, my own personal favourite, it was electric. They opened with "One step beyond" complete with the opening "heavy, heavy sound" soundtrack, fabulous.

By about 9pm the drunks were falling over in the mud, throwing bottles and cans across the audience and even one of the wonderful inflatable sofas, it started to get scary. I wonder why no-one tells you this when they report back in the newspapers? Perhaps they were sponsors?

I saw a ten year old girl being lead out of the area with a bloody head, crying, it was bound to be the result of a bottle to the back of the head, how does anyone think this is good fun?

We left in the middle of the Zutons, who I love, and missed Keane. Call me a scaredycat if you like but it had become somewhere that felt intimidating rather than exhilirating.

Thankfully when we finally got to the carpark there was still a chance for at least another 20 cars to get out of the top gate before it became a quagmire, the bottom gate was already shut with abandoned cars littering the field, covered in mud.

Thankfully even more so no-one stopped the car to see Colin with no trousers and shoes, he was so muddy he wrapped them up in my rain poncho and hid them in the footwell on the way home.

I am clearly am too old for this life, be it Glastonbury or Knowsley, I like my creature comforts too much! No-one can account for rain or mud, but there was insufficient straw or walkways either. We did have a great musical experience but the planning was poor, the toilet queue was over an hour long and the stewarding was so minimal as to be invisible. Sorry if I sound miserable, but this was the experience of a middling aged woman, no longer 17 and up for it to that degree.

I will want to go again next year but only if Lord Derby has learnt a few lessons.