Parklife 2013

Day 1

Today I am pretty knackered after a heavy weekend at Parklife Festival in Heaton Park, Manchester. It is the first year I have been, and is also the first year it was held in the current venue, due to a big increase in performers/ attendees.

On the Saturday I went with Abi and her brother, and we were lucky enough to get a lift in, so escaped the crowds (and the hassle of a car crashing into the met causing them to be cancelled!) and we were in the venue for 1pm. It was quite busy, but to nowhere near the extent it was later on in the day!

The weather was gorgeous, so we spent the first couple of hours lounging around soaking up the rays, and I got a really tasty lamb pitta burger, which was fairly reasonable at £5.50, as it had stacks of proper roast lamb inside, as well as a mint yoghurt sauce. We could hear various performers on around us, but there wasn't a great deal of massively well-known acts on early on, so we decided to save our energy.

The first band we watched were Delphic, who were on the main stage. They came on at 3.15pm, so it was when everyone was starting to properly arrive and the atmosphere was really good. We missed the beginning, but I got to see them do 'Baiya', which is my favourite track off the new album, so I was happy. We had a bit of a dilemma afterwards, as we went to the bar and got split up from Abi's brother Joe, so ended up trying to find him for about an hour, before stationing ourselves near Nandos and hoping he received our text to meet there! The signal inside the park was atrocious, so most people couldn't contact anyone.

Whilst we were queueing for the bar, which we were at for nearly forty minutes due to the lack of people working on it, we heard The Temper Trap perform, and saw a little bit of Rudimental before we finally found Joe. We then went to the Hospitality tent, which was mainly for dance acts, where we saw High Contrast, which definitely cheered us all up and gave us some much needed energy. We went to get some Chinese chicken noodles for tea (they were so good!), and then headed over to the main stage to watch Maccabees.

I saw these guys at Benicassim last year, but didn't really know their stuff, so since getting more into them I was itching to watch them perform live again, and they didn't disappoint. They did a good mixture of older and new tracks, including a couple of my faves, and they always have an amazing crowd reaction, so even Abi and Joe commented that they enjoyed it, despite not knowing many songs.

By this point we were all getting a bit tired, and alcohol was wearing off, so we thought we'd counteract it in one of the dance tents. A French DJ called Madeon, who I was recently introduced to, was playing in the Drop the Mustard tent, and his set was electric! Abi and I got chatting to some guys, who put us on their shoulders too so we got some great views! Straight after him was Fake Blood, who I saw at Beni two years ago with my sister and all her friends, and strangely enough we bumped into them all in there, which was a coincidence. We were all dancing away and having fun and then he finished on his famous 'I Think I Like It', which sent everyone crazy!

We headed out at 11pm once all the music had finished, and Abi's dad kindly picked us up, which saved us lots of drama trying to get home. I was tucked up in bed at 1am, yet my sister got home at 3am and had to ask someone's mum to pick them up!