Parklife (Part 1)

Saturday

This was my second year doing Parklife, and last year's was a bit chaotic for a number of reasons, so I was looking forward to a better experience being a bit more clued up about the festival. I went with my sister and four of her friends that I knew, and everyone was staying at mine for ease, so we started early on the Saturday; I was alternating between a cup of tea and an amaretto and coke at 10.30am! We got the tunes pumping and the drinks flowing, and after getting ready, set off to get the train into town at 12.30pm (armed with premixed vodka and lemonade).

The transport situation was much better this year - after getting the train we jumped straight on a met (a combo ticket was £5) and were at the Bowker Vale tram stop very quickly (it's the one before Heaton Park but is less crowded and not much further to walk). At this point we were all pretty tipsy, but needed a toilet stop, so went into a pub en route that was playing club music, and then had a shot each before moving on. The queue to get in wasn't too bad, so we were inside, bags checked and wristbands collected for 2pm. First stop - the bar. Unfortunately unlike last year they didn't have large bottles of wine, so we had to make do with smaller individual ones and make more trips, but at least the price wasn't any different.

We milled around for a while, bought a program and sussed out where the toilets etc were before heading to see our first act - Bondax. I personally hadn't heard of the DJ, but all the girls seemed to be buzzing for it so I went along. The atmosphere was great, for so early on people were pumped and dancing away like it was already 9pm. The mixes had lots of well known tracks so I got into it and was singing along before ten minutes were up. We stayed for the whole set before moving back to the main stage to see Foxes - an act I was particularly looking forward to.

She was so good live, a great voice and gorgeous as ever - she totally did the album justice. I am a big fan of her so knew all of the songs. At this point the rain we had endured on the journey there and for the first hour or so had stopped, and the sun had come out which was lovely - too bad the mud had already formed so there was no sitting on the floor!

After Foxes we went to get some food (chips with minted peas over them - classy!) and then stuck around for the next act, Katy B. This was the one I was most excited for - having played her latest album Little Red to death, mainly whilst dealing with a breakup, which I find always keeps songs and artists close to your heart. Not going to lie, I was crying through quite a lot of the set, though that was totally due to the wine...!

Annie Mac was on directly afterwards so we did a quick bar trip and then took up places quite near the front of the stage. The sun was starting to set at this point, and Annie brought her A game, so the crowd went wild and everyone was singing along until the end. 

We attempted to find the tent that A$ap Rocky was playing in next, but failed miserably so consoled ourselves with the last bottle of wine for the day and went to catch half an hour of Snoop Dogg before leaving at 10.30pm to beat the rush to the mets. We were home with pizza and chips in the oven for 11.30pm - a great first day of the festival!