Sunday 12th July 1998

T in the Park. Oh yes. We decided to only go for the second day as that's when all the best bands were playing....of course the first day it was unbelievably glorious weather....entirely unheard of for Scotland in summer....So Sharon travels to Stirling feeling a bit silly taking all of her waterproof clothing, but you know, just in case. Preparing for a heavy day of gigging: The night before is spent working out the best way to take all said clothing whilst not wearing it..Wear: T-shirt and jeans, tie: long sleeved shirt and waterproof jacket round waist, hide: waterproof trousers, toilet roll and sun cream (hey, when you are going to gig, BE PREPARED!!) in jacket pocket. Then: stand in front of mirror and practice jumping up and down. If this can be acheived without losing any property or causing bodily injury to you or another...... CONGRATULATIONS!!! You're ready....let the gigging begin.

So at a ridiculously early hour, Caroline, who understands mornings, wakes up Sharon, who thinks they should be banned, using the tried and tested method of holding a cup of coffee under her nose until the need for caffeine over-rides the need for sleep. She flings open the curtains and says in cheery voice 'it's a LOVELY morning'. This was of course a blatant lie. It was raining so heavily even Noah would have been concerned. It continued to rain for 24 hours. Not to be perturbed, our brave heroes pile on all the clothing they had determined they could mosh in the night before, cadged a lift off Caroline's incredibly good natured father into Stirling and caught the bus to T in the Park. Upon leaving bus they found themselves ankle deep in mud soup with leaking boots. There followed 12 hours of wondering whether they were ever going to be warm, dry, clean or any combination of the three ever again.

The girls had been informed by the friends they were due to meet there that there wasn't a meeting post but there was a beer pyramid and that would be a great place to meet. So, having faced the chemical toilets for the first and last time that day, put on their waterproof trousers, tried not to be ill at the thought of the two people in the chemical toilet trying to have sex (eeewwww!!!!!), they spent some time wandering in a cold, wet manner around the entire field looking for a non-existent beer pyramid. Eventually finding their friends at the meeting post there followed a 30 minute madness period where at all times someone was missing and someone else was looking for them. Eventually (and the names have been changed to prtotect the guilty and innocent), Bert turned up after a momentous teeth brushing session, Ernie turned up after finally finding his sister, and very tall man and man with 2 names bravely tried not to sink further in the mud during all the waiting.

You think the ticket looks a mess, you should have seen us...

First up: the Supernaturals. Replacing James at the last minute, the lads turned up in pristine white suits, promoting a mud flinging session from the front of the stage. Caroline, Sharon and co decide there is no point in trying to stay clean (apart from Bert who had a world record of waterproof clothing changes throughout the day) and pogoed merrily away. Their version of Wham's Freedom was truly awesome. Chumbawumba were due to follow but fortunately had lost their instuments on a plane or something (you mean they play instruments??), which gets the biggest cheer of the day and we get an extra song from ver lads which can't be bad. We manage to miss Garbage, not a bad idea, and see a little bit of the Stereophonics from the TV screens - we should have watched more, they really create some amount of noise for 3 ickle Welsh lads, but hypothermia was setting in and Caroline appeared to be developing a case of trench foot. Our intrepid heroes brave the food tents (botulism bap? Salmonella burger?) and manage to fight their way onto a wooden pallet in front of the hot drinks stall. At this point a random man decides we look far too comfortable and asks us if we can move off it for a second. We looked at each other, at the mud river surrounding the pallet, then stare at the man until he feels uncomfortable enough to leave us alone. Hiding in the somewhat mis-named comedy tent for a while was slightly prefereable to the short time spent hiding in the Asian Dub Foundation tent, trying to find Bert, who had actually decided to go for another costume change. Then it was off to see me man Bernard. Our first Bernard Butler gig. And he was so ickle and far away and the water really was running alarmingly down all of the electrical wiring in the tent. Bless him. He must have been SO cold. But I think we were colder. After seeing our little hero, we hot foot it to the entire opposite side of the field. Well, we would have done, if running had been remotely possible. More we sort of squelched slowly across the field stepping on alarmingly crunchy things in the mud we can only hope were plastic beer cups.

The reason for the mad rush? To see our other little favourites, the sadly no more Unbelievable Truth. A small aside about this band: our friend Anna told us to look out for them, they were sure to be good. So when the single Higher Than Reason was released, Sharon bought it without actually having heard a note. She dragged Caroline in to listen to it. At the end of the CD Caroline was off into town to buy her own copy. It's that good. That's all you need to know. So we end up at the front of the stage entirely by accident and are highly distressed at being able to see close up just how cold the band are. Poor Andy can barely play guitar his hands are so frozen. But their songs warm us for a while and we leave happy bunnies, until we actually exit the tent and become cold not so happy bunnies again.

Queuing up for a listeria pizza slice and keeping an eye on the world cup final (France V. Brazil), the girls make an alarming discovery that their little faves (we have a lot of little faves, you may have noticed), Astrid are playing in the new bands tent. We join the 6 other people in there for some of their jangly sunshine (for more info on Astrid, see the Longest Day page). At half time in the world cup the tent fills up, it being nearest to the big screen, and as fitting credit to the bands performance most of them don't leave again well after the game has restarted. Astrid, the wee lads from Lewis, ROCK!

Our soggy but happy heroes stand at the meeting point waiting for the mugs who went to see Ian Brown (Ian Brown solo is conclusive proof that the Stone Roses should never have split) and have some fun sinking into the mud for a while. Then it's onto Pulp, the headliners. Make no mistake, this was an amzing gig. A feel good moment that watching the TV coverage of this gig sends shivers down the spine. The highlight, sadly not captured on camera, was Bert (aka Teflon man: he had avoided mud all day) moshing merrily to Jarvis and gang, doing an over-enthusiastic pogo and ending up 'sploosh' in a muddy puddle and completely covered. It seemed only fair. This was followed by a long trek to the bus stop, only to discover the buses had been redirected to - of course - the other end of the park. A hilarious running through mud in the pitch dark episode followed, which saw Caroline and Ernie losing Bert and Sharon, Ernie throwing Caroline over a fence and Sharon yelling Caroline's name at the top of her voice to discover Caroline stood 2 inches away. Finally getting on the bus the girls were greeted by very drunken man demanding to know the names of the dolls in Playschool. Fortunately Caroline's encyclopaedic knowledge of children's TV programmes did not fail us and we lived to tell the tale. The extremely long cold walk up to Bannockburn from Stirling bus station, was, however, a part of the day we like to forget. Having deposited the very very very muddy clothes by the back door and attempted to remove the worst of the mud, it was sleep time for brave gig-goers. Caroline's parents had an entertaining time the next morning trying to work out where the smell of mud came from, then noticing the small pile of mud by the back door, it suddenly all made sense....