Dear AJ,
You don't know me, although I gave you $150 yesterday for the privilege of attending your music festival, 'Harvest Presents The Gathering' in Werribee; a festival so poorly organized and extortionately expensive that I woke up today feeling more ripped off than the time I got mugged in Sicily by a couple of opportunistic lads on a motorbike.
You see I was excited about your festival. Love festivals. First started going to Glastonbury as a baby and all that jazz. And when I heard about Harvest I was immediately rapt. "Portishead" I beamed, "you can't go wrong with a festival featuring trip-hop extraordinaires Portishead." I was wrong.
From the woefully inadequate number of toilets available which necessitated repeatedly queueing for up to an hour for a wee; to the fact that in order to buy drinks you first had to queue for roughly an hour to buy drink coupons and then queue AGAIN to buy drinks, your festival was a comedy of errors. Don't even get me started on the food which fell somewhere between 'eek' and 'meh' quality wise and again, necessitated lining up for up to an hour and a half for a humble and overpriced bite to eat.
There were moments of joy and elation of course, the joy of finally exiting the venue's 'car park' after a one and a half hour wait when organizers had expressly encouraged attendees to drive; the elation expressed by a girl more patient than I who had waited an hour in line to go to the toilet and decreed her experience 'the best wee ever'. I was truly happy for her, if a little envious AJ, because frankly, my kidneys were starting to ache.
I know you've boasted that Harvest enjoyed 'one of the best festival line-ups ever assembled' AJ. You were right. The line up to buy alcohol so expensive that one could only imagine that Werribee existed within some strange bubble economy in which hyperinflation was rife. The 'Werribee Weimar' as your drinks coupons shall henceforth be known. Oh that and the fact that by 4pm beer was as rare as hen's teeth but you were letting people queue up for it anyway you miserable, thoughtless cheapskate.
Yours sincerely,
Arabella read more