Homelands 2000

Mud, Rain, Trains, Antipodeans and more Mud. It was a while back, but Homelands 2000 was a huge night and deserves remembrance....

Eventually everyone wanders off to get tickets and supplies for the train journey down to Winchester: fags, drinks, crisps, pornography etc. Tom and I are there when we're approached a lovely Australian girl looking for the platform for the Winchester train. I suggest she comes along with us, she accepts and so it is that Karen is adopted by bunchofcaners. Brilliant work and we've not even left Waterloo.

The train journey is absolute carnage. I've just got back from Morocco, I'm tanned, have bleached hair and this provides endless pisstake opportunities for the others. It's a riot. We manage to clear the carriage of fellow travellers in 32 minutes, nearly a personal record for Paul.

Quite why Winchester, pretty Hampshire town, ancient capital of olde Englande, puts itself through this every year is beyond me. 40,000 over-excited ravers cramming themselves into the local Wetherspoons for filling up on the energy provided by scampi and chips and three pints of Stella. It's a noisy, messy and almost unbearably tense affair. Looking around the faces at this table you can almost see the adrenalin pumping through them. Homelands starts at 2pm, it's now 4.30 and we all want to get up there.

After a good deal of confusion involving Andy and Vicki shipping our bags off to Fiona's, and Nick dropping his money in the street gutter but luckily finding somebody else's so only coming off a fiver down, we are assembled, ready, slightly nervous perhaps, but up for action. We get the buses to Homelands.

Near the site the roads are blocked for miles around. Not sure why you'd want to drive to Homelands, but thousands are. We get off the bus and begin the two mile trek across some fields to the Matterley Bowl. It's nor raining at the moment, but it has been all week, and with thousands of people carting themselves through here, already the ground is showing signs of what's to come.

There is a huge buzz as we approach the site. Some guy near us gets a call on his mobile, his friend informing him that the police have sniffer dogs at the gates and are stopping people. Watching him then cram a small plastic bag up his arse is hilarious. 

Once we're into the site, have got rid of the bags, we head directly to the Radio 1 tent. It seems strange to start dancing with the sun up, but we're off anyway and a few hours later we move to the Slinky tent for Judge Jules. Whatever you think of Jules, he is certainly consistent, and he's banging the tunes out. I'm back on home turf with Slinky so it all gets very frantic, very quickly.

At some point during the evening, some of us squelch over to see Leftfield. It takes about 10 minutes through the mud, it's pissing down, really pissing down, and when we get there it's totally packed and Leftfield are not that good anyway. U-turn and back to Slinky for Lisa Lashes. Hard house our bag! By now it's getting fragmented. Some have gone AWOL but the rest are trying to hold together.

We now enter a few hours of stalemate. There's no point leaving this tent. The weather is too awful to contemplate. We're having it for a few hours in Slinky, the sweat is evaporating off skin, rising to the ceiling, re-condensing and then showering thousands of people. It is literally pissing down inside the tent. During the proceedings, Drew recovers his stash of birthday cards and starts writing birthday greetings for random punters. This causes all manner of reactions, from laughter and kisses to outright fear.

We move camp to the Radio 1 tent at 3am, for Paul van Dyk to see us through to the end. Situated over a  valley-like patch of ground, the tent now has a full blown river running right down the middle. After paying the ferryman to get us across, we take position on the stage side and proceed to get jiggy with it. It's not his best set by any means, but Drew writes him a birthday card anyway, in best 4am scrawl handwriting, which gets passed person to person up to the stage. We are in hysterics as it is thrown frisbee style, closely shaves the top of PVD's head and is recovered from the stage floor by some techie. 

And then, all of a sudden, it's over. It's 6am, it is still chucking it down, none of us have so much as sat down in 13 hours - there was nowhere to sit all night due to the mud. A long, long trek back to the road follows. The scene is like a Kosovan refugee exodus. When I catch a glimpse of Kate Adie reporting, I know I'm in much trouble. 

We end up walking all the way to Winchester. From there, taxi to Fiona's. Attempts are made at cleaning boots, but the task is too much to bear. Attempts are made to sleep, but always seem to end up in dancing round the garden. Gin and tonics all round, and we even manage to eat some of the smashing food Fi has laid on. 

Eventually we get down the pub, Miss Stella works her magic again, and we're back on the train returning to civilization. It's been a long hard weekend. The weather made things difficult. Dancing for 13 hours when the ground is sucking you in and your boots weigh a ton with all the mud and your trousers are wet, is very very taxing. But it's been a landmark occasion. The summer has been launched in legendary fashion. We're eyeing up Creamfields, Gatecrasher, Leeds and the various planned parties with fervour. Not to mention your average weekends in between. In short, Homelands was one of the seminal nights of the year, the start of a string of events that led to the very formation of bunchofcaners. Can't wait for next year....

the bunchofcaners at homelands.....

Andy, Vicki, Julie, Fiona, Sacha, Martin, Nick, Tom,  Bob, Nessi, Paul, Kaan, Dan, Lou, Karen and Drew.

Thanks to Fiona for the photos and for hosting us the morning after.