The event of the yur, like

Nobody who knows me could ever accuse me of hating Swansea. I was born and bred here, and I love the place. I could go on and on about the ways in which Swansea is awesome (and believe me I do), but this post will be casting a critical eye over a certain event over the weekend that swiftly pissed off me and everyone within a five-mile-radius of the fucking thing.

Upon glancing out of my window at 11.30am on Saturday, all I could see were topless male chavs with "tats" in abundance, and scantily clad female chavs, the majority holding a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of alcohol in the other. All were bellowing a limited variety of swears, and generally strutting around like they owned Uplands, occasionally stopping briefly to vomit. I naturally assumed it was the apocalypse, and promptly shut my curtains, and dithered for a couple of minutes wondering who I should phone to say goodbye to first. Then I remembered it was the chav's version of Christmas. Escape in the Park has been running for quite a few years now, and while I've always been an advocate of "each to their own", I have no idea why anyone would want to gather in an arena which offerings include an endless mish-mash of noise, aggressive, worked up meatheads fighting eachother, and general chav-esque tomfoolery that would embarrass even Tim Westwood.

I will go on to look at how the event could be good for Swansea later on, but first I will look at how it annoys most Swansea residents to the point of writing a strongly-worded blog entry.

First of all - the noise. At the risk of sounding like an elderly woman who glares in the direction of any type of pitch higher than that nice Terry Wogan off the radio's dulcet tones, the noise is fucking ridiculous. From what I've heard, the arena is not big. Therefore it's not like a lot of musical festivals where, due to the space left between stages, you can hear a definite melody and lyrics from the outside of the arena. With EITP however, all that can be heard is a horrible, non-specific boom-boom-boom, thanks to stages being placed too close together, with the respective Djs assumingly trying to out-do eachother in regards to volume. This is a nightmare for any nearby residents who have the nerve not to be interested in non-stop repetitive noise. This leads me into my next point - the location.

You will rarely get musical festivals plonked in the middle of residental areas. The reasons are obvious, and yet the organisers choose to ignore this and go ahead with it anyway. I may have been slightly more acceptable of the idea if the little darlings pill-popping parade ended at around 6-7pm instead of carrying on until 12am. Twelve hours of eardrum busting "music" isn't fair on anyone in the vicinity. I'm not saying I toddle off to bed at 7pm on a Saturday night, but I'm not the only person living in the surrounding area. There are people of all ages, case in point I have a friend who lives nearby with a young daughter and he expressed his frustration of not being able to get her off to sleep due to the noise. Another thing the organisers have seemingly failed to acknowledge is the very long and very busy duel carriageway that runs along Singleton park, and how the aforementioned carriageway may pose a threat to drunk/drugged individuals who may choose to escape the park for a bit (see what I did there). I remember when Jonny used to live in West Cross, I had several idiots walk nonchalantly infront of my car as I was driving along on the day of this wretched event. And even when it ends, it doesn't stop there.

I've had a couple of light hearted digs at the chavs already, and yeah maybe they can be a bit louder and more aggressive than your average music festival goer, but I'm not going to pretend that the piece de resistance of this annoying tale wouldn't have happened if they had been of a different variety of people. Living in Uplands, there are a lot of taxis, kebab shops etc, so it's unsurprising that a lot of the masses go home via this way. Unfortunately, due to a mix of alcohol and euphoria, and without a doubt something of the illegal variety, it renders them without a care in the world. This leads to groups of utter twats marching through the streets at silly o clock singing, fighting, and generally screeching at the top of their voices, without even considering how their actions may be affecting other people. I was woken up quite a lot, as was Jonny, and I'm sure loads of other people.

Ok, I understand how events like this could be good for the area, for example tourism. I also appreciate that it could generate a fair amount of money as well. But in my opinion it doesn't justify putting everyone in the vicinity through a bit of a nightmare in the process. Yes it's only one day, but unless you live nearby you can't imagine how annoying it is. And I'm not just having a bit of a moan purely because it's a be festival which includes the type of music I'm not really into; I had the same concerns when Singelton Park was going to hold the Fflam festival a couple of years ago. Initially I thought it was a good idea, but then I considered the location, and started to wonder if the organisers had really thought this through.

Anyway, rant over. There's not doubt EITP will continue for years, and I can deal with it, probably by investing in a good pair of earplugs. It's the older people I feel most sorry for, perhaps organisers should start a campaign to include them...

Whatever happens, I would prefer it if this particular outside disco was a silent one.