How to Bore Festival Hippies Into Submission

Illustrations by Sam Taylor

Hippies invented festivals. That might be hard to admit if you like festivals, but admit it you must. Anyone who wants to come back at me with: “But the Romans had festivals, the Britons had festivals. A festival is a coming-together of people to celebrate something, normally a harvest, and every single tribe and people in the world has participated in festivals since the dawn of time,” can just go back to Oxford and earn that great big PhD in History. This guide isn’t about the Saturnalia, it’s about T-Mobile. It isn’t about druids, it’s about fluids. So throw away your songs of the harvest, your knowledge of pre-60s history, and accept that today’s festivals were conceived in the crucible of Woodstock, wrought of long hair and fragile togetherness, imagined in the pastoral dreams of addled baby boomers. Glastonbury lives on, V Festival is our Altamont. Given that hippies define festivals, you’d imagine that they’d be the hardest people to bore at festivals. You’d be right, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, as I discovered. Last year I found myself with a friend – let’s call him "Alex" – deep in the heart of the Green Fields at Glastonbury. There we were with a woman in her 60s. Her name was Garden Flower or Joan Baez’s Relentless Social Conscience or something like that. We talked to her for at least an hour until it was she, and not us, who could bear it no longer. Telling us she needed to “go and do something in the garden”, she walked away and sat down with another group of people, hiding in plain sight, with no thought for our feelings. We’d managed to bore a hippie. To bore the boring, a dream achieved. And now you too can realise that dream.   THINGS TO TALK ABOUT

Favourite Trees
You’d think this would be a sure-fire hippie-pleaser, wouldn’t you? You’d be wrong. Alex asking Joan Baez’s Relentless Social Conscience what her favourite tree was led to her leaving us. He had beaten her at her own game. He had out-hippied the hippie. No one wants to have their uniqueness taken away from them like that. Like the punk struggling to come to terms with your detailed knowledge of unreleased Anti-Heros EPs, the she-hippie, faced with Alex’s harrowing description of an oak’s soul, had nowhere to go but somewhere else. Re-enacting Altamont in East London
Altamont represents the end of the hippie dream. Your desire to see a version of it replace Field Day will bore and repel in equal measure. Hippie Stuff in a Historically Detailed Way
Oh, you know where Britain’s ley lines are? You know about the rise and fall of the druids? You once started an MA in Eastern Philosophy? Detailed knowledge of traditional hippie subjects will inspire fear, and fear will inspire boredom.

Aggressive Dance Music
Jungle, 2-step, anything urban and aggressive will work here. Imagine you are sitting on some hay bales with Richard and Linda Thompson in the early 70s. Then imagine the last thing they’d want to listen to. Then talk about that. Being Pragmatic About Stuff
Suggesting that it’s unrealistic to expect human beings to return to an idyllic, pastoral existence in which carrot soup is eaten morning, noon and night will lead to a rage so profound it’ll end in boredom. THINGS NOT TO TALK ABOUT

Types of Weed
Hippies, like teenagers, are crushingly proud of knowing all about different types of hash, weed and skunk. Charis, Purple Haze, Nocturnal Meltdown… allowing someone to give you a guided tour of their favourite “herb” is the opposite of boring them. Pharmaceuticals
You are, of course, addicted to Anadin, Nurofen, Lemsip and anything else made by Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline or Roche but, as with multinational corporations, you need to keep your love of mass-produced medicines quiet. Speaking up for them will result in a long day’s journey into night in which you, brainwashed over-the-counter-medicine dependent that you are, will be bludgeoned into eulogising echinacea for the rest of your days. The Occupy Movement
Prepare for your brain, body and soul to be occupied for days if you bring this up.

Any One of Crosby, Stills, Nash or Young
Although, Young’s 70s exploration of experimental rock and punk probably makes him safe. Using Horse Shampoo
With those flowing locks? With that glossy pelt upon their chest and back? They know all about horse shampoo my friend, and thus bringing it up will result in a thorough schooling in its potency. By the end you’ll have no need for that BA in Animal Husbandry. Multinational Corporations
Talking about how much you love the food of Tesco, the nectar of Coca-Cola, the oil of Shell and the improvised explosive devices of BAE Systems will only inflame those you are trying to bore.

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