Supercharged

That shall be my phrase to describe the Summer Madness '06 for me. Who actually reads this anymore anyways? Ah well, the reason i'm still typing is cause 1: i may put down some of the good stuff that happened, and 2: somebody will eventually stumble upon it.

So, Thursday night a guy in a big van drove into my driveway, and i was whisked out of the house to go and start to build my home for the next 4 days. This guy in the big van was Jimbo, and the van was a rather good van, which of course reminded me of how awesomely loaded Youthlink seem to be (or else they just manage their money well), as that's where the van had come from. Going into Summer Madness we got held up by Lisa beign site staff, and telling us to do stuff already :P. Then it took about 2 hours for us to put up our tent, mainly cause we just talked about random crap the whole time. Everybody got kicked out at 9.30, so a load of us piled into Dave Bell's car and sat in a queue for 20 mins while listening to some Richie Sambora from Bon Jovi.

On Friday i didn't actually go down til around 6pm. By this time our staff camping was full on tents, our entire crew consisting of Phil Todd, Pemerson, Magill, Matty, Fi, Clare, Alli, Jenny, Jimbo's other sister + friend, Lauren, Aaron, Jamie, DB, Mark, Castlereagh Jack and myself. That was a pretty class group to have actually. We made ourselves comfy, and i dropped the bumper food box of supplies into our tent. Youthlink, having loads of money from somewhere, had bought Dominoes for upwards of 30 people! Next was Warship (worship), which in previous years had been a bit on off with me. However, Tre Sheppard was back! To put it straight, it has all got a hell of a lot better in the last 2 years. The band was good, and the drummer had what was the awesomist snare drum sound ever. We were up in the balcony, but downstairs most people had just floor to sit on, apart from Mark and Jack, who'd decided to bring their portable camping chairs in and sit above everybody. Good choice. The activities kicked off, and i spent a while in the comedy club then got the guitar and went and played round at the bandstand with Matty, Nicci and somebody else who i didn't know. Actually i can't remember much about Friday at all, apart from seeing people i hadnt seen for yonks.

Saturday the team had devotions, which really consisted of us dancing to some song, then i went and took some pictures of DJ Roly Miller in the Youthlink tent. What a class name. Morning warship had a guy called Phil Collins (not the Genesis drummer) speaking, and he told an amusing story about his family and a spide family on holiday. On Saturday afternoon there was a seminar in the Youthlink tent involving people asking questions to an ex-INLA member and an ex-UVF member. One had planted a bomb which didnt explode and the other one had served 13 years for a sectarian killing. So that was really interesting actually. Youthlink being Youthlink had them sitting side by side, one on a chair with a tricolour draped over it, and the other with the union flag draped over it. I ended up later on briefly with the Pslam Drummers again, before we gathered with 1500 people in front of a big screen to watch the England Portugal match. The support seemed to be about half & half, so it was pretty mental at times. Haha good match it was. We had dinner of fish & chips, then evenining warship, which again had Tre, who told another story about his infamous dad (:. I seem to remember that the Saturday night music was pretty awesome too. Can't remember much of Saturday night either, a lot of hanging around. Oh yea, Jimbo Stevie & Mal got the chicken & monkey suits out and spent ages scaring people, which was good. Saturday night involved a lot of chillaxxing and then about 6 hours sleep, which is good for summer madness. Sunday had about 5000 people there cause it's free then, and Phil Collins was talking again. In the afternoon we did a bit more videoing of another seminar, this time involving victims of the troubles, and then i ended up in the 24/5 place. I'd actually never gone into it until the Saturday, like i always knew it existed, but i thought it was just a small room. It was actually a large room, with cool lights, and painting and stuff to do. On Sunday afternoon the Pslam Drummers had moved in there, and i ended up with them drumming for around an hour & a half. Jack was there too, and he was giving it complete stacks. With Pslam Drummers, there is just a circle with continuous changing rhythms being played, with loads of bits of percussion in the middle, and you just pick up and join in. That was one brilliant 90 minutes. From there it was over to the Avalon Acoustic Afternoon, where Dave was up against 4 others to get into the final. He played well, but was just outclassed by the 2 people who went through, but he's learnt stuff from it, so it's all good. Sunday evening warship had a guy called Mike Pilavachi talking, and he was class. After that there was more comedy club. I'd been in the Matt Foley sketches, and the best one was where Jimbo jumped on top of a "crappily made coffee table" so that it smashed into pieces in spectacular fashion. Myself and Pemerson ordered a Dominoes - £8.95 for a medium pepperoni! The guy delivered to the wrong gate, so we had to tear through the campsite to get it cause we were quite hungry! For information, when all the evening activities end at around midnight, everybody just hangs around and has a laugh, and eats from the overspriced food trucks. Jack somehow managed to get a giant hockey cokey started, which was brilliant. I got "Yessed" by Magill to play the game of life, so we ended up playing it in one of the tents. I came 3rd, but Pemerson got his ass kicked cause he had no house insurance, and he lost $125000 from fixing his house after it was damaged by gales. Jamie won because he had climbed Everest, invented a new sport, become prime minister, cured the cold, discovered a new planet, and done loads of other crazy stuff. I ended up still awake but not feeling tired at all, so i ended up sitting in 24/5 chilling, where i ended up hanging with a girl i knew from the staff. This resulted me in getting into the staff chill zone to fetch coffee, where a few of them were playing poker at 3 in the morning! They all get free food, but then so do we.

Anyways, Monday i had to get up early cause i had to go to my granny's funeral. Pemerson was left in charge of the camera. Oh, and i wasnt that down in the dumps either. A phrase had come about over the days "It's not summer sadness, but summer madness". That applied quite a bit, and there was no way in hell i was going to mope about when i got back. So i gave it stacks, as that's what would i would have been wanted to do. I returned in time to see the Avalon final, to get my supersoaker confiscated by Mr Summer Madness, to sponser a balloon for realease, and to see Mike Pilavachi do a halarious study of the disciples. The rest of the night saw more comedy and plenty of celebrating. I ended up in bed at 5, got a few hours kip, then i had to leave to go to the law courts for work experience at 9.

So that's that. A crap account of it in my opinion, but there's too much to remember. I had a good time and i'm pretty sure everybody else did too. I look forward to living like that again next year. I have 130 photos, which may appear online sometime soon!