Our day started at Mile End station, following the crowds walking to Victoria Park. Festivals like this are always ideal at this point of the day, it's before the crowds are too big and there are no queues for either the bars or the toilets. After picking up our tickets from the We Got Tickets desk and having our bags thoroughly searched we were in, and we headed over to the Shacklewell Arms tent to catch Tei Shi. She was great - really seemed happy to be there and got the crowd going. After that we wandered over to the Village Fete area, where my boyfriend got involved in a Tug of War. His side didn't win so, defeated, we headed off for a restorative snack. I spotted the Bleecker St. burger van, so we made our orders and waited for our burgers - as it was still early in the day the wait was no more than 5 minutes. I walked past the van later in the day and the queue was enormous so I'm glad we went for one of these when we did. Obviously, I am super in to a burger (the burger crawl we went on will attest to this) but I hadn't had a Bleecker St. one before - I wasn't disappointed. They have a pop-up on the Southbank this summer so I'm definitely going to visit again in the not-too-distant future.
After that we headed back to the Shacklewell Arms to see Jagaraa. Our group was split on them - I enjoyed them but someone else said that they didn't interact with the crowd enough. Worth a listen on spotify though. After a quick toilet-break for me (I went while the others were watching Stealing Sheep and there was NO QUEUE) and then a sit down with some beer (craft ale) for them and red wine for me, we wandered to the Crack Magazine area to see Owen Pallett. He was GREAT - much better than we had thought and a real highlight of the whole day. Definitely one to have a look out for as his whole show was really enjoyable.
Time for another food stop after that, and I spotted the Good and Proper Tea Co. van. I had a iced tea of autumn darjeeling mixed with elderflower which was amazing, and a crumpet with smoked salmon and cream cheese. This is the type of festival Field Day is - loads of interesting food and drink choices that suit all tastes. Needless to say we all greatly appreciated the tea break.
Over to the main stage (Eat Your Own Ears) for Kindness, and then back to Shacklewell for Tune-yArds - I was pretty under-awed for them so went for another wee, only this time had to queue for about 20 minutes. By this point in the day the site was pretty full, so queues for everything were getting ridiculous and the amount of rubbish on the floor was even more so. It was definitely a shame to see paper plates and cups on the floor after seeing so many people using bins earlier in the day.
After that it was time for tea. We had originally decided on wood-fired pizza, but these were cooked to order and with a queue already in place we were told it would be at least a 30 minute wait. Instead we went for Spit and Roast fried chicken - which also had a queue but by this point everything did sooo... This is another one that has been on my food-van to-do list so I was pretty pumped to see them there. Needless to say the chicken was delicious and I would definitely go again.
We then headed back to the Shacklewell Arms for Chet Faker - awesome - and FKA Twigs - super awesome. Chet Faker was great, he has a few singalong songs that everyone knew so people were really enjoying it. When the tent started to empty after he finished I rushed to the front to get into position for FKA Twigs who is one my current faves and I love love love. Of course, she was great. Her whole thing is about her stage persona, her outfits and movements are all so carefully thought-out that you can't help but get swept up in it all. It was the first time I had seen her live and I adored it.I would say though, I was so near the front I was really able to appreciate it, and I'm not sure whether my experience would have been the same if I had been at the back unable to see what was happening on-stage.
To round our evening off we headed back to the main stage to watch the end of Caribou. We all had a nice dance although the music at this stage could definitely have been louder - this is something I've seen a few comments about on twitter but then we were watching Caribou from quite far back so maybe that was our problem.
Field Day is a great festival - there's a great mix of acts and stages (we didn't even touch the sides) and there are loads of awesome food and drink choices. It's the perfect way to get that festival feeling without actually having to go without showering, and I will definitely be there again.
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