Running Away to the ‘Circus’ in my Sixties

Volunteering at the Green Man Festival - August Re-stack

How do you mathematically calculate the value of a worker whose contribution to the work force is to dance upon rolling caskets, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins, ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. You cannot calculate the value of such a thing and you ought not to try. That does not mean that it is valueless. (Charles Dickens, Hard Times)

One of my favourite Dickens novels is Hard Times. It is based in the industrial north and is a forensic look at industrialisation, the daily grind of the working people in the factories of Coketown, the controlled and factual world of the schooling of Mr Gradgrind against the backdrop of the pleasures brought by the visiting circus. The circus is a metaphor for the forbidden, the hedonistic; pleasure for pleasures sake. It is a place for pure release. That’s how I see and experience a music festival. And Hard Times was the book I took with me to Green Man in 2024. My first stint as a volunteer steward at the age of sixty four.

Book Tickets by clicking here.

I have been going to Green Man Festival for ten years so when tickets sold out for 2024 in a matter of minutes I was gutted. The prospect of the long wait for resale and desperate hope that we would be lucky was too much. I reflected on Green Man 23, which had taken place only weeks before, but was already a receding memory, with no certainty that I would be there next year. That festival feeling always stays with me for quite some time. The escape, joy, abandonment. The colour and connection. Conversations, discussions, art and creativity and bounded in one place for you to wander around, discover, enjoy! The final Sunday of GM 23 stuck with me.

Sunday morning. Early. If you go to festivals you know this moment. It is first light and you are desperate to pee but your bed, sleeping bag, whatever you’re cocooned is just too gorgeous to leave but bladders have a way of creating a sense of urgency so you grab the big sweater that you leave by your bed, creep quietly out of your tent so as not to disturb your fellow campers, pull on your wellies, tucking your fleecy pyjama trousers into them. The sun is already up, a brittle and brilliant light and you know your hair looks wild. A pair of sunglasses makes for a forgiving sight, and you stroll to the compostable loos a couple of hundred yards away. The occasional whisper is heard from a tent, a fidgety child already awake. You might see someone sat outside their tent, the gas burner lit, waiting for the kettle to boil for that much needed first cuppa of the day. You give a silent wave of acknowledgement. A tired father holds the hand of a small girl who skips along beside him. Having visited the loo, I head to the handwash and there were two men, about my age, in high viz jackets replenishing sawdust, loo roll, hand gel.

“Morning,” they call cheerily.

“Morning,” I reply with a smile, “thank you!”

“Hey we’re having the best time. If you haven’t done it then you should think about volunteering.”

The seed was planted, but I did not pay it too much attention, however when there were no tickets to be had - I thought about it a bit more. I did some research, joined a Facebook group of people who had volunteered at other festivals as well as at Green Man - I started to water that little seed.

I found out when the call for volunteers would go out; what the expectations were and decided I was going to go for it. My brother, my usual festival companion, was not particularly interested, had other uses for that weekend and so I decided to go alone. I knew I would be paired up to work with another volunteer and could only assume that they would be a good crowd, all with the same shared purpose and that I wouldn’t be lonely. It would be fun being part of the ‘circus’!

I signed up as soon as the call went out. I had not anticipated such a rigorous application process but it made sense. It was a pause for reflection as I considered, throughout my life, when and how and for what I had volunteered; what was my motivation? What was my experience in hospitality? I mined my memories, surprised at the common thread I had never noticed about service, creating and holding spaces for people to come together, to bond and have a shared experience. I knew that this was going to be something special and now I really wanted to be part of it. I didn’t need to be the bareback rider, but I would happily usher people to their seats!

I paid my deposit, submitted my application and crossed my fingers. On the day of the deadline, I had a casual Sunday afternoon conversation with my brother bemoaning the fact that he couldn’t go and I told him that I had applied. A flurry of frenzied activity and he submitted his application only just ahead of the deadline, and so we waited.

We were accepted and then invited to join the crew and volunteers Facebook group and I found myself in this wonderful community to which I now belonged, weeks away from the festival but literally part of the build-up. Seasoned volunteers offered advice, exchanged friendly chats with previous years helpers and I threw myself into it. I offered a lift to anyone who was travelling from my area and met the first of many fabulous people, a young music producer who lives in Falmouth but would be vacationing with his parents near where I live in North Wales before the festival and needed transport. Phone numbers were exchanged and a plan was made.

As crew - you turn up before the main festival on Wednesday to set up camp, walk the site and get a briefing. A couple of weeks before the festival we had the opportunity to select our shift pattern and a full briefing pack was sent to us. The details were fantastic and there really wasn’t anything there that was missing. It felt really well organised.

Arriving on site is the same as it always was for the main festival, the usual anticipation as you approach Bannau Brecheiniog and the signs for Green Man, but with none of the traffic. Cheerful car park attendants direct us, we go to the artist box office and check in, get our crew wristbands and head in to pitch our camp. There are already a lot of volunteers and stage crew camped but still plenty of good spots. We collect our kit from the car and as we settle for our first drink, realise that we have left three rather crucial bags of supplies in the garden shed. We have white wine, cheese, and all things cold including a bottle of chilled pink champagne, but the plates, glasses, mugs, cutlery, crackers, crisps, chocolates, gin, tonic, bag of essential drugs (antihistamines, hangover cure etc) and more are absent. We need food for the first night and discover that none of the concessions are open and the crew catering isn’t available to us as we haven’t started working yet. What to do?

We go to the camp kitchen, a focal point for volunteers. It is a large marquee open 24 hours, always an urn of water on the go, makings for tea, coffee, hot chocolate. Biscuits. And always a friendly face. We collect our hi viz jackets and I take a lanyard saying, ‘Dysgu Cymraeg’ (learning Welsh) to hopefully encourage people to speak to me in Welsh and to help me practice. We then gather late afternoon for the site walk round for new volunteers.

Our guide, Mark, is funny, serious, knowledgeable so it creates a sense of order and camaraderie but sensibility from the outset. The site that I am so familiar with is so strange as it is almost completely built up but there are no punters there. Food concessions are in place, all closed and we are able to walk unhindered by barriers which are still in the process of being erected.

Site walk complete we then go for the briefing in Babbling Brook, the talking tent. It is a celebratory event with the organiser, the head of security, the volunteer’s leader, and the accessible camping coordinator all giving a briefing on their role and on how we as stewards, litter pickers etc can support. Awards are given out to returning volunteers, including a man for whom this is his tenth year volunteering and, he is clearly quite a bit older than I am!

Briefing over, we return to the camp kitchen to see what other options we have apart from cheese and no crackers. There I meet Elb who is on shift and, it transpires, has worked the kitchen for a number of years in his four years of volunteering. He is the friendly face serving tea and biscuits today. I have a chat with him and he informs me that the only food is in the settlers’ field at the far side of the site, a burger van. I tell him of our dilemma and what we do have. He smiles broadly and suggests we take digestive biscuits back to our tent to have with our cheese. This we do and the jam jars I have brought filled with fairy lights became our glasses, hill billy fashion. Dinner is pink champagne out of a jar, digestive biscuits and a selection of cheeses. Result.

The next morning, Thursday, day one of the festival, the queue the other side of our fence is already back to the gates with people waiting to get on site to build their camps. There is something quite strange about being behind a high metal fence in a tented town while people wait to do the same, the essential goods for the weekend loaded on wheelbarrows and trolleys and all of us doing it for pleasure. The irony is not lost on us and is the subject of some serious discussion over the course of the weekend as we speak of Gaza, the Jungle in Calais, the plight of refugees.

Our first shift is a night shift from 1am to 7am. I stroll over to my allotted area, the campfire itself, where people are gathering after the evening’s revelries. My partner for the shift is a young student, and our job, to keep people safely enjoying the warmth and chat around the campfire. By 3am the fire is dying down and the visitors have thinned to fellow volunteers coming over for a bit of warmth. Highlights of hilarity include the security guards being called as late-night partygoers are spotted attempting to climb up the helter-skelter and a drunken man setting his foot on fire at the campfire and sheepishly confessing that he was a fire fighter. I suggest it is time for him to go to bed. Our crew chiefs drop by regularly to check in on us, which is much appreciated as they hand out sweets and good humour in bucket loads.

It is a still and cold night and quite magical sitting round the fire chatting softly with new friends, all with different and wonderful stories to tell; our ages range from eighteen to me at sixty four, and everything in between. As the site stills and quietens, we watch meteorites in a star-filled sky. Even a stroll to the loo is filled with wonder. There is a calm across the site and a beauty in the dark. Slowly the light changes and the lines of the mountain stage and surrounding hills are delineated across the skyline. The air shifts as the light draws its lines across the sky. We are all flagging a bit but one of the guys starts up a funny conversation about algorithms and we have a free fall discussion with much laughter. By 6.30am moods are lifting again as we know that our replacements will be appearing soon. They are a welcome sight in their hi viz jackets and we hand over walkie talkies and head to the camp kitchen for a coffee, shower and bed as the camp shifts into the day.

We have two more shifts over the course of the weekend and at different times of the day so see a side to the festival that we had never experienced. We quickly get to know the names of the security guards around our areas and everyone is friendly. My second shift is from 7am until 1pm and I am at the cinema tent. It occurs to me as I walk across the field to start my shift, that we each are suddenly the most important people to one person. The person that we are replacing. I had been that person the previous day so I smile and wave to a tired but smiling guy who is ready for his bed. Handover complete, I spend the next hour with Patrick from security, originally from Kenya, who tells me about his children with pride in their achievements as young black people growing up in the UK. The conversation is fascinating.

I am watching the site come to life as the day breaks into light and action. Sleepy dads cross the field to the cinema tent with lively children excited at the prospect of a robotics workshop. The recycling cardboard from across the site is brought in in grab bags and tipped onto the floor of the tent and creative artists work with the children to fashion magnificent machines, owl faces, legs and arms whilst a coding workshop takes place on the stage and I usher lost children back to their parents. And then silence as they sit themselves on the floor to watch a robot anime.

My final shift is on the last day, Sunday, a busy 1pm to 7pm. The weather is fabulous and the site crowded. I am with 19 year old Beth, a film student, and we are stewarding while The Lambrini Girls perform. We discuss feminism, their song, The Boys in the Band, and work out that I am the same age as her nan! These young women from Brighton are singing a protest about sexual harassment in the music industry and the lack of accountability that is no different to when I was a young woman. It’s a sobering thought but I don’t doubt that Beth will find a creative outlet to highlight these ongoing issues.

We leave the next morning but not before a final trip to the camp kitchen and a farewell to our newfound friends and particularly Elb, our angel with digestive biscuits. Elb has been volunteering for four years and finds it a great way to go to a festival when travelling solo. He shares his thoughts with me. “All life is here, from homesick sixteen year olds to people well into their retirement. I have met young people who had spent the summer volunteering at festivals with Green Man the last (festival for them) and they were all ridiculously brown and healthy and carefree.”

We talk of the busy times when crowds are moving from one act or stage to another and there is often a large crowd coming towards you. “There’s lots of very happy people and all they want from you is possibly some directions to water or toilets or bands and you have that information. And it makes them even happier. It’s such a contrast to a crowd in a city centre! Or the threat they you can feel in an urban crowd or going past a sports ground when fans are leaving.”

During the course of the weekend, we met up with various friends who we always see at Green Man, having watched their kids grow up over the years. I spent time with my de facto godson and his gang. We brought him when he was 17 to his first Green Man and encouraged him to volunteer, which he did, with that same gang of friends. Now they are in their late twenties, they go as punters, a fabulous group of young film makers, artists and media writers. We made great connections with new people, shared some wonderful experiences and saw the festival through a completely different lens.

I return to Dickens and ask; how do you mathematically calculate the value of a worker? (substitute worker with experience). It can’t be done but I do know that running away to the ‘circus’ was a great idea, so much so I have already put my name down for 2025. I have been accepted and am excited already about meeting old and new friends and fellow volunteers and being part of something that is bigger than me and designed to bring great pleasure and joy to a wide range of people. So important in the current climate of anger, madness, racism, misogyny and fear.

Finally I asked Elb for his festival essential. It is his knitting. “It’s a conversation starter and it also means that if you’re on your own, you’ve got something to do.”

Mine? Remember to check the shed before you leave.