The prompt

Published on Friday 4 July 2008 23:19

FIVE days, six hours, 20 minutes, and some seconds to go until I'm screaming in my wellies in the middle of a field, dressed up like Marge Simpson meets the Supremes in homage to The Woman With The Tallest Hair In The World. If you don't know who this is, I can't help you.

Why, you ask, am I subjecting myself to such tomfoolery? Because it's Scotland's biggest, boldest, brashest, booziest party! It's T in the Park! And this is what people at T in the Park do! Isn't it?

I confess I've never actually been, so this is pure guesswork. The Amy Winehouse get-up can be explained by the fact that for the first time festival-goers are being asked to bring their dressing-up boxes to Balado for Fancy Dress Friday. Gone are the days when you could pitch up at a festival naked, with nothing but a hemp handkerchief for modesty. Now you have to go in fancy dress or at least the on-trend festival look, which only Kate Moss ever seems able to pull off. If you win you get free tickets for next year, which for some by the end of a weekend culminating in the wails of Michael Stipe, might seem more punishment than prize.

Complicating matters more, we're being encouraged to make our tents look fabulous, too. Is this Paris Fashion Week or a disused airfield in Kinross-shire, I ask you? I don't even know how to pitch my tent and now I'm being told to stick it in a frock and some Gladiator sandals.

Really, though, I shouldn't complain about something I know nothing about. Even I can't quite believe that I've never been to Scotland's biggest and most adored festival.

I'll be honest and tell you the reason for my T in the Park virginity. I'm scared. I'm frightened of the legendary mad-for-it crowds that I imagine look like a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life, except the sinners have cans of Tennent's instead of torture instruments. I fear camping, wellies, mud, emo kids, bands like The Wombats and Panic At The Disco, and now I have to add a potential punch from Amy Winehouse to the list.

In the past even when friends of mine have come up from London to go to T in the Park, I've waved them off from my flat, snug in my slippers. I may have gone to Connect in Inveraray but only because it had the word 'boutique' in it.

Now, the time has come to feel the fear and headbang to Rage Against The Machine anyway. After all, T in the Park is the quintessential Scottish knees-up and I'd be an idiot to miss out on it another year. So many of the bands I've interviewed, from CSS to the Klaxons to Biffy Clyro, have said it's the best festival they've ever been to. If I get back in one piece, I'll let you know if I agree with them.

Our writers' week

SIOBHAN SYNNOT

FILM CRITIC

Despite having zero affection for the countryside, I'm getting addicted to the eccentricities of Radio Scotland's Out Of Doors. Mark Stephen and Euan McIlwraith, the rural issues' John Peel and John Walters, enjoyably tease each other and their Cairngorm, Tall Ship and longhorn fanboys.

I can't listen to Radio 2 because it has so much useless audience participation. "And Dave from Wombourne has just texted in to say he's doing some ironing and is loving the show. Thanks, Dave." It goes on all day. Surprisingly, all the messages are complimentary.

CHITRA RAMASWAMY

ARTS WRITER

In a week in which I've moved house and city, most of my cultural life has been home-based. I went totally overboard on the Glastonbury coverage on the BBC (love Hot Chip, don't get the whole Jay-Z is the best rapper in the world chat). I also listened to about 12 hours of Radio 4 every day, which starts to make me feel a bit crazy in a rampage in Ambridge kind of way. I enjoyed illustrator Posy Simmond's Desert Island Discs, largely because I like it when people throw in some Elvis with their Bach and Mozart. Oh, and I can't stop listening to the Fleet Foxes album, which is so breezy and enchanting and upbeat that it's guaranteed to be my sound of the summer, and if there's any justice, everyone else's too.

STUART KELLY

LITERARY WRITER

It's such a wonderful idea, I don't know why it hasn't been done before: Robert Browning's long poem for voices, 'The Ring And The Book', is notoriously difficult – but in Martyn Wade's hands has become a perfect Classic Serial on Radio 4. Set in Renaissance Rome, the plot boasts a triple-stabbing, scheming priests, illegitimate children and oodles of melodrama.