“This is essentially like if everyone who was at Dalston Superstore for Sue’s Anal Bum Party went on a school trip together”. I overheard someone say as a gaggle of late-20-somethings tentatively throw their luggage into a megabus. Luckily, everyone had their permission slips, because, that’s right, fellas… It was Field Maneuvers weekend.
Field Maneuvers is perfect for many reasons. With a capacity of only around 1500, it’s no bigger than a Manor House warehouse polycule. If you spot someone fun young and hun in the toilet queue you can almost guarantee you’ll bump into them again at the Packet Inn (Field Maneuvers pub), and again at the lake stage, perhaps even to the point where it gets awkward and you run out of things to talk about.
Field Maneuvers:
Intimacy 1
Convenience 1
Fitbit step count 0
Now, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know there was a bit of a drought in England this summer. The parks were yellow, the rivers had been apparently ‘sucked dry’, and you could basically measure someone’s financial positionality by the colour of the grass in their front garden. We were living in a budget version of Dune. Everything was beige. Everything was parched. Somewhere, a Tory was watering their lawn. Naturally, we were gagging for rain. Just not that weekend. The one weekend I wanted to get my mid-bod out with the gays without spending the entire festival looking like I’d been rescued from a shipwreck.
As we sat on the coach, approaching the flatlands of Norfolk, a pathetic fallacy began to loom overhead. Someone checked the BBC Weather app: “It’ll probably be fine.” “We had this at WHOLE Festival and they just let everyone go straight through security.” “I didn’t put all that *** in a condom up my arse for nothing!” I’m sure the above comments were not the worst thing a National Express coach has ever heard, and were on our way to Field Maneuvers after all. As we disembarked, I shuddered, thinking about the time someone stole my entire tent when we got off the coach to Boomtown in 2018. Thankfully, my luck had changed (in one way), the tent was still present. However, what an onslaught of massive rain clouds appeared overhead. As the queues to enter FM began to build up, the heavens opened.
What happened next was a bit of a blur. We scrambled to put up our tents in what had now become near biblical, torrential rain. I screamed at my tent roommate (my sister), in fight or flight, possessed like a grandma in an A24 film. After about an hour it finally subsided, and we made our way through the campsite to the sound of, in the words of Dizzee Rascal, ‘big dirty stinking bass’. My only pair of boots were clinging onto their soles for dear life. I imagined that I looked just like Kate Moss in those Hunter wellies in Glasto circa ‘08. But I caught a glance of myself in a mirror… Only to see it was much more Peppa Pig meets Stig of the Dump. A samaritan (bartender) ushered us into, what I felt, was Field Maneuvers’ central mecca, The Packet Inn.
The walls were lined with knick knacks from all of your favourite kitsch-camp-british-core culture. It’s a bit like someone invited the admin of Love of Huns to take over your local. In fact, is that actually what happened? Scampi Fries adorned the walls next to cardboard cut-outs of Grace Jones, while a life-size Peggy from EastEnders stood guard at the door, silently emoting: GET OUT OF MY PUB! Field Maneuvers is essentially the physical embodiment of every vocal stim and vintage meme that occupies the dusty corner of your brain. And I know it’s not just me. At Field Maneuvers, you can blurt out any niche early-00s X Factor or reality TV reference and someone, somewhere, will immediately shout the next line back at you.
“IMSORRYTOHEARURGRANDMAPASSEDAWAYYEAHIACTUALLYAMBUTIDONTWANNABEURFRIENDOKAYALRIGHT.” Honey, I’m home, I thought to myself.
There was something particularly special about this year’s festival. After last year’s near-closure, Field Maneuvers was back, seemingly with a bit of a DIY SOS glow-up. There was a pub extension and a very sexy and slinky new outdoor stage. Nick Knowles, eat your heart out. With all the fuckeries going on in the so-called ‘normal’ world, it felt more pertinent than ever to have somewhere people can actually let their hair down. We’re often told that the rave is a space for freedom, expression and liberation etc. How often it actually delivers on that promise, is up for debate. But Field Maneuvers, to its credit, seemed willing to ask what that promise actually means. And the festival programme puts it better than I ever could:
“In the real world, you can STILL get arrested and thrown in jail for saying you oppose genocide. You can get pulled over by imaginary genitalia police for using a public toilet. And you can’t fail to notice that it’s fucking hot – the highest temperature of the summer was recorded right here (in Norfolk). It’s not all sunshine and rainbows in our right-on rave bubble, either. New revelations of abuse, sexual assault and predatory behaviour – and the obvious patterns of cover up and denial that deepen the injury – have reminded us that the underground is not an inherently safe or progressive space (ask yourself: have you ever told a friend to text you when you get home? If not, make sure you know why some people do). We’re also seeing how the misogyny that affects every level of society is being twisted into the persecution of our trans siblings, who get blamed for male violence despite being far more likely to experience it.
Sorry – is this all a bit much? Have we got our knickers in a twist? It’s only a bloody rave, love!! But we wouldn’t write it unless we thought you’d understand… Are parties political? Is raving a form of resistance? Does the pope like footwork? These are meaningless koans. The only reality is us.”
I couldn’t have put it any better myself. After easing ourselves into the festivities at the Packet Inn, we headed over to Sputnik: the big dome tent, partial to a queue-orientated situation when one of the more popular names on the bill is playing. Last year it was Big Ang’. This year, it was I. Jordan. We joined the queue, and so began the descent into the dead of the night. We glided through Jay Carner’s “forest techno”, through Paleman (with a brief, tactical chunder somewhere in the middle to aid our passage) and eventually into Paranoid London at 2am. Someone’s trip had cast everyone as characters from the Shrek universe. “You’re the dragon that Donkey is trying to shag”. She told me (will take it as a compliment, have you seen those eyelashes?).
Taahliyah was playing in the ambient tent, where we settled down in front of an old TV, literally shaped like an apple. As a Y2K technophile, I immediately entered into a brief, psychotic negotiation with myself about whether I could fit it in my bum bag. Could I? Would I? Was this the beginning of a new life of crime? But then I remembered the signs next to the Scampi Fries in the Packet Inn: “SHOPLIFTERS WILL BE CHAINED TO THE FENCE BY THE LAKE.” Better not.
On the TV, an episode of Sex and the City was playing, naturally. As I looked at Zeobat’s cut out SATC memes and discourse stuck around the television, I started to astral project as I read “anti-carrie bradshaw sentiment is projection, vitriol for the unsavoury parts of yourself you recognise in her…” Carrie was talking. Somewhere nearby, someone was lying horizontally on a beanbag with the thousand-yard stare of a person who might have just discovered their own attachment style. Am I Carrie? Are you Carrie? Are we all Carrie? I decided it was time for bed.
Day two was very fruitful, if you’re someone in the market for a tan. The sun was shining, bums were out. Nature was healing. We jigged down and dirty to the sounds of Baba-T, as I smugly sipped a bloody mary (something I only recently got into, since the development of my pre-frontal cortex). It was at this moment, that my friend, who shall remain nameless, let out a bloodcurdling gasp. This is the friend whose shroom trip last night, for better or for worse, had her seeing FM punters as the entire extended cast of Shrek. We looked around, sober, to see an (impressively large) friendship group striding over to the lake, dressed as the cast of Shrek. “I made this happen.” My friend whispered. For context, Saturday was dress up day at FM. My friends and I had made a good amount of effort at a costume, but ended up resigning to the lazy cop-out: each buying a ‘fun wig’. We decided that for such high and impressive levels of effort, such as the Shrek friendship group… This is the only sort of thing that post-30 year olds are able to achieve.
Day turned into night and things started to get a bit more feral. We moved into Sputnik for Angel D’Lite, whose pumpy choons had me feeling like I genuinely could run a marathon. We manoeuvred all around the towns and that: from the Function Room for FAFF and Kurtis Lincoln, to D.Tiffany at the FMMT (sort of the main stage). Although “main” feels like a slightly aggressive term for anything at Field Maneuvers. By 2am, I started to feel like I was astral projecting again. This time, it was in Sputnik at DJ Storm, rightfully known as the ‘First Lady of Drum and Bass’. I don’t know about you, but I would take DJ Storm over Melania Trump anyday. Her tight mixing skills were almost as sharp and effortless as her flick-ass bob. I wondered how she did it all. We stay until the bitter end, OBVS, and then meander back into the Ambient Tent (like clockwork).
Three has always been my magic number, and day three brings plenty of magic. It was SILLY SUNDAY: the final day, and, in my humble and increasingly hungover opinion, often the most perfect day of the weekend. The festival had settled into its natural state, it was God’s day. We started with Uhaul Dyke Rescue, who had been staging sexy, sapphic arm wrestles throughout the weekend. I lost my voice cheering on some pals, but it was fine because I sounded husky, like Katie Weisel from the X-Factor. We joined the pub quiz and, I’m not even pulling your leg, came SECOND. The questions were, to put it diplomatically, fucking deranged. I think this may have aided our performance. Traditional knowledge was of limited use here.
Back at the Lake Stage, Buggery Grips blasted out some singalongs and I thought I could just die right there and everything would be fine. I’ve annoyed plenty of friends on nights out by saying my catchphrase: “Can we go somewhere that has some lyrics???”, and FM certainly delivered. Our final night was spent in the FMMT for Hannah Holland & Mama’s batty-bass set.
Accompanying them were visuals by AVVA Studio, which, by this point in the weekend, were blasting across the screens with the intensity of a medieval fever dream: knights at the Round Table, a figure who looks suspiciously like Maid Marian, and words like LOVE. POSSIBILITY. GREED. EMPIRE. HARMONY. And then, somewhere in the middle of all this: “GRANDMA.”
There’s something about the whole thing that reminds me of a Jeremy Deller piece: slightly folkloric, slightly political, slightly stupid, slightly profound. I started thinking about England. Britain. Empire. The state of the world n that. The weird little island we were dancing on that we both love and hate. For approximately 14 seconds, I become extremely reflective. Luckily, Hannah Holland was on hand to reel me back into reality. Plus, I started to notice drips of sweat falling off the tent ceiling onto me, which is enough to slap anyone back into reality. We spent the rest of the night dancing to Detroit In Effect. The bass was booming. I looked around and thought: sapphic arm wrestling, synchronised rimming, music with lyrics, balloon couture. Carrie Bradshaw. Silly Sunday. God bless. Nature is healed. FIELD MANEUVERS FOR EVER.
