DAVE BALFE

Trying to sum up the last five days in extended paragraphs just has not been working.
I think the best way to capture the sheer ridiculousness of Ieperfest is in point form.


- A rave in Ieper, Belgium at about 3am, they’re playing Slayer, and I’m having the laugh, there’s a lad in a wheelchair crowd surfing, people ramming a trolley around the place with a lad in it and a guy in a wife beater with a killer beard on stage pouring beer on himself. Somebody please confirm that I saw all of this and it wasn’t my mind fusing all the bizarre acts together.

- Sometime between 6am and 7am in a campsite in Ieper. I stand with Ciarán Nolan and our new European friends, their names escape me.  There’s some hyper lad milling around us with an ipod and ipod dock playing some dubstep that I don’t want to hear yet dance to anyway. Ciarán spits some incredible knowledge with a freestyle rap in Irish and blows our minds. Some girls come over, ask if we’re from Dublin and then ask if we know ‘Zach’. Yo, Golden, you’re famous. Ciarán bashes the ground with his bauld shtick, there’s then loads and loads of us and the security come and they look like a biker gang. Incredible.

- Trash Talk eventually play. Before the drums even kick in during their first song which is Hash Wednesday, I stage dive at a pace that was way too much for me. Thinking of this now makes me shiver and wretch. I roll over the people and Euros being Euros don’t catch me, I hit the ground my foot catches a dip in the ground and my leg snaps. I hear the noise, don’t realise what has happened, go to take two steps and my leg gives way. I hop to the first aid tent. They get me a lad who speaks English, he is locked. Tells me a thousand times that it’s not broken and it’s just twisted and I should just walk it off. He then tells Iano that he thinks I am a pussy. Fuck you shit first aid lad, you’re a fucking tenderboy nullhead. Eventually I make them take me to the hospital because I am a pussy. Goo comes with. I lose 50 quid along the way, they x-ray me, tell me it’s broken in two places. Tell me I’m getting surgery the next morning. In the middle of the night they transfer me from one room to another for fear of my safety cause some messin’ cunt was smashin’ shite and causin’ havok. What a lad. I couldn’t sleep anyway so it was fine. I get the surgery, my head is mental, there’s loads more, Goo and Paul save me. The end of that to cut it real short cause the rest is snore.

- The bag that has my doctor’s notes and letters, my x-rays, my data disc, some of my clothes my medication, my E 1 11 form and most importantly my passport gets misplaced between the ground and is lost forever.

- I am in a foreign country just after surgery with a broken leg, no medication and no passport. FUN.

- Everything worked out and I’m going to go asleep now forever cause it’s been too long.

All in all I had the fucking time of my life and it was awesome. I spent most of today in the hospital and even that was grand. Ieperfest was incredible. I wish I wasn’t so tired so I could write this with some clarity and class instead of a horrible spiel because I need to vent and release. Basically, everything comes down to life experience, and they were just some other ones not everybody has. I’m grateful in a way.

Download here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?pz30ytn4fvu61o5

Reblog, repost, reblog, repost. Send this to anybody you think may be interested.