The Wickerman Festival 2006

United Kingdom | by Tom Fair | 24 July 2006

For those of you who don't know, The Wickerman was a film made in the early 1970s. It saw the devoutly Christian cop Sergeant Howey (Edward Woodward) arrive on a Hebridean island to investigate the disappearance of a young school girl. Along the way he gets seduced by a nubile and half naked Britt Eckland, weirded out by the primitive islanders and out-smarted by the Laird of the island, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee). The film ends with the prying Sergeant being burnt alive as a sacrifice to a pagan deity believed to bless the island's crops. There is one particular dialogue between Sergeant Howie and Lord Summerisle which goes a long way in painting some kind of portrait as to what the Wickerman festival is all about and it goes something like this:

Sergeant Howie: "Your lordship seems strangely... unconcerned."

Lord Summerisle: "I am confident your suspicions are wrong, Sergeant. We do not commit murder here. We are a deeply religious people."

Sergeant Howie: "Religious? With ruined churches, no ministers, no priests... and children dancing naked!"

Lord Summerisle: "They do love their divinity lessons."

Sergeant Howie: "But they are... a-are naked!"

Lord Summerisle: "Well, naturally. It's much too dangerous to jump through fire with their clothes on."

If you imagine Sergeant Howie as the personification of Middle England, conservative with a small 'c', one of those horribly tedious people who tell you you can't do such and such because it's not 'normal' or 'right', while Lord Summerisle personifies the typical British eccentric, then you may begin to understand what this festival is all about. Not that the party is hassled or impeded by the dreaded "straights" - black-shiny-lace-ups types - but had some poor unsuspecting "normals" stumbled across these happenings they might have been somewhat aghast. Horrified even. The burning of the Wickerman, minus an evangelical Christian, is merely the culmination of two days of high jinx, tomfoolery and general professional misconduct.

It's all so close to not happening though. My initial lift loses the keys to her recently acquired vintage ambulance on the Thursday, which puts a certain dampener on things. All is not lost though, another confederate rings on Friday morning demanding my presence. Having decided to try and have a quiet weekend in Wales, especially after the madness that was Glade, I'm in a quandary as to what to do. Suffice it to say nine hours later we have passed through the Lake District, beautifully lit up like a Turner masterpiece, and crossed the border into Scotland. One near miss involving a bicycle falling off the car in front of us on the motorway and we're almost home and dry. Shaken, stirred and generally ready to let rip.

On arrival we're blown away by the numbers present. For a festival that not many people have heard of, there are a load here. Like Glade it's an interesting mix, except an even more diverse, range of punks, gypsies, wizards, hippies, crusties and indie kids that look as if they've stepped out of some early '90s time warp, oldies, youngsters, and loads of people with their little ones in tow. This is a real family festival and despite knowing hardly anyone, by the time we leave we feel like we've made a connection with practically everyone there.

But back to arrival. Most the crowd are gathered around the main stage and whoever is playing is whipping them up into a frenzy, the lead singer looked like a younger less-amphetamine-ravaged Joey Ramone. It was too much for me, and after a brief spell in the reggae tent I make my way to the Eden zone where I'm due to DJ at some point. The Eden area is cockroach kingdom made up of pods, well marquees if you insist, interconnected by tunnels. Each zone is dedicated to different types of underground dance music, so you have electro, breaks, deep house, psy-trance and chillout.