The entire population of the area at this point in time included a Helicopter Dude in search of a leak, his mate and myself, so it was an obvious case of setting out for a look around and, if that turns up a blank, return to the main gates and see who has lobbed in the vicinity in the interim. There were a number of cars scattered across the car park, obviously belonging to various BEC employees, but there were a couple of camper vans over on my left as I made my way around, so having nowhere else to investigate that was the way I headed.
"Looking for someone?" was a not entirely unexpected inquiry as I made my way towards the first of them, and my response was along the lines of looking for people I've never met, but I know what their uniform looks like.
That required further explanation, which took a couple of minutes until I glanced across to the hired camper van next door and spotted a couple of orange shirts that looked to have the right logo on the front, so I made my excuses and headed in that direction.
As it turned out, I'd got it right. We stopped and chatted for a bit, I accepted a VB from Dave as Linda turned her attention to establishing where everybody else was.
Over the next hour and a bit I formed an impression of a sort of wandering caravan that makes its own way from point to point and reassembles at the evening's venue, usually after marshaling their forces somewhere nearby. There aren't many marshaling points near the BEC so the rest of them had convened at a pub closer to the city and headed towards the venue sort of together, arriving in dibs and drabs to claim prime spots at the head of the queue that hadn't quite managed to form yet.
I suspected there was something of this nature afoot, which was why I'd ventured out so early, and will point out to anyone who reckons I'm a little obsessive that the purpose of the exercise is not just to get to the show, but to get to the very front of the General Admission area right up on the rail up close and personal with Mr Young and The Horse.
As an outsider, I was happy to watch the rituals, the making of the Woo Hoo signs on sheets of A4, and the coordinated planning of when these were going to be wielded. Very interesting, and it gave me a perspective on what I need to be considering next time around.
The gates opened at 5:30, and I was on the end of the first batch through, who produced admonitions about a lack of need to run as they headed inside in search of Gate Three. I followed at a more sedate pace since I had a seat and didn't need to claim prime real estate. Wandering along the left hand concourse I found them huddled at the head of the GA queue a good hour and a half before the doors opened, and hung around the area for a while before heading off for a wander myself. You never know who you're going to run across in circumstances like these, so I tend to wander semi-aimlessly and see who turns up.
It was around an hour and a half before I managed to locate anyone I knew, and that came in the form of a vaguely familiar dude in the GA queue on the other side of the venue who asked if I was Hughesy, and introduced himself as Skid, a bloke I'd shared teacher accommodation with twenty-one years ago.
We had a surfeit of Marks in the block where I lived, so we needed a means to differentiate between the two of 'em. Goodo (a.k.a. The Bastard, a term which seemed to comprise a fair chunk of his oral vocabulary outside school hours) wasn't excessively rapt in the moniker derived from his surname, but probably found it preferable to Skid or Skidder.
But, as I do so often, I digress. That was at the end of a lengthy ramble to and fro, in the course of which I had a couple of yarns to security dudes, caught up with the duo from the first camper van in front of the big merchandise stall, visited that location myself (coffee mug, Tonight's the Night T-shirt and On the Beach tote bag), had a beer (but only the one) and a cup of chips and sighted various wandering Winterlongers able to roam a little because they had friends to mind their place in the queue.
The doors opened just as I was reacquainting myself with the Skidder, so that put the kibosh on that, and by seven-twenty, with the foyers filling up I reckoned I might as well find my seat and settle into concert mode.