Lovebox Festival

This year’s work Summer Party wasn’t horse-based as in the previous two years but was a day out enjoying the VIP hospitality at the Lovebox festival at Victoria Park. I swear the person who organises these just picks out something she wants to do and then thinks “How can I get the company to pay for it?”.

We all schlepped over to Mile End, walked up to the park, picked up our wristbands and lanyard and then hung around for an hour waiting for everyone else to arrive. It then took us another half an hour to get into the park through security and we eventually got to the VIP section hungry and thirsty. Luckily all the food and drink was paid for so we got our fill before heading off to take a look around the park at what was going on. Which at that point in the day was not a lot!

Some of our team wanted to do rollerskating but due to my knee problems I didn’t want to risk screwing that up some more so just watched from the sidelines for a bit.

We visited the Despacio tent which is a sound system created by the guys behind 2 Many DJs and LCD Soundsystem. It was bloody hot in there so after about twenty minutes we left to get some fresh air. Or as fresh as it could be with all the marijuana being smoked around the place!

We went back to our VIP area for some more food and drink and then we went to the main stage to see Mark Ronson do a DJ set. It was nothing special, just him, a couple of turntables and two blokes shouting at the crowd for 45 minutes. Although the place got a bit jumping when he played Uptown Funk.

After another break for more drink it was back to the main stage to see Cypress Hill who were brilliant. They really got the crowd pumped up as they blasted out their biggest hits and got a crowd battle going on. Biggest cheer came for Rock Superstar which was their finale number. I’ve seen them before when they supported Eminem a few years ago and this time they were even better.

Back to the VIP tent for another drink and as I had no desire to see Rudimental and faced with a long journey home, I decided to leave and made my way back to the tube station. It had been an OK day out, the size of the place meant that we lost track of a lot of people throughout the day, but the food and atmosphere was pretty good.

I wonder what they’ll come up with for next year?