Quick review of your first minute of going to the first festival of the year. Security guard stubs your ticket, you pass through a small turnstiles, raise both arms and then you are searched for any drugs. Making Homelands completely and utterly drug free. Yes indeed, thanks to this incredible thorough body search there is absolutely no way whatsoever one illegal substance will be dropped over the next 15 hours at Winchester Bowl during Homelands. So we demand an inquest. Everybody seemed off their face! It was something like a Doctor Who episode (which incidentally we had to record that night!). Of course no drugs were smuggled in. Heavens forbid. The guy standing next to us was probably a diabetic as he needed to keep dabbing this powder to keep his sugar level up. Oh and Nurofen must had made a killing as every punter had headaches and were necking down these white tablets. Bloody strange. Us, well we just shot some crack in our arms in the afternoon and enjoyed all the entertainment which we will now cover in our annual Homelands report...

As per usual Homelands was made up of six arenas. The most popular for the Saturday was of course the Live Arena which had Babyshambles, The Bravery, Mylo, Roots Manuva, Beck and The Streets giving it large to the raving crowd. Pete Doherty had played a secret gig in Southampton the night before and did an afternoon slot at the fest as he then had to catch a helicopter ride to Scotland to perform at the Burns Festival. with a hectic schedule like that we would recommend that that the old cockney should take drugs to keep up with things, if he doesn't he could end up in rehab because of exhaustion! We can't really say if he was any good because we arrived late making us miss the bloody Bravery as well! Still we managed to catch Mylo who managed to storm through an incredible set which of course included 'In My Arms' and 'Drop The Pressure'. Beck made a very welcome return to the festival circuit and after telling the whole of the arena he was a 'loser' and 'Where's It's At' he quickly raced backstage with his band and changed into white glowing outfits. We know this as we were actually in the wings and saw the whole show close up. In a matter of fact we hope to be in the wings for most festivals and will be launching a pretty awesome festival competition very soon on this very site. After Beck we made our way over to Arena 5 for two very good reasons, One being to watch the Human League but Two, and the most important reason was so we could happily miss The Streets. We have no idea how they were and quite frankly couldn't give a toss. As far as we're concerned Mike Skinner is probably thanking his lucky star that Akon and Crazy Frog have arrived so we can no longer crown his band the crappist music act at the moment. The League managed to pull in a full tentful of fans despite being old enough to be your parents and for just over an hour we took a trip.

Sorry, we didn't finish the last sentence properly. We meant to say we took a trip down memory lane, of course we wouldn't want to imply we took any drugs! Over in Arena 4 Jazzy Jeff was on the decks with Mad Skillz and Groove Armada opted for a bit of DJing themselves over at the Outdoor stage. Highlights from other arenas included 2 Many DJ's and John Digweed (Arena 1), Felix Da Housecat (Arena 2) and a whole bunch of badly spelt DJ's who we have never heard of at Arena 3. The Barcadi B-Bar was packed as per usual and Strongbow had various DJ's playing their stuff elsewhere on the site. Sadly we didn't have time to visit the Aftershock tent which not only had a Beyonce bouncy castle but hot tubs on offer to help ravers keep out of the cold for a few minutes. Hopefully we'll catch the Aftershock tent later this year at another festival and bring you a decent report.

To round up our first festival review of the Summer we would like to thank a few people. Glen, you were fantastic as always and Mean Fiddler put on another great festival. Although there is another person who deserves our thanks and that's the security guard who kindly told us that we were in Arena 5 and not Arena 1 after waiting half an hour for our mates and being surrounded by half dead ravers who had given up and laying on the floor huddled under blankets and silver foil. Another thing before we close this report, a 'geezer' with eyeballs bigger than his face asked us at the Barcardi B-Bar if we had seen 'Steve', if anyone can help please email us straight away. Cheers!