The Streets Les Ardentes Festival 2008

Liége, Belgium, 12 July 2008

We (Ozzy, Laura and me) left Hillegom and drove to Liège. We arrived at about 1.15 pm checked in the Ibis hotel, searched for a fridge magnet, for the bar owner Fred of the pub de Tempelier in Haarlem, as we always give him one, he collects them, but couldn’t find one…at about 4ish we met up with Emma Jones. Emma? Who’s Emma?

And Emma‘s friend Jenni, Emma gave me a huge poster… it’s the billboard poster of Mike‘s album “A grand don’t come for free” I’m chuffed to bits, Its amazing and very very very big!! OMG thanks so much!!

(This photo is from our spare bedroom (Eric’s room) in our house in Hillegom in 2017)

Anyways we decided to go to the festival… Emma got backstage passes, she got them from Mike, lucky bitch haha. She met Mike on an Example gig, that’s where Mike promised her guest list tickets, so she didn’t go yet. Well we searched for the right bus and in about 10 minutes we reached the Astrid park… The Belgium people were so friendly!! Everybody was willing to help. They all showed us directions of how to walk from the bus stop to the festival site.

We got off the bus, got through the entrance and went straight to the open air stage where Mike would perform… OMG It’s so muddy!! haha it has been raining a lot the day before.

I didn’t feel too well, I got cold. Ozzy let me borrow his jacket.

Well Mike wouldnt start until 9.30pm and Dizzee Rascal wouldn’t start until 7.30 pm so we had plenty of time to check out the other 2 stages. We saw Dizzee last year at Cardiff Calling. We got a couple of drinks, we had some food, we chilled a bit in the sun… And we saw Martine, well she noticed me. I met her in Luxembourg 2 years ago remember?! Her boyfriend Frèdèric was there as well, they told us that they were engaged, they were going to get married. Congrats guys!

At about 6ish we went to the open air stage, we found a nice spot, but too far away from the stage… so we decided to get closer to the stage for (Dizzee and) Mike.

We were standing next to Martine and Frèdèric. Dizzee started at about 7.30 he was great, but the huge boxes in front of us were shit. They were too loud!! my ears were hurting, it gave me a headache. I got very ill.

I didn’t want to leave because of Mike. the first half of Dizzee was great tho, just the second half was crap. Thankfully we had a break for 1 hour until Mike came on…

Mike saw my banner and recognized me straight away. I did show my bikini anyway…. Just in case… when he saw my banner he did *thump up* (My banner said, What about our date in the grasshopper? it never happened) and when he wanted everybody to “GO LOW” he said “you know what I’m going to do” just as what he said to me in Cardiff. There was a guy who jumped on stage… and Mike run after him like a mad man. The security took it very serious and smacked him on the floor… Mike said “sorry, about that”

(Filmed by Emma Jones)

(Not my videos)

(Not my video)

(Not my video)

(Not my video)

(Filmed by Emma Jones)

(Not my video)

(Not my video)

(Not my video)

At the end during Fit, but you know it, he wanted everybody to devine down the middle, Mike calls it the “Moses” so he could walk to the middle of the crowd, and crowdsurf back to the stage, but nobody understood him haha…. they hardly speak English there… only a few… but finally after repeating himself 4 or 5 times they knew what he meant…. when Mike saw the floor he said: “FUCK, thats muddy” haha. He run to the end and someone picked him up and pushed him up so he could come back to the front while crowd surfing…

He showed us his muddy feet, then he thanked everyone and walked off.

I loved this gig so much!!

When they were finished, I needed a break. Groove Armada would play as well, but I was so ill and cold. I sat down for a while. We got some food and a drink and we left back to the hotel. We never saw Groove Armada.

July 13th

The next day we stopped in Maastricht for a drink or 2.

Then we went back home to Hillegom.