OLD PUNX NEVER DIE: They just stand at the back with a camera

After the fun and games at Whetherspoons, we jumped in the car and headed south of the river in search of the 4^th Okupational Hazard Squatfest. All the flyer said was South London, and a phone number to ring after 8:30pm. By 8:30 we were south of the river, but the hotline merely stated “we are running a bit late, ring back after 10:30”. A mate from the festival scene I had bumped into at the Bookfair, said the word around the campfire was that Deptford was the place to be, so Deptford bound we were.

On reaching Deptford, there was still no help from the hotline, so we nipped into Greenwich, which is next to Deptford, to say hello to me mates John and Jackie.

I hate dropping in on John and Jackie unannounced, but as we were only a mile from their house it would have been rude not to! As we sat in their house catching up on things, like their trip to Italy (they had only been back a few hours) and the ins and outs of Blackwood social scene, we received a text from someone we knew that was involved in the Squatfest giving directions. A quick check of John’s local knowledge revealed that the party was less than a mile from his house. At this point, the plan was go to party, boogie till I could take no more and then drive home. On hearing how close it was, Jackie asked us to stay and John decided he was coming with us, it was after all his birthday!!!!

The ginger beer was promptly dumped and cider swallowing commenced, then it was a quick stroll up the road to the disused factory that was home to Okupational Hazard. We got there about 11:30 and word had already spread with about 1,000 already in and queues starting to form.

A quick recky revealed a building that looked like it had not long been ‘cracked’ with PAs still being set up. Downstairs was going to be punk central, 1^st floor was the bar and a live drum ‘n bass thing going down and the top floor was chill out/acoustic.

After hanging around ‘the bar’ for a while we went down stairs to find a decent place to settle down for a marathon session of 21^stcentury punkorama. It is a long time since i have seen so many punks in one place in the UK, it was like the '90s (and half the '80s) never happened.

No-one seemed to know what was going on, even the bands. I had a chat with old mates P.A.I.N., who have done about 5 Peppermint Iguana gigs for us in Wales; they were pissed and all they knew was that they would be on sometime between 5am and 7am.

At about 2am the first band, Dread Messiah, hit the stage. I had not seen them before and was quite impressed. Even John, who to be honest is more funk than punk, was rockin’. After Messiah, John was in full punk mode and bought himself a ‘Penis Lickers’ t-shirt, simply because he liked the name of the band. After some all girl noise merchants, whose name I never found out, John decided he could not wait all night to see PAIN, so headed off home. Just as well, ‘cos Chris and Ellie had gone out for fresh air and could not get back in.

At about 5ish, after blistering sets from Inner Terrestrials, The Restarts and some other band, it was announced that Flat Pig would be next. The party was showing no signs of calming down and there were still a couple of hundred queuing to get in. Although I was still feeling frisky and we had not yet seen PAIN or Headjam, the fact that I had to drive home at some point was in the back of my head so Tom and I reluctantly made our way back to the ranch… slightly pissed, slightly stoned, slightly deaf, but full of punky happiness.