Sydney Festival opening night

Last weekend I thought it might be a lovely idea to go to the first night of the Sydney Festival. What I didn't realise was that the entire population of Sydney thought it would be a lovely idea too.

The moment I set foot in the "festival zone" in Hyde Park, I was sucked into a frenzied human whirlpool, which first spat me out next to a stage that was clearly a "young persons' zone", judging from the vast number of gladiator sandals, shrieking voices and glowing fluoro sticks protruding out of heads like Martians' antennae, backed by a techno beat.

I bid a hasty retreat and re-entered the throng towards the main stage where a great band was playing. We could hear them. All we had to do was work out how to get anywhere within the same postcode when there were approximately 40,000 people already in residence and a complex barricade system that seemed specifically set up to thwart us in our attempts to get anywhere we wanted to.

Don't get me wrong, it was a fabulous night of entertainment, but I'm clearly missing a crucial festival gene. All around me people were happily whooping it up in the crowd — arms waving, whistles blowing, glowing fluoro stick things flashing.

Meanwhile, I was impatiently barging my way through the masses, huffing and tutting as people stood on my thongs and elbowed me in the head.

The only person who seemed to share my crowdophobia was a man who had clearly been trying for some time to find his friends and was screaming desperately into his mobile phone, "I have my arm in the air! I'm making a horn with my hand! Can you see my horny hand?!"

Now that would've been worth seeing...