The Enchanted Garden Ball is essentially Exeter's version of an End of Year Ball. It has a festival vibe to it: two music tents, fairground games, face painters, zorbing and a croquet pitch. The drinks were reasonably priced (£3.50 for a double), and I didn't get to try the food but it smelt amazing. I wont bore you with a lengthy description of what we did, and they say a picture paints a thousand words:
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| Despite being fun to pose with, cigars are actually disgusting. |
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| Educating Issy's one and only fan! |
However the fantastic night soon came to an all too sour end. It was stated in the event that the last coach home would leave at 2am, but when the music turned off at 1:30am people began running towards the exit. Eager to get home quickly, like a bunch of sheep, we all followed blindly into what has to have been the poorest example of crowd management I've ever seen. There was absolutely no control. People began pushing and shoving in desperate (and futile) attempts to get on the coaches before they stopped. On a muddy surface it was only a matter of time before people went under. A friend and I saw one girl being lifted into an ambulance, and from what I've heard this wasn't the only time someone was rushed to hospital. You hear the expression 'crushed to death', but you never actually consider it until you're fighting for air as you're squeezed by the sheer weight of people's bodies. I just don't understand it. Surely at some point the event managers should have sat down and wondered: 'How the fuck is everyone going to get out?' - at which point the next logical step would be to organise something. It would appear this didn't happen. So why didn't the security do anything? They must have worked similar events before, they must have noticed that there was no prior planning for the exit. Right? Again, it seems no one even considered how they were going to ferry people onto coaches until the crush began.
It was just so utterly dangerous. I have bruises on my upper arms from where my friend had to physically hold me up, and I'm ridiculously thankful he was there to look after me. Not every girl had a huge rugby lad behind them, and we came across many who were crying: panicked, trapped, crushed and drunk. It's not the ideal way to end an evening.
It is such a shame. When I think about the Enchanted Garden Ball I wont remember laughing continuously for ten minutes whilst zorbing, or finding the secret bar, or going down a slide into the main tent, or all the other laugh so hard your belly hurts moments I had. I'll think about the time I was left shaken, bruised and incredibly frightened. And to think, it all could have been avoided.
