11.00am
It’s the second annual Underage Festival, and as 10,000 kids descend upon London’s Victoria Park, the heavens open.

Normally nearby pubs would be rubbing their hands at the prospect of such a spike in business - but with today’s underage crowd, it’s only the bootleggers selling waterproof ponchos outside that stand to make a healthy profit.

The queues have formed well in advance of an hour before festival gates open, but despite the weather the teens are in jubilant form, with Mexican waves and chants ringing around the park as the final few straggling adults disappear. In true hipster form, the sun does make a fashionably late appearance just in time for the first acts of the day however - things are looking up.

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12.45pm
Bombay Bicycle Club provide the first surprise gig of the day, taking to the Myspace bus and performing acoustically to a bulging crowd. Desperate to hear over the 10,000 raucous teens elsewhere, this is without doubt the quietist and most well behaved audience of the day - frontman Jack Steadman is armed with just a guitar, but compels the crowd to silence.

As well as the band’s own underage anthem 'Sixteen' (“Something you may be able to relate to”), the brief set includes a cover of Joy Division’s classic single 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. To those here to witness it it’s a wonderful moment - with no barriers separating the young band and their similarly aged fans, the distinction becomes almost blurred, and it’s a pleasant reminder of the underage revolution today is championing.

3.00pm
Fresh from NME’s own New Noise Tour, Team Waterpolo entertain the day’s first packed out tent, filling the not insignificant Top Man Stage to bursting point.

With some of the smaller members of today’s audience clambering onto poles and barrels for a better view of the band, casual observers would be forgiven for thinking this were a band with a far more established following. Similarly, the wealth of perfectly formed material they reel off here suggests a far more sizable back catalogue than their solitary limited release single release would have you believe.

Both tracks from the single though - 'Letting Go' and B-side 'Problematic Girls' - are rapturously received and sung back at them. It’s a true festival moment - crowd surfers, girls on shoulders, and singalongs - and on the strength of today’s performance, their first of many.

4.30pm
We took some time out from the festival to bundle some of your favourite bands into the Myspace bus and ask for their tips on sneaking into over-18 gigs underage.

Bombay Bicycle Club - “Contact us on Myspace - Talk to us beforehand and we can sneak you in the back.”

Florence and the Machine - “Use your dad! At my first gig I got mine to pretend to be an A&R man - he wore a suit and carried a briefcase - they let us both in no questions asked!”

Artists and fans alike were invited to sign the Myspace bus. Here's what it looked like:

6.30pm
Inexplicably confined to a tent tonight, would-be headliners Foals truly proved their stature here.

Playing at the same time as Gallows, you would be forgiven for thinking the rowdier crowd members would be elsewhere for this set, but the Oxford five piece proved any disbelievers wrong. Within just two songs, opener 'XXXXXX' and 'The French Open', the NME stage had seen circle pits to surely rival those of Gallows, fans climbing the centre pole only to dive off again - one reveller did so from almost 20’ - and the front barrier literally buckling under the weight of the crowd.

It’s perhaps no surprise then that the gig was halted at this point while the security battled to regain some control over the underage fans. Never ones to slow the pace of their live shows however, the band bounced back into action straight away with former single 'Cassius', sparking pandemonium in the crowd.

Although their set was paused again after further security struggles, Foals proved unstoppable. Much to the staff’s dismay, 'Hummer' and 'Electric Bloom' only furthered the riotous scenes, as Yannis joined fans in climbing the staging.

“Can’t we behave like adults?” Yannis feigned. “Actually, disregard that advice completely.”

Words and pictures by NME's guest blogger Donald Vass, 18.