AlBarclay

I would have stayed inside all day despite the autumn glory if I wasn’t looking after this unusual dog. Thankfully he got me out a fair few times. He’s pretty much completely silent, but for the occasional excited yelp. When he wants something, he just has a way of looking at you. Most of the time he sat in his basket and observed me as I was working. He occasionally suffered me to come and play with him. Mostly he just got on with the business of being a dog, and I got on with the business of listing tut on eBay.

I have my lightbox set up on Melody’s table, so when I decide something is for eBay I can photograph and list it. But for every item there’s a strenuous identification process. I find it interesting and quite fun – but something of a rollercoaster: “This figurine is Lladro! It might have value! Ah it’s Lladro Nao. That’s the cheap stuff. Oh well it’s strangely attractive. Maybe I’ll keep it … Oh but wait a second, actually Nao is now worth a little bit anyway” etc etc.

I have to make sure I don’t keep loads. As a general rule I’m trying to only keep things I remember fondly and that aren’t worth much.

We’ve started to sort the things we inherited from our grandparents, Max and myself. We are gradually archeologising their lives. This involves lots of memories of very different times – ancient times almost, buried in the weight of years.

Today the system was reasonably effective. I spent time with each item trying to get a positive ID online and then trying to see how much people had paid for similar in the past. The stuff I was doing had already been sorted by Max and I once. My job was to move things on. I ended up with 4 sections. One was stuff I wanted to keep. One was stuff good enough to bring on the next Tennants run. One was attractive stuff for charity shops with no hard value. One was Ebay. Anything I reckoned I could get more than a few bob for.

Thank God I had the doggie to chase me out to the lake every few hours, or I’d have eaten my own hands. My head and my conversation and my blog – they’re all full of identification of objects. I’m getting better and better.

I can’t do glass yet and I’m strangely bored by silver but improving. I enjoy porcelain and oddities and toys and ephemera. I can’t do furniture for shit, but everybody has to have a weakness. I’m not much good on jewellery. I rubbed two “pearls” together and got paint instead of powder. They were painted glass. I ran a plastic fish under the hot tap and sniffed it for ages. It might still be bakelite, but since I’ve never actually smelt bakelite, all I have to go on is that it “smells like formaldehyde when warm”. It’s not bakelite.

I’m buoyed up by surges of optimism, not daunted by the probability that half the stuff I listed on eBay today won’t sell, expecting to find lovely things, weird things or things that will help pay the service charge.

It’s a good headspace, honouring the memory and reconfiguring the possessions of people long gone that have just lain in boxes for decades.

Oh and there’s a fifth pile. Furniture. I’m taking some of that to Lot’s Road tomorrow just to get rid of it as they’ll know enough about it to flog it and it’s incomprehensible and takes up loads of room.

Here’s a weird 1960’s aluminium mask. It comes with 2 cotton filters. I put it on eBay for £1.99… The claim “Workers Enjoy Wearing Them” tickled my funny bone. Any billionaire friends, feel free to get into a bidding war. 🙂

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/143723352130

“I think the experience of driving in London will make me into a better pedestrian,” says Tristan.

“It won’t.”

“They’re all fucking insane. It’s like they all want to get killed.”

“Yep. Your job is to not kill them.”

London driving. It’s a peculiar type of assault course. Tristan drove us across town in the sightly troublesome car. We had barely left Twickenham when we saw the first deathwish of many. I almost take it for granted these days, but seeing it through the eyes of a new driver really puts it into focus. A cyclist. On a busy public road. Over forty years old, so perhaps old enough to know better than to roll along the road with no hands on the handlebars, fully absorbed in a mobile phone screen, trusting to balance and to lack of oil in the front wheel joint in order to not fall over and roll under a bus. While Tristan swears about it, the cyclist, now with one hand on a handle as the phone finds a pocket, undertakes us to then overtake a bus that has started indicating right to rejoin traffic. This time they were fine. I hope they’ll be fine every time they do something that stupid. But they weren’t even the worst I’ve seen this week. Kids doing long wheelies on Tower Bridge Approach, and more people than you’d ever believe cycling with a mobile phone.

On Park Lane earlier this week I drove past a man lying on his back outside the Hilton. A woman was kneeling over him, waving expansively to the traffic, encouraging us to pass by rather than stop to look. His moped was a bit further on, as grounded as he was. And the momentary snapshot that my brain holds of him, prone in his helmet, carried the feeling that his body looked too flat, like it had collapsed under its own weight – no more involuntary muscles holding it up, no more air in the lungs. He isn’t the first probably dead biker I’ve seen on the streets of London, flat out very possibly for good, snipped off in a moment. Even without an engine, even without undertaking cars and overtaking buses as they pull out – even then you take your life into your hands on the London roads. Cycling with a mobile? Just don’t.

The roads are busy again now. And lots of people haven’t driven for months. People do all sorts of crazy shit…

—

On which subject, I pulled up outside Melody’s only to have my door opened by a drunk young woman, Southern Comfort fumes coming off her in waves as she begged me to take her to her friend’s yard. It was easier to just say yes and drive her, even if getting directions from her was a masterclass in translation. By the look of it she’d had a shit night. Thankfully I speak excellent Drunk after studying it for years. I tried to put her mind at rest, even though she basically had my door open before I could stop her. I dropped her outside Barnes Stadium and she staggered off, hopefully to a warm yard. Hitchhiking is rare in London, and most of the cars are taxis anyway. She’s lucky she got someone unruffled, patient and sober.

Looking back over the miles I’ve covered in the last few weeks, I’m counting my blessings. There we were a couple of weeks ago, Lou and I, careening over the Dales with a full load of china, rain lashing and wind howling. All that time just a few inches below us the whole of the exhaust was fixed onto the chassis with a pair of bulldog clips.

The guy at Kwik Fit looks at them as if they had tongues and had insulted him. “You’ll never get this through the MOT,” he tells me. To his credit, he could be changing the bald tyres and charging me a few bob, but – well he’s not. MOT is in a month. He tries to change the headlight bulb and he can’t. Neither can his colleague. “What the hell is it with these micras?” The drivers side dip bulb is dead and will continue to be dead. There’s a slow puncture in the front right tyre. The heat shield is falling off. Occasionally I hear a clip go *bing*. There’s a hole in the exhaust. There’s a slow puncture in the front right tyre. And now the spring on the left makes a loud bang when you move the tyres beyond a few degrees. Some time soon it’ll ping off. Hopefully it won’t happen at speed. Hopefully it won’t happen before October when the thing has to pass an MOT ha ha ha.

Looks like it’s time to move on. After all, MOT stands for Moving-On Time. I must have owned about 12 cars so far and I can count the number of times I’ve taken one to MOT on the fingers of one hand. It’s never worth it for a £300 car. Go to a big brand garage and you get a list as long as your arm and a price to match. Go to a little one and they don’t want to do the work and try to persuade you to scrap it. I usually just anticipate that now, save the cost of a failed MOT and get a quote for scrap.

It’s a luxury having a car, but it makes my very unpredictable life viable. I always get a huge amount of use out of cars when I have one. I wish I could just have a good one one full time. They make it much much easier to drop everything and go somewhere in a world where train fares get larger at short notice. You can take your stuff and avoid public transport, which is even more relevant in these days of self important rage and zealous terror.

Soon now I’ll get something that won’t die on me, and I won’t teach early drivers clutch control in the thing, or rag it through rainstorms in Yorkshire, or fill it with tonnes of heavy plates and drive for a few days with them in the back. I will be that guy who pats it like it’s a fucking horse, and polishes the chrome.

Right now I’m in Barnes and I’ve taken a box of teacups and saucers with me so I can try to pair them up and work out if they’re any good on eBay. I couldn’t have done that and taken the dog and the clothes and been mobile without wheels.

I took two passengers and all their stuff with me to Medicine Festival. I can easily swing to Hampstead to see Hex. I’ve been down and up to Brighton and Yorkshire and back and forth and round and round, sorting things out and moving things round and improving my life and breaking areas of stagnation.

I did the grand tour of my London residences today.

Waking up in Chelsea at 5.30am, I blearily made crumpets and marmite and drank what might turn out to be my last cup of coffee for a few weeks. Then off to Barnes to pick up a friend and drive her to the airport. I’ll be looking after her dog and her lovely flat with no books in it for a few days. Room to think a bit.

Once my friend was safely dropped at the terminal, I spun straight to Hampstead in order to feed a hungry snake.

In my pocket I had a note from her about the things the dog needs. He’s an anxious beasty. He goes off his food when he’s disrupted, and the last thing I need is another animal with an eating disorder, having successfully weaned Hex back onto his regular extra large white mice. Which is why I had to get to Hampstead – to keep him regular.

I didn’t want to have to take the doggy to the snakey as I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t play nicely together, but it’s Hex’s food day today. I’m thinking that doggy would be weirded out by snakey. Snakey would think doggy was another warm moving anxiety pillow, but that would only be one way comfort. It takes a good long time for a frozen mouse to defrost in warm running water. I had to make sure that the two animals didn’t freak each other out while the mouse warmed up.

I think I succeeded. Cicero didn’t seem to associate the snake smell with anything and was as cheerful as ever. I guess Spaniels haven’t had to evolve a fear of snakes.

Once he was dozing I played with Hex a bit and then let him hunt the dead mouse puppet. His eyesight is atrocious. He can only really see movement. This time he aimed a bit better when he struck and I didn’t think I was going to lose my fingers.

Now I’m back in sleepy Barnes. We went for a walk around the lake.

Now I’m going to stuff myself with tasty food and then turn in. Not mouse. Not treats. Pie.

I’ve got to take the car in to Kwik Fit first thing in the morning tomorrow. It has developed a very concerning bang in the spring of the left front wheel.

My brother showed up at my flat with a leopard skin. He had previously taken it into the museum and popped it in the place you pop things to decontaminate them from little nasty parasites. He then identified it and wrote a bit of bumf on headed paper with approximate dates and some impressive sounding Latin taxonomy. “I think I can guess the people that mounted it from how they cut the felt. Plus they’ve given it green eyes. Leopards never have green eyes – more yellow. They probably thought it looked more scary for whichever idiot shot it.”It’s going up to Tennants next time I go, in time for the taxidermy sale at the end of October. I’ve been in two minds about selling it, but it feels wrong to destroy it, the museum doesn’t want it and I don’t like having it in the house. I’m drawn to the leopard family. Part of me has always felt an affinity with them. I’d sooner not sleep in the same room as the skin of a dead one shot by some idiot tourist in Mysore between the wars.Max and I operated some kind of nonsense swap shop. He dropped off the leopard, and it made me remember I had the foot of deer in my bedroom, stuffed with a silver plaque telling us it was shot on his birthday but over 100 years before he was born. I don’t like it anymore than the leopard but the value is negligible and he wanted it. It’s not in my bedroom anymore. Hooray.He arrived with a catskin a ring and a cake basket. He left with horrible corner cabinet, a deerfoot, a smoke damaged bust of Huxley, a few plates and a mahogany tray. This is what happens when you come to my flat at the moment. You leave with stuff.I’ve been looking at pictures today. They’re all fucked, but one of them is by an artist that did well in the 1800s, so fucked or not fucked it might fetch a few bob. I’m hoping I can find a way to move the rest as a job lot of paintings in need of restoration. I’ve got a timescale for getting all this stuff out and it doesn’t leave me very long at all so it’s time to be less picky and more inclusive. I’ve started sending emails to small auction houses nearer to London than Tennants in order to take in the bulk lots of things that aren’t really good enough to warrant the time and the petrol. I’ll be up to Tennants before long for sure to drop more things and collect anything that doesn’t go.I’m still finding it harder to let go of all this stuff than it should be. The flat has virtually no corridor space and all the surfaces are covered with knick-knacks, but I see the spaces where the busts of Gladstone used to sit. I’ve grown attached to some of this stuff just because it’s been sitting there so long it’s started to feel like it belongs here. Nope. Job lots to eBay, charity shops, cherry pick some bits to display for when I rent the place, find a few things to love and move the rest. Give more to random people. Get back the corridors. Boom.Full moon. Everybody is struggling to remain positive. Remember to be kind, my dears. I’m gonna have a bath.

A new month. My birth month. And a full moon tomorrow in Pisces. I’m back in Chelsea and tomorrow morning I’ll have to wake up early and do maths.

Much as it was a delight, Medicine Festival was cold. Really really cold. The temperature drop at night was so aggressive that I was trying not to drink water in order that I didn’t have to wake up to pee, but it was usually to no avail and I’d find myself stumbling shivering out through the zip in the wee hours shaking and mumbling.

Last night I slept like I’d been shot, luxuriating in the warmth, and I woke up smiling after a proper long rest and the dreams to match. Even though I’ve had a few days off, I allowed myself to count today as mostly a down day. I sent a couple of difficult emails, and got back to the business of sorting the junk in the flat. The end of the antique pile is closer now that I’ve run two loads up to Tennants, but there’s still so much more to do. I also have to start thinking about boxing up my own things. It looks likely that Mel is going to stay in New Zealand and renew her artist residency in Auckland. That being the case I’ll pack all my stuff up, put it in the attic here and move to hers with a suitcase so I can look after the snake full time and rent out my whole flat for a while.

With the world waking up a bit I’ll have to be efficient with my time again, and not allow myself to get bogged down. I’ve made a list for tomorrow, but it’s pretty rudimentary. It goes : Morning: Tax then walk. Afternoon: eBay then drive. Evening: Snake.

Right now it’s past my bedtime and I realised I’d forgotten about my blog as I was half way through sleepytime camomile. Despite my inertia today I’ve booked a job for next week, agreed to taxi a friend to Gatwick and to look after their doggie for a week, I’ve found out that one of my pictures from the haul might be worth a few bob and I’ve made sense of another box of stuff.

Still a reasonably good day, but I’ve spent many hours getting distracted and reading nice things and looking at shiny things and googling auctions. It’ll be a miracle if I can move out in a month with all the distractions I’m finding. But it’s worth a try, dammit.

It’s 11pm and I’ve just got into my flat, after four nights at Medicine Festival. Beautiful and healing to be at a careful sober festival in these maddening times. I was getting an early bed every night which is virtually unheard of when I’m in festival mode. I was sober, and any music that was playing late night was bollocks anyway and clashed with the nature and purpose of the weekend. The stupid late night vibe helped me exit once the important ceremonial bits were done. Maybe I’m just getting old. But it felt like there was a push and pull between two forces at this festival – the force of good intentions and the force of capital. If good intentions beat greed and lack of imagination then this could be the beginning of something very necessary and wonderful in the UK festival calendar. An international healing festival. The land is remarkable, ancient and fertile.

I spent quite a lot of my daytime absently looking for mushrooms as I wandered through the site and through the surrounding woods. A lot of people don’t understand mushrooms at all. They think of them like plants. “You’ve killed it!” they squeal as you pluck the fruiting body from the earth.

Fungi are an incredible, varied and extremely weird lifeform, and mushrooms are a small part of the mechanism of some of them. The organism itself can be absolutely vast – there’s an Armarillaria Ostoyae mycelium that covers 4 square miles in Oregon. That’s a single living organism. They call it The Humongous Fungus. It pops up mushrooms in large numbers over the whole area, and pulling them up does no harm to the actual organism. Mycelia pop up mushrooms to send spores into the wind. You can actually help them spread their stuff by moving the mushrooms around and getting their spores into the wind – helping them travel. The bit you can see – the mushroom – is basically just an egg sac for the mycelium. The mycelium lives in the tree or in the earth, and consists of loads of microscopic threads interwoven through the root systems of trees or in the bark itself. Huge living webs connecting things underground. It’s kind of hard to get your head around how they work, which is why so many people just imaginatively group them with plants – like thinking an octopus is coral because they both live in the sea.

Some of them work symbiotically with the trees around them, like the Cep, ferrying nutrients to the root system and feeding off unwanted by-products – mutually beneficial.

Some of them work parasitically and eventually kill their host, but continue to live in the body. Like Laetiporous Sulphureous – The Chicken of the Woods.

I found a Chicken of the Woods on the first day at Medicine, but left it there as I didn’t want it to dry up before I could get it into a kitchen to be cleaned and eaten. I would have left it until Monday morning until I realised on Saturday that there were other people from the festival shrooming. It’s considered a prize. “Have you seen any chicken?” I was asked. I went and grabbed it and carried it to the car in my hat.

This morning, Kate brought what I thought might be a Cep to me having found it on site and, knowing I liked foraging mushrooms. A Porcini! Omnomnom. I wasn’t certain at all though, even if it rang a huge bell. She told me where she found it and I went to survey. If there’s a mycelium, it will likely extrude multiple fruits. Sure enough I found another one. I might have found more but I didn’t give myself much time as I had other festival things I wanted to do.

Problem is, despite obsessively ‘shrooming for something like 7 years now, I rarely if ever trust my own identification. This is a necessary caution, as the price for a major fuck up is total organ failure with no antidote.

I started learning mycology to overcome my childhood fear of and adult distaste for all things mushroom.

Now I like them. Exposure therapy. It’s habitual when in nature to keep an eye out for a growing list of specimens with which I feel confident. I’m certain of Chicken. It’s unmistakable. And it only kills you if it’s growing on a yew tree. Here’s the one I found:

As for the Cep, this was my first rodeo. I was nervous. I got a second opinion, which was very positive and aligned with mine. Eventually I decided to go for it. But I recruited a friend who is knowledgeable in the kitchen.

After getting Helen and Tash safely home from the festival, I swung by my flat in a flying visit just to grab my mushroom book and then hared it up to Richmond to share the findings with Tristan and Tanya. I knew damn well that Tristan would cook them better than anyone I know. Here’s the smaller of the two Cep. No gills.

I’m still not sure it’s a Cep – (boletus edulus). But it was tasty, and I’m sure enough that it’s from the boletus family, so could discount anything genuinely harmful. I didn’t take photos of it surrounding trees which would have helped in identification. Something to know for next time.

The Chicken of the Woods is a truly surprising and filling meal on its own. It served three and we were full. A rich deep flavor, a thick consistency. A bit of a bitch to clean but Tristan did that while I was dissecting the Cep looking for a solid ID. I want to find more of them. So unusual, so filling, a free meal, and the sense of nature’s bounty.

As for the Cep, whatever it was it had a delicate flavour, but I limited my intake as I wasn’t 100% on identification despite being clear on family. Some of them can make you puke. I’ve been freezing my tits off for three nights in a tent. A night on the spew would just about finish me off.

And now I’m finally home, I’m full of strange food, I’m just about to have a hot bath, and it’s midnight. This has taken a clear hour to write.

Luxury time at last.

“He’s the land-owner,” says John. “This has been in his family since the 1720’s. Maps. They were the big cartographers.”

I bet that somewhere on the estate, framed on a wall, is a map that is almost as valuable as the land- if it were sold at auction. Well done his family for not losing the land piecemeal to the inevitable leeches and addictions that accompany easy wealth – despite the passage of 300 years.

Apparently there was a maypole here when the estate fell to his family back then, down by one of the festival firepits now. So there’s ancient ceremony here, rooted in this soil. And right now this geographic land-owner has opened the gates to a remarkable jumble of energetic practitioners. He is here too, surveying the chaos he has allowed to take place, worrying about distancing, proud to have taken the step at the end of this stagnant summer.

Many of the representatives of practice rooted in distant soil have had to remain on distant soil, so the festival “Wisdom Keepers” are mostly of this land. Their perspective varies. Many people, myself included, are attracted to the clearer perspectives on spiritualism drawn by other cultures. My oojieboojie stuff takes in Peruvian tradition, scratches of vodoun, lashings and lashings of Buddhism, and magpied touches of virtually every practice I’ve been properly exposed to over the years. I’m a collector, and I spit in the face of the narrow assertion that “our idea is the only right idea” – particularly those of the Atheist tradition, with perhaps the most nihilistic God of all – the Nothing God, evangelised vigorously in every pub by left brain people with their head in a plastic bag.

This morning I sat in a circle held by a glorious man of the Christian tradition. He’s a vicar. He spoke with clarity and poetry of the beauty of nature. He locked us back into observation. He was charming and self effacing. “What’s coming up next here?” “Oh it’s just a talk by an idiot.” It was measured, crystal clear, beautiful and welcome. Now I’m off to a rainforest ceremony and then to a pagan fire ceremony. If you see wrong in this, look to yourself. The intention is clear, across these cultures and traditions. We align, as we must, in a will towards kindness, mindfulness, ambition, care of self and others and the land – all these things can exist in all these traditions and these colourful thought-spaces.

I’ve always been attracted by shiny things.

After the vicar I sat in the sun and chanted a Japanese Buddhist sutra, as I do every morning. I’m wearing the Camino boots my friends clubbed together to buy, flared Levis from the nineties, dad’s shirt from 1969, uncle Peter’s monogrammed trilby, mum’s pashmina, a jaguar and a scallop shell. Fucking hippy. With plastic bottles.

And I’m just as much of a hypocrite as everybody here, with the time and money and connections to come to this privately owned natureplace and hope that the strength of our shared ideals can somehow change the world.

But it’s nice to believe in something. I recommend it.

The bald fellow is Jason. He has come with a cohort today from the local station to assess the situation. After I took the snap I walked round to join his chat.

This festival is completely sober. I haven’t seen a spot of booze, which is helpful considering my proclivities and the resolution I made recently. The only substances I’ve come across have been CBD oil, and Cacao. People are basically dancing on chocolate and winding down on cannabis. I have no doubt at all that mushrooms are involved in the mix somewhere, since most of the food is from that kingdom anyway. But I haven’t seen any. Everybody has just been solid, respectful and connected to the ground.

As a result of this sobriety, Jason and his chums don’t have much to do. No lagered up lads molesting and fighting. Nobody indiscriminately selling poison drugs to desperate minors. Nobody needing to be rushed to hospital because he thought they weren’t working and had six. Jason is strolling around in the sun dappled woodland, listening to the music on the air.

Because the sun has finally deigned to show up. I’m lying in it, or where it is when it pops out from behind the cloud. I’ve just chatted to Jason the cop and now I’m under a tree, near a dragon, writing to you. There’s somebody praying behind the tree. Normally he’d be emptying his bladder.

Jason was a curious fellow. “We’d much rather do anything other than take away somebody’s freedom,” he is saying as I enter the chat. That’s party line of course. “This pandemic is unprecedented in our lifetime,” is another phrasebook utterance and I’m wondering where he’s gone. But then it shows.

“This is lovely, you know?” His eyes change and he breathes out as the sun shows up through the trees. “It reminds me of a holiday … a holiday I had … in North Carolina …” For a second I see authentic Jason. Then his escort cuts across him, and he snaps back on duty. But it was a lovely flash of Jasontruth, and I think of him for a moment in North Carolina. There he sits by a river in a forest with the fire burning. He’s wearing his shorts and holding hands with somebody. “This is the life, eh?” he says, and for a moment he looks like 8 year old Jason, on the beach making sandcastles. Somebody squeezes his hand.

For the rest of the day though, Jason and his friends will have so little to do that they’ll have to spend their time chatting with us hippies, or ensuring we don’t get too close to one other. It’s a big area for 600 people. But there’s lots of dancing and singing going on.

There’s a peace here. There’s a lot of good intention. I’m very happy to be here, and feel lucky to be part of such a small tribe for a few days.

It’s only just gone noon. I’m going to switch off my rational brain now, find some sort of ceremony, maybe cry a bit at nothing and then go and dance like a maniac.

In the morning I went for a walk in the woods surrounding the festival. With all this rain I thought there might be some delightful mycological extrusions. Sure enough I stumbled on a fine Chicken of the Woods, but with no kitchen to clean and cook it, and no solo experience yet in preparing that particular delight, I thought it best to leave it where I found it and drop a pin. Then I can roll in on Monday morning before I go back to London and see if there’s a new one or if it’s still good. After all, there’s more rain to come. Lots more rain. Another bag of soup, by the look of the BBC weather forecast. Here we go.

I’m safe and dry in Flavia’s bell tent ####////#### he writes as he lies back in a puddle that has stealthily been filling from a badly pinned guy rope fuckitall. Having sacrificed my towel and gone out to re-peg the guys I am NOW safe and dry in Flavia’s bell tent. I hope.

Earlier today I went to a grief and gratitude circle run by Fiona Shaw. She trained as a medicine woman of the totem of the red tail hawk. I found it a lovely circle and never stopped being impressed that an actress as lauded as Fiona Shaw was also so adept at holding a circle and working with plant medicines. How did she find the time to train and practice? AND she’s a midwife. I sat next to Tash. Tash is part of our group – I met her yesterday and drove her down. She sat behind me in the car so I’ve not seen her face a huge amount.

At the end of the circle I asked Tash if she was thinking of heading back to the tents for coffee. She looked at me silently, and then wordlessly got up and walked to the other side of the circle. At the time I put it down to her still having some inner work to finish. It was only much later that I realised my two mistakes. The woman holding the circle wasn’t the famous actor Fiona Shaw, despite a resemblance. That would be bad enough. But much worse, the woman I’d asked if she wanted to go back to the tents for coffee … she was a complete stranger. So basically she thought I was massively hitting on her directly after we all sat in a circle and spoke with vulnerability about loss and life. Bugger.

I went back to the tents for that coffee. That non-euphemistic coffee. I’m mildly concerned that she might lose time and energy avoiding me from now on. “For fuck’s sake,” she might be saying to her friend. “I can’t even sit in a grief circle without some guy hitting on me.”

The rain is easing a little but it’ll come back I have no doubt. Off to my right people play pipes and string things and sing and cheer. Now I’m blogged up I can leave my phone and drop my responsibilities for the rest of the day, go listen to something interesting and beautiful.