AlBarclay

It’s so peaceful here, under the sky, after the rain. The festival is still rolling, but we are long into Sunday night now. The moon, just off full, comes in and out of cloud as I write. I’m with friends who were strangers a week ago. We have worked hard together these last few days. Now it’s time to relax.

So… what have I actually been doing? Working at a festival. Shambala. The call came in last week. It’s a beautiful game that has run here for many years in the daytime. They needed a character referee at short notice that was willing to work at a festival and put up with living in a tent. Somebody suggested me, quite rightly.

It’s the Shambala Foxhunt. It runs on the hour every hour from 12 til 4. It’s always fully booked, with excitable children. Some of them have been doing it every year since it started, and are now awkward but very tactical teenagers. The game taps into something ancient, and works on many levels beyond the obvious. Watching loads of children running around dressed in red coats, blowing horns and shouting “Fox Fox!” was unusual. But all the kids wanted to be the fox. And there was so much joy in watching teams adjusting the rules to their own needs.

It was joyful, but then the rain. Today, constant penetrating rainfall, and my job is to run around after children with a whistle, arbitraring disputes. In the open. For hours. In the pouring rain. Having slept in a leaky tent for too long now. I still love these places, and this work, but I was close to the end of my reserves when the last game ended. I was dripping wet, right through. My pants were wet. I had two pairs of socks on and they were both drenched. My fingers were prunes. And still I was running around being enthusiastic.

Now it’s Sunday. The work is done. Some of us have left, but I can now have a party. So that’s what we’re doing. Those of us remaining. Right now I’m in a platonic bundle of warm bodies, listening to a fiddler play a mean set at Chai Wallah – one of the venues on site. The guy is on stage with 40 people. How the hell do they all fit?

This is my last night of festival, I think, for certain this year. It’s been a glorious season. I’ve done the usual list of bizarre things, and at this festival where I was a last minute replacement in a big group, I’ve opened a huge wider circle of friends. These remarkable thinkers and makers who are trying to make a game that is not only fun to play but also has a narrative thread running through it, while tapping into a word of sounds and symbols that are so familiar and ancient that they resonate understanding to us on some deep level.

There’s a party going on around me and I’m going to dive in. The internet here is atrocious. Worse even than Green Man. No way a photo will land. I’ll catch up tomorrow (Monday) evening.

THE CINNAMON BRIOCHE WERE BURNT TO A CRISP.

It’s perfectly rational behaviour, this, despite what they tell me on the megaphone. I’m only here to wait and shove all the burnt brioche down his filthy gullet.

Getting in was easy. I just lured his little cat with a prawn on a stick and then trained her to open the door. I didn’t expect his flatmate to call the police when he couldn’t get in because of the barricade. It’s only for a day or so. He’s back soon from his dirty festival. I’ll show him.

They’re offering me all sorts. “Let the cat go and we can negotiate,” said the skinny one that talks like a schoolteacher. But I know the cat is my bargaining chip here. I didn’t think it would escalate so fast. It’s because I made a baguette in the shape of a rifle. I thought it would make me look powerful. I think it might have been a mistake. Still. Hi by the way. It’s Jay. I used to cover that fucking actor’s blog for free when he went off to festivals. Can you imagine? “It’ll be good experience.” Lies. It was just thankless time. But good flour costs money and when he offered me £50 for 3 I didn’t break it down properly. Thruppence a word. Of course he plays Scrooge. Penny pinching weasel. Spending all that money on a stolen car and then only trickling down a measly 50 quid to the cake eating masses.

Well the masses have got his login now. And have broken into his flat. And have seized the means of cat.

Also my mate badger says that he’s got a van full of angry bees and he’s going to drive to Northamptonshire and find Al’s tent and fill it with bees. Thousands of the hairy little fucks. That’ll give him something to think about after all the crying his hippy friends’ll be doing at the festival about bees dying because of pesticide or whatever the fuck.

Here are my demands:

1: More flour

2: Not having to write about hippy crap

3: All my burnt brioche to be eaten by Al

4: Safe escort from the premises.

5: One million pounds.

I didn’t ask to have to break in. It’s not my fault I’m angry. It’s society.

Ow

Xxxxxhdh f ghjgh jff

Ghjv jbcgjkk hg

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Helo. Iz PIkul. Cn I gett fissh? Noysy Jay tooo noysy so I dropt book on hed. Slep nwo. Likk arrs. Ssh. Nno move. Can I eet toez? RUNRUNRUNRUNNNNN O iz nuthing. Cudlez? STROK MY BELY.

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Good day. I understand my little Jay has been contributing to this fanzine. Jay asked me to finish. “Write any old shit, mum, so long as there’s 500 words of it and a picture of a cake. It’s worth £50 to me. Turn the oven down to 60 at 4pm.” That was the text. So that is what I shall do, and never let it be said I’m not a good mother, despite the murders. Dear Jay. Never have children my friends begged me. But Jay is my little blessing and the cakes are lovely.

It’s Jay again. Pretending to be Al. Again. “Shouldn’t write the intro”, fool you all, gags hahaha. God. He does this every day? For almost 600 days? What is wrong with him? It’s some sort of condition. You should get him help.

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Hi blogsters, so yeah I’m still hipping it up at Shambala drinking matcha with Emanuel. There’s sky and ground and I’m in between it.

Nah.

Nah. I mean really, nah. What motivates someone to write every day like this? Sure I love baking. I do that every day. But sometimes when I’m hungover and stuff I don’t bake. I take downtime. I hide. Maybe put the oven on really low just for something to go the full 24 hours but that doesn’t count. I guess he can hide by getting people like me to cover for him. God knows what he’s really up to, the bastard while I earn my measly £50. Probably sleeping. Getting me to write these so we all assume he’s embroiled in some gargantuan party when in reality he had one beer and passed out in his shit tent. Or maybe it’s the other way. Maybe he’s partying so hard it’s not about internet at all – he’s physically incapable of operating his phone right now. Can’t even pronounce his own name. Eyes like saucers. Drooling. I should get my mate Badger to fill his tent with bees.

Anyway, I made a beautiful Swiss Roll today. Then I went to Westfield with my mum, which seemed a good idea at the time but I regretted it when I realised she was buying clothes. I ended up outside the fitting room for bloody hours having to have an opinion on everything, with cinnamon brioche almost certainly going over in the oven. ARE YOU ENTERTAINED?

There Once was a person called Jay

Who didn’t like writing each day

I’m going to find

A way to unwind

I’m going to make Al Barclay pay.

I’ve not actually been to a festival. Don’t really know what they’re about if I’m honest..Singularly pointless things. If you wanna have proper fun just make a baked Alaska. Bet you can’t do it without melting the ice cream..put a load of sherry in the flan base and that’s a party right there.

Anyway. Write like me, he said. Blah blah blah blah blah. Well he likes starting in media res. So…

—I wanted so much to kiss her but something was holding me back. She shifted. The air was heavy, thick with her scent. I tried to kill the moment, but she held it somehow. “Kiss me,” her eyes said, as she widened the stance of her front hooves. The skin on her flank shivered instinctively to dislodge the constant aura of flies. I shivered with it. I knew what that mooing meant. I leant in. Her smell was earthy. Milky. The flies started to settle on my hair. My heart beat faster. I was horny. She had the horns. Her long wet tongue lolled outwards suggestively …

Oh. 500. That’s the word limit.

Hi everyone in Al blogland. It’s JAY. So. Market forces or whatever, who knows. But yeah. I was baking and I got a call. It’s only Al. Seems I did well attacking him on his own blog for not paying me. He wants me to cover his blog again. Lazy idiot. He says “I’m at Shambala Festival. You know the login. Try to do a better job than last time. I’ll give you £50 for 3 nights. But don’t do that thing at the start where you tell everyone it’s Jay. Just pretend to be me and get 500 words out there.”

Yeah. Well. Disobedience is the foundation of creativity, Al. You should know that. It’s the sort of crap you spout. Look at you. You’re at a festival again.

While I’ve got the audience, let’s look at festivals. Come on. Seriously? Filthy middle class people vanishing into their own echo chambers on an estate in the home counties. What do you really think they are Al? Some act of rebellion? They are just as much a part of the machine as football matches. “Serendipity” you call it when you run into your dissipated hippy friends in a hippy trap. That’s just an excuse to use a polysyllabic word. None of you understand the intricacies of baking like I do. Get a skill, you festival ponces with your kale and quinoa killing the world with air miles while you turn your nose up at plastic and throw your cans of matcha into landfill. Anyway festivals are the placebo so you put your potential activism in your pocket because you’ve done naughty things so you’ve satisfied the urge to kick off against a world and a system that is not working, never has been, and won’t start to anytime soon. Wake up ponces. We need a revolution.

Anyway. £50. What do you get for £50, Al? I could bake you a massive batch of scones. But you asked for a blog. 500 words. Right.

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Arriving at Shambala Festival it was immediately clear to me that I was at home, surrounded by people in their grandparent’s clothes already drunk at 6pm and trying to put up expensive tents in their leather walking boots and unnecessary hats. I looked at my gold watch, and then shared a beer with someone who has a 12 bedroom house in Peckham. “How do you make a battenberg cake?” my friend asked, but I didn’t have a clue and nor did anyone else. Because we don’t even care about baking. It’s a lost art. We are losing all the skills we used to have. Who even knows where they’re going anymore without that little satnav voice? We store our own memories on the cloud and what happens if there is an EMP? What happens if all the technology stops working? Murder and cannibalism, that’s what. They can’t even make bread without a supermarket packet and squinting at the manual with scales and a bloody tape measure. Off at their festivals being “free spirited” cogs in a hideous “meritocracy” where merit is nothing to do with merit, just positioning. It makes me sick. Screw you Al and screw your blog.

Happy happy happy oh I’m so happy and everything is going really well. Etc. Pass the sick bag vicar. Jay out.

He introduces himself as Khan. Limp handshake. Much shorter than me. I immediately suss him out and reckon I could take him. He’s driven down from somewhere else and he’s late “because of the M25”. He is meeting me in a parade of shops near Purley. “I own some of the shops,” he tells me. “Did you drive down in the Jaguar?” I ask him. “No. A different car.”

The Gumtree advert was selling a 2003 X-Type for £495. “Bargain. First to see will buy.” A big claim, but true enough. It had just been posted, last night at about 6. It has an MOT for a whole year. I called him immediately. “If it runs, I’ll buy it. I’ll come tomorrow morning at 11. I’m paying full asking price. Don’t offer it to anyone else.” 5 minutes later I noticed he’d taken the ad off gumtree. He texted me the postcode for this anonymous parade of shops in Purley. I went to bed nervous.

Now I’m sitting in the car. “Do you own the balloon shop?” I ask him. “Yeah.” “How much do they pay in rent?” “You know what, they only pay £600 a month. If that shop was, I dunno, in Battersea, it’d be like, I dunno, £1200 or more.” “With staff costs, they’d still need to sell a ton of balloons though.” I’m provoking him. Looking for his truth. Deciding whether to trust him. “Yeah but it’s all those parties and stuff, you know.” “She was shit at her job.” I tell him. “I went in, said I’m off to a festival tomorrow. She told me it’s just a balloon shop. It was me that told her people like to buy balloons at festivals. She’ll never sell any like that. Acted like I was in the wrong place.” “So long as she pays the rent,” he says, and falls into pensive silence.

We drive to a house. The driveway is full of cars in various states of disrepair. “It’s a hobby,” he says. “Check out this one!” He shows me another jag. It’s automatic. It’s not well. “My next project.” But he can’t get in the door of the house. He has no keys. Neither of us have a pen, you see. He’s lost the logbook, or he never had it. Am I buying a stolen car off this diffident guy? It’s not registered as stolen yet – I checked. Time will tell. He can’t get into the house. It’s his mate’s house. “But your cars?” “We share them.” This is well dodgy. I send Brian a photo of him outside the door in case he shanks me when I’m not looking.

We end up in a Co-op. I buy some pens. We fill in a form. He takes a photo of the form. Hmmm. Now he knows where it’s parked at night. Still, I pay him. And I go to the post office. It’s not taxed. I tax it. £340 for a year. Need insurance though. Direct Line, my previous insurer, try to shove a pineapple up my arsehole. I go compare, and end up with a quote from some place called something dodgy like “insure u face”. It’s still £270 up front and £150 a month. Because I’m an actor and my no claims discount of 3 years in no way reflects the amount of road time I’ve accumulated.

Not done yet though. I can’t park it. Off to High Street Kensington, where I realise I have no receipt. I’m way too trusting. I message Khan. He texts me a receipt. They accept it. £66 for 3 months parking in my borough. So far, with £70 for a full tank of petrol and £1 for the biros I’ve spent £1272. Now it’s parked outside. I’m driving to Shambala tomorrow with it so he’d better not steal it back tonight.

When I filled it with petrol, I jagged my finger on something and it took a chunk out. Loads of blood. It bit me. Now there’s a bit of my blood in the fuel. I’m going to smudge the car thoroughly tomorrow morning with Palo Santo in case those dents in the front carry a dark story and it’s hungry.

But I can beat bad energy every day of the week. I think I’ll be happy with this dark animal once I’ve recovered from the big spend to acquire it. I need to make sure I turn over little bits of money here and there with it, so guys – if you need a driver…

 

Straight back into London life today but it feels unusual, somehow as if the normal state of affairs is to be woken up by the sun in a tent, and then to spend the day wide angle, surrounded by beautiful things and shiny people, under the sky. I’ve essentially been living outdoors for most of this month. I haven’t managed a night in the bivouac yet, properly under the stars. Maybe Thursday, temperature permitting. I’m feeling pretty light now, and pretty grounded too. And very relaxed. This month has been a glorious opportunity to depressurise.

I’m doing laundry right now and sending invoices. Considering there’s no tumble drier I barely have time to get everything washed and dried before I’m off again- this time to Northamptonshire and Shambala Festival. Surely the last one of the season. I’m going to pack smarter this time. I brought no warm clothes to Green Man, and could’ve been in a pickle if the weather had turned. I also had no portable light sources outside of the obligatory glow sticks so I was stumbling around in my tent at night, throwing things hither and yon, losing glasses and contact lenses and stepping on puddles. I’m going to aim for a more organised pack, so that’s what tomorrow is for – if the clothes are dry by then. I also have no idea how I’m getting up there. It’s not far to Northamptonshire but I don’t want to carry all my festival stuff on the train…

Considering how much tickets cost if you buy them, I’ve been very fortunate this summer to be asked to do such a variety of interesting things at festivals and to get all my expenses back. I won’t finish this month smiling about my bank balance, but I won’t be cursing it either. I don’t even fully understand what we’re doing at Shambala yet. I’m totally relaxed about it working out fine, as it is certainly within my skillset. I think it involves being energetic and quick thinking in character for much of the day. The hours are comparatively long, but there’ll be a big group of us together and I reckon it’ll be entertaining work.

I was invigilating this morning, but I’ve invited a friend for dinner as she is going to Shambala as well, and we have something we want to build for the festival circuit next year so we can pitch a complete experience and see if we can get paid. We might as well makeshift something and scratch it live at Shambala.

Before I go I also have a chance to check out a performance space in London and think about whether we can build a show into it after Carol. All of this starting to kick off and I still need to earmark a month to do Camino. I think I might start on my birthday. All the festivalling has woken up the idea circuits again. It’s lovely to act in things you believe in, and what better way to ensure that you believe in the thing than to make it yourself.

They burn the Green Man at the end of the festival, in a nod to our pagan past. It’s after the last band cuts out at midnight. A huge crowd gathers to see it blaze. There are no virgins inside it, but there are fireworks which make as much noise and are much easier to find.

There’s a strong ritualistic aspect to the burning. People have walked around inside him, and filled him with wishes and regrets on little pieces of paper. He burns and your wishes fly to the heavens, or your regrets vanish in smoke. It feels cleansing, but to me it has another meaning – it somehow feels like the official end of high summer. We need rituals to mark the turns. I’ve watched previous Green Men burn, and then felt the world grow incrementally colder as we slide towards winter again. I have that same expectation now. Although it’s always nice until my birthday is done, dammit.

Last night I stood with the crowd, warm-faced and tired. Happy but melancholy. Full of the past, full of what might have been, full of the future, full of what might be. Watching another year burn in a circle of opened hearts at the end of the season.

It’s been a hell of a summer, even if I feel no closer to my elusive dreams. But maybe that’s because I keep getting distracted by silly fun stuff…

I’ve agreed to do yet another festival next weekend. A small rate of pay and free meals. Here we go again. I’d better eat loads of kale for the next few days. I’ve barely got time to turn around. I’m physically exhausted, emotionally splintered. Being inside buildings feels oppressive. I don’t understand why everybody looks so drab and boring. Nobody is smiling or shining. They’re all heavy and slow. Where’s the glitter? Where’s the joy? Why are their shoulders so high, their eye contact so fleeting, their faces so closed?

The last day was a little less of a party for me as I had to drive the van onto site at 7am to load up the fucking heavy mini golf courses that my friends had built. I woke up at ten to six fully dressed in my sleeping bag, and swore my way onto site, carefully driving past little pockets of people who had forgotten to go to sleep and were staggering haphazardly through the light wondering if they should sleep now or just give it up as a bad idea and work out how to get home through the fog.

We loaded up and then momentum took us to break up the campsite and drive dammit drive, back through the sheepy mountains to the places where the heavy people flump. At first I was worried, behind the wheel droop-eyed, tired and angry. So I stopped and filled myself with sugar in a sad lumpy place called Leigh Delamere, where we pumped the van with fossils and I ate food that wasn’t food but was pretending to be from West Cornwall. And had regretful caffeine so we could be safe.

Festivals are a lovely thing. Again an artificial frame. A safe place for pretend anarchy, where if you track the money back you probably discover that the landowners are collecting all the “hippy money” they make and donating it on purpose to the “Kill the Whales Foundation,” or “Climate Change Deniers for Fracking plc”.

Now we can go back to our consuming lives with glitter still on our faces and pretend that by paying ten quid for a falafel and watching someone fall over on purpose while playing guitar we are somehow enlightened.

But we did see the Green Man burn. We had a shared experience of something rooted in our ancient history. Different reasons for the same thing. Thank you summer, for your gifts. Let us each carry this warmth and light into the winter that’s coming, and share it with those who are cold and lost.

This festival is full of bubbles. There’s a very active shop on site that blows smoke bubbles all day and all night, luring people in to buy their bubbly goods, and those people, armed now with bubbleguns, go and spread their bubbliness into the festival. Often you see big fat bubbles insolently drifting past the front of the main stage. It all adds to the atmosphere and is something I associate particularly with Green Man.

I spent a lot of time at the main stage yesterday. It’s called The Mountain Stage because behind it rises the peak of one of the beacons. Apparently it’s a four hour walk there and back, which is tempting but I’m not sure I’ve got the energy. There’s a big area in front of the stage for people to crowd in and dance, and then there are tiered grass banks for people who prefer to chill out and watch it in wider context. We sat there for much of the day, while people wove musical stories for us.

Seamus Fogarty was great as a starter, and built up our appetite. My friend had somehow found a Guardian, and read it from cover to cover before going off to break his vegan with as many cheeseburgers as he could manage. I honked a Mac and cheese. You can eat well in this field if you’re willing to shell out all your worldly wealth. I get breakfast and dinner covered at the crew catering, but I still have to pay for lunch and it still hurts. I wouldn’t be able to go to so many festivals if I had to cover the tickets. I probably wouldn’t go to any. As it is I’ve just agreed to go to another one next weekend. So much for this being the last blowout of the season.

We watched John Grant and Fleet Foxes as the dark came. The Fleet Foxes guy spoke of a storm coming, which concerned me considering my paper tent. My friends went to bed, leaving me floating around the festival like a bubble, and no rain yet, so I blew into Simian Mobile Disco, and danced until they stopped. Then I found Snapped Ankle, telling me that Herefordians get everywhere – something I can corroborate from my experience. I wasn’t particularly bothered about being on my own, which I noticed because in the past it has detracted from my enjoyment. But I was fine. I eventually found my way into Nathan Wylde, which is clearly where I wanted to be. I cracked two green glowsticks and went mad for it at the front. Inevitably that brought me into a friendship group that I knew from Wilderness. “Look at that guy – he’s going for it. Hang on its Al.” But I was on a solitary tip. I continued to blow around solo until, walking past the Ferris Wheel that was pumping out drum and bass, I was popped. A small person excitedly chased after me. “It’s only three pounds!” Pop. Natalie had served me a round earlier when she was working. All her friends have gone to bed and she’s just finished work. She’s in tech support up in Manchester. She is looking for the party, and the glowsticks imply I might know where it is.

We go on the Ferris Wheel. We pretend to be twelve. They eject us after about six rotations because they start playing airy music and she is shouting “Drop the beat!” every time we go past the bottom. They don’t like it. The guy looks at us like we stink as he opens the cage. We don’t care. We go for a drink and laugh a lot and I’ve made a new friend. Eventually I go back to my tent which is still upright, and sleep beautifully. It’s never been that cold again. Tonight is the last night in this bubble, and then it’s back to the real world for about 4 days before it all kicks off again…

 

The serendipity lottery is in full spin. I was walking through a field and I ran into an old mate from drama school. We used to go to Glastonbury together back in the day. We immediately slipped into old festival shorthand, and it felt like the perfect company. We also hooked up with a friend from Wilderness, who was working artist liaison round the back. She’s considering going full time into festival work when she leaves university. So she knows all the bands and has strong recommendations for the whole evening.

The four of us spent hours together, moving quickly from band to band, settling where the vibe kept us.

The whole site is lit up at night in all the colours. Music competes with music, and every few steps at night the atmosphere changes completely. One second you’re underwater with long sustained notes, then you’re in a breakbeat rainbow, then it’s a patch of grass where a man in pants with a pint mug is imitating an orang-utan, then it’s a tree with glittery fire and unexpected nocturnal children. Unlike Wilderness they have a license that permits fire, so they build massive bonfires and people spin fire poi, and juggle fire batons. We had a lot of bands to see though. We started at Beak, who was grinding out evolutions of the keyboard madness that first hit the Bristol scene with Portishead. Then King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard for half an hour, in which time my university friend expressed great disappointment that “he didn’t play his aggressive flute. He’s the only man in the world I’ve ever seen make a flute aggressive.”

Then we wandered over to The Walled Garden for Alex Cameron. “If you had an estate, would you have a walled garden?” I’m asked. Yeah. With a maze. And roses. And a hot air balloon. And a secret bit of the maze where there’s always a party. I’d need a pretty big walled garden. Best get working on it.

We went back to catch Mount Kimble. They were extraordinary, or it could’ve just been the state of mind I was in. I mostly remember strobe lighting, and a moment when he told us all his daughter was in the crowd, and she was off to to university in Wales. By the time Kimble was done, two of us had gone to bed. Another old friend emerged from the crowd. I was tired by now though and on survival mode. Most conversation was burnt out of me, but I still wanted to dance a little. I ended up back in the walled garden with all of her university friends. I danced a bit, sat a bit, looked at my watch. It was after 2 so I figured it was legit to crash and said my goodbyes. Excellent random festival night. Things were nicely aligned.

The tents for the performer area are very well placed, right behind the stages that you tend to arrive at last. I wrapped myself up properly this time, and didn’t knock the cork out of my mattress with my feet, so it stayed inflated. And I slept beautifully, warm and happy.

Then this morning, as I was staggering to my morning wee, another old friend first-name-last-named me. He has set up tent right by me, and is here with his wife and daughter, neither of whom I’ve met before. Another lovely bit of convergence, and one that satisfies me that coming to this hilltop field was the right call. Two more nights, and I’m going to enjoy them.

Oh, yes! And I played mini golf. Course of life mini golf. You can’t choose the ball you are. And then various lifestyle choices either help or hinder you as you go on your journey. Here is a young man diligently steering his ball towards consuming apples, instead of donuts or cigarettes. But watch out for the beer!

Last night was the coldest I can remember being. I had a sleeping bag, a blanket and my deflatable mattress, which in theory should’ve been plenty. But my mattress did its usual trick of gently softly lowering me onto the grass as I slept. And the beautiful cloudless sky sucked all the heat through the holes in my tent, and left me curled into a shivering ball on a little bit of rumpled rubber, with a terrible terrible headache.

 

Occasionally I was sucked into mad dreams, only to be woken by my bladder, the cold, or – once – the loudest sustained fart I have ever heard, about 5 foot from my ear. For a second I thought it was an air raid. At about 4 in the morning I rolled out, stumbled to the loo shivering and mumbling, found it in a delirious semi waking state, audibly berated my prostate for being too big (the beer wouldn’t have helped). I did the deed, successfully navigated back to my tent, crawled in, dragged up all my clothes, wrapped myself in my sleeping bag, and unceremoniously dumped the entire contents of my wardrobe on top of my shivering body. They immediately fell off to either side so the whole exercise was pointless. I lay there trying to reclaim any warmth left over from before I succumbed to my bladder, and tried to find the delirious dreams of arctic.

 

Then the dawn broke and transformed my tent into an oven. I was ejected onto the damp grass with my headache, in order to try and have fun again before a repeat performance tonight. I’m wiser now though. I’m going to sleep in my clothes, in my blanket, in my sleeping bag, in my bivouac, in my tent. Oh yes. Many layers of warmth. And hopefully the headache will be gone by now. It’s caffeine withdrawal, and it’s deliberate. Next week is detox and I’m getting the hardest part out the way early. Coffee is lovely until you stop drinking it, and then it attacks your brain like no other craving I’ve known. I don’t want that going on when I’m post-festival season and having to stop myself on everything else. Booze sugar meat dairy and gluten is plenty to be craving without adding caffeine to the mix.

 

I’ve had breakfast, which comes with the ticket, school canteen style. Now I’m lying in the entrance of my tent. The only painkillers I’ve got have caffeine, which defeats the object. I’m going to see if I can find an ibuprofen fairy in the campsite, then try and post this, then see about going in to listen to some bands, and do some cards. I’m worried this won’t post. I haven’t been able to get online all morning, so I’m writing this in docs. I’ll try for a photo, but I don’t hold up much hope.

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I went around the tents asking for paracetamol and got thoroughly ribbed. “Mate, I know you’ve heard that you’re supposed to wander from tent to tent asking for drugs but you’re missing the point.” But someone came up trumps with codeine eventually. And I was offered some horse tranquilizer…

It’s 11am but I’m gonna try and post. This internet – You get what you’re given.