Cool Yule!

Non, je ne regrette rien

I get awfully tired of hearing about the looming recession on the radio, watching tv news and reading the papers. So many words! Yet, with all the commentary on the credit crunch, the recession, a depression and economic mayhem, everyone is so busy attributing blame, finding reasons and excuses with the perfect vision of 20/20 hindsight, you have to wonder about our vision of the future. Is anybody looking forward and planning how to avoid this in the future? Doubtful!

Who cares whose fault it all is? Why do we have to spend so much time finger-pointing, blaming and picking history to pieces? None of it will teach us anything to prepare us for the next time round. It's so easy to destroy politicians after the fact (makes you worry for Barack in times to come). Lest we forget, we are the ones who had them elected, after all.

And we can bitch and moan about bankers, greedy capitalists and corrupt fraudsters like Madoff, but it was our own self-interest; our own consumerist hunger for more of everything material that made them, wasn't it?

We need to get over our little selves; our ego-driven arrogance, and celebrate the tightening of the belt.

It can only do us good to lose a little of the fat ...

... in every sense of the word.

The 8.02 via Charing Cross

For nearly 4 years now, each morning I have come this way. I walk to Finchley Central, and I wait – if I am lucky – for the 8.02 to come down from Mill Hill East. It is a shorter route, so it’s the only train which arrives still empty. All the other trains come down all the way from High Barnet and they are full, so there are no seats. The 8.02 is the one train I can still find a seat to sit and sleep in, and to dream, on my way to work.

Most mornings I sleep. I start off by reading the free daily tabloid, the London Metro. But after so many years I am sick of the British media. There’s nothing of substance to it but the comics and the horoscope. Then I drift off to sleep and wake, every time, two stops before the one where I alight. It used to be Charing Cross – every day, for two years. But because I work in temporary contracts nowadays, sometimes it’s Leicester Square, sometimes – as now – it’s Tottenham Court Road and on to the Central Line.

Sometimes I study. We are back with poetry on my Open University course and I’m reading The Faber Book of Beasts. My thoughts drift off and I remember my dogs. Perhaps in March next year Guy will have the chance to meet Scooter and Zeus. I remember Scooter and how she loved to curl up against me and close her eyes in bliss, inside my arms, my smell, my love. I remember her first time at the lake; small abandoned doggy, so scared, hopping on three legs. She was such a girly-girl. She used to get stressed in the heat, stressed in crowds, stressed by Zeus, jealous. Feminine to the core. And Zeus, so much like Guy, big and bold and golden and beautiful – a force of nature; patient, joy-filled adventurer. I see them often in my dreams. Sometimes when I meditate they’re also there with me; they swim in the dark pools with me in the silence of the wooded forests where I walk. I think they’ll be with me till the day I die.

Today my sister Jane called me. This is the first phone call in four years; and it was a bit of a tragi-comedy. There she is, at work on a public holiday. She started talking and it became harder and harder to get a word in edgeways, until I had to cut her off to deal with an electrician waiting patiently to talk to me in my office, a broad grin on his cheerful face. I cut her off and called her back a bit later, and we spoke of my parents; frail, ageing, nostalgic.

She tells me Julian is heading on to Design College next year, and I’m filled with fierce joy for him. Vincent continues with gym every day, which also buoys me up with pleasure. But it’s possible they may be on holiday at the coast when Guy and I come to visit next year, so – once again – my family manages to plunge me into despair and irritation. Really, you’d think they were crossing continents to try and avoid me! But I shake it off; as I always do. This is my family and we are what we are and I am where I belong, for all the right reasons.

On Sunday morning, just after midnight, Guy and I will travel down to Stonehenge to take part in the Winter Solstice ritual at sunrise. He helps me realise all my dreams. There is no more powerful sense of belonging than to be drawn into someone’s arms at night and hear the words “my woman” whispered in the dark. Glimpses of other peoples’ intimacies over the years – love letters on a kitchen fridge - come back to remind me that 20 years of freedom was a great adventure for a loner like me, but that all the frustration and heartbreak of partnership are wrapped up in new worlds, new families and new adventures.

The 8.02 comes into Tottenham Court Road, where I change for Oxford Circus and the high street lights of Christmas. I put on my scarf and trudge the 97 steps (I’ve counted them) up to street level.

The lights are fragile and beautiful against the still-dark morning sky.

Our First Christmas

The littlest Christmas tree



















Home is the hunter ...

Absurdities

Attack of the Killer Monster Snow Goon!



















Guy - menacing? Never!

Winter's improbable gifts

This last beautiful sweet-smelling rose flowered in our garden,
long after the end of autumn.





















Welcome to Carnaby Street Christmas!
I work round the corner from here, in a new job;
quite unexpectedly happy again.

Halloween

Return to Rochester Castle





















In the Great Storm of 1987, several very old trees were uprooted in Rochester. To commemorate the event, the community carved this Monk out of what was left of one of these ancient and beautiful trees. The commitment was to allow the Monk to wear away with time, and to replace him with another - in perpetuity.

He looked very eerie in the sunset on All Hallow's Eve.

The Medway at last light.

The very best start to Autumn

Sunday afternoon stroll along the Grand Union Canal towpath through the villages around the Tring Reservoirs ...

The end of summer

Mornings in my garden




















Afternoon on the South Bank
















Evening on Camden Lock

Instructions (Neil Gaiman)

Stories, like people and butterflies and songbirds' eggs and human hearts and dreams, are also fragile things, made up of nothing stronger or more lasting than twenty six letters and a handful of punctuation marks. Or they are words on the air, composed of sounds and ideas - abstract, invisible, gone once they've been spoken and what could be more frail than that? But some stories, small, simple ones about setting out on adventures or people doing wonders, tales of miracles and monsters, have outlasted all the people who told them, and some of them have outlasted the lands in which they were created.

Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things, 2006

* * *


Instructions

(Quite literally, a set of instructions for what to do when you find yourself in a fairy tale.)

* * *

Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never saw before,
Say 'please' before you open the latch,
go through,
walk down the path.
A red metal imp hangs from the green-painted front door,
as a knocker,
do not touch it; it will bite your fingers.
Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat nothing.
However,
if any creature tells you that it hungers,
feed it.
If it tells you that it is dirty,
clean it.
If it cries to you that it hurts,
if you can,
ease its pain.
From the back garden you will be able to see the wild wood.
The deep well you walk past leads down to Winter's realm;
there is another land at the bottom of it.
If you turn around here,
you can walk back, safely;
you will lose no face. I will think no less of you.

Once through the garden you will be in the wood.
The trees are old. Eyes peer from the undergrowth.
Beneath a twisted oak sits an old woman. She may ask for something;
give it to her. She
will point the way to the castle. Inside it
are three princesses.
Do not trust the youngest. Walk on.
In the clearing beyond the castle the twelve months sit about a fire,
warming their feet, exchanging tales.
They may do favours for you, if you are polite.
You may pick strawberries in December's frost.

Trust the wolves, but do not tell them where you are going.
The river can be crossed by the ferry. The ferryman will take you.
(The answer to his question is this:
If he hands the oar to his passenger, he will be free to leave the boat.
Only tell him this from a safe distance.)

If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe.
Remember: that giants sleep too loudly; that
witches are often betrayed by their appetites;
dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always;
hearts can be well hidden,
and you betray them with your tongue.

Do not be jealous of your sister:
know that diamonds and roses
are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs:
colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.

Remember your name.
Do not lose hope - what you seek will be found.
Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn.
Trust dreams.
Trust your heart, and trust your story.

When you come back, return the way you came.
Favours will be returned, debts be repaid.

Do not forget your manners.
Do not look back.
Ride the wise eagle (you shall not fall)
Ride the silver fish (you will not drown)
Ride the grey wolf (hold tightly to his fur).

There is a worm at the heart of the tower; that is why it will not stand.

When you reach the little house, the place your journey started,
you will recognise it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember.
Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once.
And then go home. Or make a home.

Or rest.

Chester

I survived ...

... The Large Hadron Collider First Beam Event Horizon !

Provenance

When people spend fortunes on a Rolex or a Piaget or a Cartier watch it means very little to me. Because they are buying into a brand name which is, after all, someone else’s character, personality, history and provenance. And the question I always ask (quietly, inside) is, “don’t they have any of their own?”

I suppose my vague resentment comes from a conversation about City men and how they spend fortunes on watches and suits and shoes and briefcases. I remember the most beautiful briefcase I ever saw was one carried by a Creative Director I used to work with. It was leather, battered, bent, curled at the corners, handle darkened by the sweat of his palm on steamy days, and it matched his shorts and scraggly beard and the pillow he always carried for Power Naps, perfectly.

In Africa they speak of seriti or isitunzi – those symbolic shadows we cast; a reflection of our greatness as a remembrance of the way we have lived our lives, and the richness we have offered to the community. Although our mark is sometimes measured in the number of cattle and the tangible wealth we’ve brought to the clan, more often it’s measured in the potency of action, the bravery and courage we’ve enacted and inspired. The izibongo – those epic poems sung about each individual recalling the anecdotes of a life lived well – accumulate from the person to the people and become a history spoken of for ages after. What will be the izibongo of the City men of London; the Viking raiders in a new age of rape and pillage?

In another sense we talk of context and of how it frames our paintings, our lives, our interests, perspective and focal points. So for instance, while people may ridicule the art of Damien Hirst, he serves as such a perfect foil for our time. He uses gold and diamonds as paint on his canvas. But he uses butterfly wings too. It’s all filthy lucre and fragility; gold spun fine as a spider’s web, ephemeral crap much in the same vein as Andy Warhol in his own time. Damien’s art is framed by the context of the London Cityboy - all Style and no Substance, more Wealthy than Wise. I sense it in other people too – that vacuous and empty search for the ultimate party, all glitter, UV, chemicals, alcohol, music and bright lights. Sometimes it just looks and feels so sad.

In a hundred years time, what will your provenance be?

And mine? For it’s all very well being a bard who sings the epic poem of my time, but out here in the “blag”osphere who will ever hear me over the babblings of all the other troubadours, blogging about turnip farming, turgid sex and expat life?

After all, the shadows we cast are only the momentary reflection of shapes passing through sunlight ...

Return

Is this the season, I wonder, when all expats feel the saddest? This is moment when you are halfway, the furthest away from "home". It's been six months since I was in South Africa and it will be at least another six before I can be there again. Guy feels it too, and we seem to be spending a lot of time on nostalgic discussions of home-things, home-places, home-people. He mentioned something funny about New Zealand and had to stop for a moment, because it all turned around - some memory had struck him - and he choked up with sadness. I woke up yesterday from a vivid dream of a family reunion, at the Vaal Dam of all places, and had to cry on his shoulder. He laughed because I had the imprint of pillows all over my face, but how good it was to have someone to hug me who completely understood me.

This is the moment when the cold weather returns, when we go from living out-of-doors, back to the interior life of heaters and jumpers and floor-socks. The rain comes down out of a stolid, unrelenting grey sky, and I have returned to my books, back to the intellectual life of study once more.

Of Paupers and Princes

I stepped out this morning into sheets of rain and trudged to the Tube under Guy's large penguin-handled golf umbrella, through the ghastly, soaking, soggy drenching showers. We sat there in the tube train, all of us gently steaming away in the warm humidity, every now and then shaking off a dripping coat or sopping umbrella like drenched cats. When I came out from under Green Park, the sky was already clearing but it was still cool. In the shadow of one of the pillars of The Ritz Hotel, I saw a miserable ragged heap. It turned out to be a homeless girl, all curled up with her large dog in her lap, both trying to keep warm together. I stopped to say hello - her name was Emma, and her dog's name was Kipper. He was gorgeous, all beagle and big eyes; sleepy but sociable. We chatted for a while, and I scraped out all the money from the bottom of my purse to give to her.

At work we were auctioning paintings for charity - paintings that had been done by staff, for staff. I nearly bought one, but at the last minute decided to save my money for my first piece of archery equipment - my very own recurve bow (which will not be cheap). But it was fun, nevertheless, seeing others bidding, winning or losing on the works - which were all lovely. I'm running my own after-hours auctions on eBay - selling off vintage Judge Dredd comics. Some of them make money, others don't.

This afternoon we prepared for a special Evening Reception at work. I imbibed three glasses of the most dangerous substance on Planet Earth - champagne. Yuck! But I did get to meet one of the most famous and formidable Auctioneers in the world. He was charming and interesting. It really has been a week of movie star magic for me at this place ... yes, I met a movie star too but he's a client of the company and discretion is advised. How cool, though!

Today I did something bad again unfortunately. I sent a text message about Guy to my sister - not a complimentary one - unfortunately I sent it to Guy by mistake instead. Now this is something I've done recently to someone else I rather love and respect, and I couldn't believe my own stupidity and crassness today, doing it all over again. Really, will I never learn!? I truly am my own worst enemy sometimes!

When I got home, hot and sweaty, dishevelled and exhausted, I sat down to watch Pollock - a movie about Jackson Pollock. Guy had watched it before and found it depressing and sad. Me - I was more disturbed and intrigued. As the movie came to an end, Guy walked in. He had forgiven me - amazingly - and bought me a kite.

Now, let me tell you, this gift has got to be one of the best I've ever been given. Here's why:

1. It was a complete surprise - there was no rhyme or reason for it's arrival - he bought it for me "just because".

2. It was given on a non-event day. No birthday, no anniversary, no "forgive and forget". He saw it and he thought I'd like it, so he bought it.

3. It's a kite. No-one has ever bought me a kite before. It's a creature of the outdoors and the air, like me. It has no purpose other than to entertain and bring me (and others) joy.

A kite. He bought me a kite. Truly, he is a Prince among Men, and I adore him more and more every day!


He looked at me tonight and said "I couldn't live without your prickliness, you know. It's one of the things that makes you Margo."

And as I sit and write this now, I'm thinking of Emma and Kipper. I do hope they had a good day, and that they found shelter tonight and food and a place to sleep. I hope I don't see them again tomorrow morning in the shadow of the Ritz, in the place where Princes sleep.

I hope that they're ok.

Beautiful London

By Guy

South Bank (a different perspective)

My favourite Statue in London

Piglet

Our car.

I'm looking for a saucepan ...

... down 't market in Brick Lane, like

Loskop! (rough translation: "Loose Head")

So that's what happens when someone feeds you
a whole bottle of red wine,
and gives you a UV light cokie pen to play with!

The Ray Gun Police

Sunday afternoon at The Elephant's Head, Camden
Three beers down ...

Humidity

Like a weighted blanket, the air sits hot and heavy over London; still and humid. As you enter the Underground the temperature rises another stifling ten degrees. There is no respite; only your air-conditioned office, closeted and dark down the rabbit warren of hallways in the hidden areas behind the grand façade that is Christie’s Auction House in St James’s, Mayfair.

I have finished my university course on Leonardo da Vinci, and it was a humbling but educational experience. I didn’t learn too much more about the man than I already knew (well, except – did you know that he was also a sculptor?) but I certainly learned that I have a lot to learn about learning. My tutor took me down a notch or two, from scores averaging in the 90 percentile right down to the fifties. And I cannot but help acknowledge, he might’ve been a bully, but he was right - my essays did not deserve high marks. I’ve begun to realise you can’t always rely on Style over Substance in an academic essay. At some point or another, you have to Make the Argument. You have to find the right insights, using only university-accepted material, and make a strategic or deductive leap that clearly substantiates your argument – whatever angle you might be coming from.

I have always suspected that I tend to slide superficially over the real issues, be it in marketing or art history, and this course confirmed the truth of that. I have a lot to learn, but I have also learned a lot.

It put me off my studies for a while; a little out of fear, a little out of resentment. But I have been distracted by other things too.

Making the Argument is easy when it comes to my new man. We seem to argue heatedly over everything, and it’s not always his fault. (Amazingly, I’ve discovered I’m wrong in a lot of ways :-D ) I like my space, I hate eating breakfast or dinner, I like to be alone, I don’t always like to party. And I expect my partner to bend to my will in all things. Not so good. So temperatures have risen, and we’ve had some blazing rows recently. Thankfully both of us never forget how much we mean to each other, and each confrontation has been a good learning point.

We bought a Super King Size Bed – which takes up just about the whole bedroom. We love the bed and bought satin sheets for pure indulgence. Big mistake, as we’ve spent most of the last 10 nights sliding off the slippery sheets. Back to cotton we go, which certainly helps in this heat.















And we’ve taken up new pursuits together – including archery. He is an avid collector of decorative weaponry – compound bows, samurai swords and dangerous little flick-knives. We decided to try out bows and arrows at a club in nearby East Finchley and have just finished our Beginner’s Course together. We love it, and are just about to buy our first Recurve Bows. Recurve bows are the utilitarian design best suited to everyday archery, but I did have the privilege of shooting with a more traditional longbow as well. Not easy, but what a beautiful, elegant bow to shoot with!

Last night we sat together outside on the clubhouse steps, gazing out over the archery fields, and watching the big sky over Highgate Wood, where thundery storm clouds shot lightning bolts across the horizon, and a cool breeze began to blow the sticky heat away. This summer has been wonderful; I have been unemployed for part of it, but have loved the free time and holiday heat.

Archery, walking, swimming in the Hampstead ponds, as well as a Boules match at my Summer Sunday Picnic, and a day on the magnificent Stone Bay Beach at Broadstairs - as well as Glastonbury, of course - has made my summer season action-packed and an utter joy. No sweat at all …

Girl in a white dress

Margo's Summer Sunday Picnic
The Boules Court, Hampstead Heath

Remembering Glastonbury

We took off early in the morning, and made it bang on time to the gates of Glastonbury at 8am; already there were queues and traffic jams forming … we parked miles away from the entrance and hiked up hills and down dales absolutely loaded under with tent, camping chairs, airbeds, cooler bag, backpacks - the works. By the time we made it to the front gate, we were already shattered. We stayed shattered (and got more and more shattered) all weekend …

We found a great spot to camp, on a legendary Glastonbury favoured field called Pennards. We knew we’d done the right thing when we said ‘hi’ to our tent neighbours and found out that they’d been to Glastonbury every year for nearly 20 years. Unfortunately we found out an hour later that Tina and Bill and friends had all camped about 500 yards away, closer to the road. After stamping back and forth down the hill, we decided it was just too much effort to re-locate, and that we would just keep in touch from where we were. Famous last words - haha!

Our neighbours raised a HUGE flag with a picture of a pink cow on it. Our tiddly little flag had my leopard print scarf and a sheaf of Red Indian feathers on it. Thank god for the Pink Cow; so many times that we would never have found our way back to our tent, without the smiling Moo Moo Thing flapping at us!

As we set up camp, slowly the field around us transformed into thousands upon thousands of tents, camped right on top of each other. People stuck paper messages on the grass where they wanted friends to camp, and we ended up with a lovely grass space in front of us which stayed open all festival and which was really nice in terms of a little “front porch”. In other places people had rows of passersby just tramping through their sites, over their guy ropes, even onto their tents; eventually after 5 days of this the grass was just carved away into dust. It became a physical chore just getting back to your tent through the campsite.

The festival was so organised though, in a lovely organic sort of way. They left piles of woodchips for us to collect for fires, they delivered milk and water every day in funny little tractor-drawn cow-painted carts. The only challenges, really, were the showers and the loos. In all my life, travelling right across Africa, I have never seen toilets so basic, so terrible, and - after 5 gruesome days - so stinky, smelly, horrible and horrific. Eventually, we just gave up, tried not to eat, and used some very basic ablutions of our own in our own tent (“wee in a bottle” would be about right!)

On our first two days, we set off exploring the Festival farm, and probably did the worst things we possibly could. We walked for miles, trying to cover everything and see it all. Mile after mile of quaint village camps, market stalls, stages, bars, pubs, Info spots, craft workshops, massage tents, fortune-tellers, restaurants, stone circles, sleeping dragons, hillsides, campsites, friends and neighbours, post offices - well, we tried and didn’t even get to see half of it (as we discovered afterwards, reading newspaper articles and saying “What?! We never saw that!?!? Where was THAT then?!) Quite, quite insane.

We also made the fatal mistake of having two rip-roaring fun nights in Shangri La, Rocket Ray’s Jukebox Diner, and the Tranny Disco in Trash City - which left us doomed with weariness and hangovers deluxe.

So by Friday morning when the festival only actually STARTED, we were well finished. Ready to go home, really. I could hardly move a muscle, my legs were so sore. Although our airbed was fabulously comfortable (we just rolled together to the dip in the middle and fell into the deep sleep of dead exhaustion), we were a pair of groaning, achy, middle-aged farts as we woke up each morning. We discovered that we are great campers together - we loved the early morning ritual of a cup of coffee over our tiny gas stove; the brisk stroll tripping over guy ropes as we walked to the loos for the first visit of the day, cheerily greeting fellow campers either waking up or just returning from all-night partying. We loved camping, and we will do it again.

The intensity of the festival though, is overwhelming. There is so much to see and do; so much to explore, eat, buy, experience, listen to, dance to and revel in - it’s hard to absorb.

On Friday, we wearily trudged off to start listening to music, and suddenly the festival gave us yet another dimension. The music! Oh fantastic! Each stage has the most fantastic sound system; everywhere the shows are great, the music stars so massive and famous, your expensive entry ticket (£150 for 5 days camping and 3 days music) became cheap at the price …

We saw rock bands, guitarists, old acts and new, DJs, stand-up artists and cabaret. We saw legendary musicians of old, including one of my heroes - Sinead O’Connor, and others we’ve never even heard of - The Gossip, The Editors, the Pigeon Detectives, the Raconteurs, the Zutons. We saw it all … and we still didn’t see them all. There were over 1,200 music acts on show over the 3 days. Twelve hundred. One thousand, two hundred shows. It beggars belief, doesn’t it?

On Friday we saw Fun Lovin' Criminals and the greatest living blues guitarist of our time - Buddy Guy. Absolutely magnificent. Friday was the day it rained, and I actually got to use my wellies. For those of you in the know, the Glastonbury Festival has been plagued over the past few years by rain, floods and above all mountains of mud. So wellies are important, but we got lucky. Only one day of rain and the rest was hot, dusty, sunny and wonderfully summery! Thank heavens, because that one day of shuffling through the mud and rain in wellies and sweaty oilskins was almost too much to bear.

On Saturday, exhausted, we did what everyone else was doing, we carried our camping chairs over to the wide green fields of the main stage and planted ourselves there for the day. The stage is shaped like a Pyramid, with a light shining out the top at night, and it mirrors the shape of the beautiful, magical, mystical Tor - far away in the distance. A glorious sight.

To see the great band Crowded House playing live was the fulfilment of yet another dream for me, and as we all sang along (with tears in our eyes) to “Everywhere you go, you always Take the Weather with You”, the clouds parted and the most beautiful blue skies came out, and stayed with us all weekend.

Around that time, I also managed the acrobatic trick of dropping my mobile phone into my pint of cider, effectively cutting us off from all communication with friends, neighbours and The Outside World. It wasn’t too bad, because a few mates bumped into us - karma - but Tina and Bill - camped so close and yet so far - we never did manage to find their tent again! Lost in the morass of blue tents and multi-coloured people, sadly …

Guy and I stopped in at the Jazz World Stage and saw one of the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful shows of the entire festival. A small group of British musicians formed a band called “The Imagined Village” and they have reinvented some of the very old country songs of hundreds of years ago, sung along with new technology. They sang “Are you going to Scarborough Fair - parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme” and I held Guy’s hand and cried because it was so haunting and magical.

Later that night we went to watch Massive Attack, one of my best bands of all time. Their laser light show was huge, overwhelming and dreamlike, and the sound system was fantastic. We danced like demons on bone-weary feet, and then went to play until 3am in the hysterically funny Silent Disco (everyone wears headphones to hear the music and sing along like silly things. If you took your headphones off, all you could hear was the silence - and silly people singing along to the music in their heads).

By 4am we were up at the Stone Circle, where the huge statue of a wooden Dragon lunged up to meet the sky and drummers beat the rhythm around the early morning fires, greeting a pagan dawn, looking down on 177,000 people spread across the Festival.

On Sunday we sang along with Neil Diamond to “Sweet Caroline” and then headed on down to the markets to discover a tent called “Chai Wallah’s”. It was yet another small personal revelation I had, and loved, about Glastonbury. Here a loose collaborative of young and talented musicians had teamed up as “One Taste” and each sang, one after the other as we in the audience sat and rested, drank tea, sang along or slept on small platforms allocated alongside for the exhausted, weary, over-drugged or undernourished festival party animals around us.

But by Sunday night the mood of the Festival seemed to turn a little; it developed a dangerous edge of anarchy, fuelled I’m sure by weariness and a surfeit of overwhelming emotions. We watched Groove Armada and it was great, but I was simply too tired to enjoy it anymore. Guy and I bitched and moaned at each other, at passersby and at everything. Around us, people started huge fires, burning everything in their paths including chairs, clothing and alcohol. The field was mired in mess by the time we left.

I could not move from our bed that night but Guy was drawn by the drumming through the night from the Stone Circle, and at some point he slipped away to go up there and sit, saying his goodbye to the Festival. As you do at Glastonbury, he met a fellow New Zealander and they chatted on until the dawn came, and the “Last Hurrah” cheered across the fields.

At times over the weekend, people were so filled with joy you would hear a cheer start at one corner of the Festival and travel around the grounds like a Mexican wave of sound, everyone taking up the roar, for whatever reason it may have started, you never knew, but sheer ebullience carried it on.

I showered twice that weekend, once at the open-air Greenfields showers and once I got lucky - a friend of mine working in the Medical tent gave me access to a staff shower. Other than that, we didn’t mind feeling grubby - too engrossed to notice. We learned to sleep with our ears stuffed up with plugs - it became the only way to block out the noise of the all-night music and our neighbours partying inches away in their own little tents. But the discomforts meant nothing (well, except for the loos perhaps!); they simply fell away in the enchantment of the entire experience.

So many years ago, when I first came here, I sang along to the words of the Waterboys - “there is a green hill faraway, I’m going back there one fine day”. I never did expect, in my wildest dreams, to come this way again, in such wild and wonderful fashion.

We packed and left quietly at 5am on Monday morning; only a few had left before us, but it was the right thing to do. And we managed to stop in the nearby village of Glastonbury (the real Glastonbury - the festival itself takes places closer to Pilton Village) where we trudged slowly up to the legendary ruined tower of St Michael’s Church. There we met another pilgrim; a girl who had worked the festival for the BBC, and was leaving as we were, by saying goodbye from the oldest part of the countryside - that powerful symbol of myth and magic; the enchanted place where it all began and ended - from Glastonbury Tor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvoCT5I6xd4ww.youtube.com/watch?v=MvoCT5I6xd4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnH7nF_zvoA&feature=related