How long had it been. Going on three summers.
Three long trips round the sun through dark foreboding space since I’d been goggle-eyed in a field.
Thinking my only priorities on the planet were how much ale I had left, could I do with a margarita, maybe a portaloo kapow to the brain, how long til I’d be rocking back and forth in a bovine way to some banging repetitive dance music, mainly why couldn’t the world be like this all the time.
Four months on, freezing my nuts off as the mercury goes all mortal kombat, I cast my mind back to the summer madness and think where did it all go wrong. Winters are for hunkering down with a chica. Not hugging your pillow all alone like some Children In Need christmas ad.
*
We entered the field bags slung over shoulders, a man made exclusively out of hemp took us from hospitality over to our tent. 733. My lucky number. I let the hemp dude know, he seemed nonplussed. We got in, queued some soft beats on the Megaboom and tried out our festival shades.
My old mucker and I, Matthew by name, Matty to his mum, maverick by nature, a dandy, a lover, a fugazi peddler, so off the spectrum he’s ultraviolet, had decided to cherrytop our summers by hitting up a festival mano a mano. We’d done a handful of these double act adventures but not for a decade plus. I procure the illicit substances, he consumes them, whilst berating me for being an enabler.
The first hours of a festival are characterised by anxious expectation, a surging adrenaline. Our entry this year blew our cover. Matt was fielding an all-out assault from his babymoma and mother for absent-mindedly driving the household’s only two baby seats into the festival in his 2005 state of the art Volvo 4×4. While I was mulling over a pale ale and a bump he was searching Amazon marketplace for 2 for 1 deals on the Maxi-Cosi range.
Lost Village is a boutique festival near Nottingham that takes itself a little bit seriously. You know when things are too good, they lack the necessary scuzzyness, something feels off, like the guy who dresses too well. It felt like that. Then again things could’ve been worse, all was in walking distance, lit up in a neon haze, all was dawning possibility. It quickly became clear we were in the 0.00341% over 40 demographic. We’d been handed a magazine to ease us into the ‘experience’.
At Lost Village, the drinks are more than refreshments – they’re part of the alchemy. Okay. Whether you’re sipping something smoked, stirred, or sparkling, we take pride in every pour. Okay… So raise your glass, hydrate with heart, and let the impeccable liquids flow.
O-kaaay.
Whoever was writing this copy was either a comedic genius or needed a roundhouse to the temple. Looking around I concluded the latter. Glastonbury has an average age of 44. These cats looked about 16, butt-creases peeking out below micro-skirts, wife beaters draped over abdominals. I didn’t feel at home, but hey-ho. This was not a legitimate source of contention.
Besides at heart, 24 we remained.
We hit up the boutique camping bar.
A girl in an Italia 90 top was manning deck. I asked her how much one should bother hiding a stash from security. Tell them to fuck off mate. What if I get ejected, I protested. Tell them to fucking do one. This girl was something else. I traded my pupils for love hearts and got out of there.
Why did this happen to me always.
The story of my PG13 life. What was it in me that insisted on falling shiny head over heel for strangers over and over again. It rung my heart out every other day. These soaring flights of fancy never went anywhere, all that happened was my left ventricle hit 300bpm for twenty minutes, these girls then decided to set up a squat in my brain for a week. It was verging on a disorder.
I liked the story of Phasianidae, the bird that experienced all of time in one instant. Her song ran through the gamut of emotions, love, anger, fear, joy, sadness all at once in one magnificent harmony. The bird saw too much. All time was eternally present, beginning and ending, the sun setting on a love only beginning to dawn.
Stood there in front of Italia 90, Phasianidae’s song rang out. Before I’d even ordered a drink we were walking arm in arm pursued by panting and tiny feet silhouetted against the sky. Was my destiny staring me down across the bar.
Did God have a flan for me.
We hit up the madness.
Strangled the night and died with the dawn and made our way back to 733 in the early morning light.
Stepping over manicured grass to the boutique tent for breakfast the next morning Italia 90 was doing the rounds looking jaded. I bantered, semi-landing. By 10pm all was lost, I’d gone full-on creep mode, she almost called security.
Angel, she said. Domingo.
I rolled up my sleeve, told her I’d got a tat for her.
Oh yea.
I then went from 1st to 5th, told her about angelic visitation, we traded ghost stories, behind me the queue mounted. Best thing about seeing a ghost, she goes, is when I’m with my boyfriend I know it’s not just me making it up in my head. Cold. I caught my reflection and some dude chewing his face off with pupils the size of donuts stared me down.
They always say that stuff mate! Matt waded in. Women lay down weird markers. Also mate, stop getting so affected by everything. I’d go into a two minute menopause if the security dude in the campsite didn’t clock my smile. Calm down. We went all Keinemusik with some handkerchiefs, laughed our asses off, I lost my shades, had some wicked chats with high festivalgoers off their tits. Bounced around, not a care in the world.
By Saturday evening Italia 90 was a distant memory. I had a new girlfriend. Marlie this aussie DJ was spinning some hard tracks in the LandRover Discovery stage. I swear she keeps looking at me, I shouted to Matt through the strobes. Bro, every high idiot in this crowd thinks that. She finished her set, the lights came up, I stood stock still waiting for her to signal my approach, she looked through me like a window pane.
Chicks man.
What the hell was I expecting.
Italia 90 must’ve been about 23, all Gladiator energy, a balding Londoner turning 42 was hardly a match echoing in eternity. As for Marlie, what was I gonna do follow her around her DJ circuit carrying her mixer. I needed to get real.
All was ego. I didn’t know these girls. This deep-dive, intense investment, all-out commitment to the future of our love story, was just an obsession with them accepting me. Like a female attention thing, a mother who struggled to be maternal who knows. So well hidden I thought it was harmless, just me lighting up the floor rose between my teeth enjoying the frisson.
Matt came up with a new nickname. ShangriLaLa. Weirdly shy with unresolved acute anger issues. Sounds about right. We went hard on life, our failures and our fears, our hopes, highlights reels, Stones v Beatles, we even had a fight. I stomped away from the main stage over a disagreement about positioning. Autism and anger a mother’s milk doth curdle.
Hey-ho.
*
In early summer I did a 21 day water fast and finally got off the fence, out of the flesh and into the spirit, started going to mass every morning at 7am, cycling through empty streets to the Oratory. I’d been fighting this thing like a madman for three years, I was self-conscious confused and scared. The cool God dude is a guy, my mate Cass assured me smilingly on Exmouth once. I asked Guy if wearing a rosary on the outside of my shirt was a weird call. Not if it’s for real, he said calmly.
I had absolutely no idea how to give my life to Christ. So in the meantime I went to church, prayed alone, tried to do the right thing and failed repeatedly, a conviction I was being observed all the while, benevolently. I smiled in the street, called my mother at the right times, fell asleep at night to Poirot reading the Gospels.
You’ve always been pretty weird, said Chlo, it’s not that much of a stretch. Over the course of the weekend, walking around the festival, I spoke to Matt a lot about it all. He was all ears, it was moving. Just commit mate, it won’t make you a different person. Given your alacrity to be alone, he went on, the person you end up meeting might be quite remarkable, he said sweetly.
I wasn’t going to find this girl in a seretonin-fuelled effigy I’d made at some festival. Marlie and Italia 90 weren’t the gold at the end of my rainbow. Just me flattering my insecure self, the day-after birthday balloon in need of taking a pin to.
I liked the Asap Rocky line.
If you go looking for love, you’re not going to find it. Cos love comes to you, it’s like a gift. So you gotta stay humble and not block your blessings.
Going back and forth with Alfie he’d often say mate you can’t just expect someone to walk around the corner, it does involve putting oneself out there. I kind of agreed but didn’t really. A divergence about the fundamental structure of reality. On one side we make our luck. On the other, we act correctly, aware every tiny little thing is of consequence, live out prewritten destinies, sucking up the slings and arrows and gifts and all of it along the way. But morality is the most important game in town.
Drake said it best.
God’s flan… God’s flan.
The more you pray the more coincidences happen, divine timing, God writes straight with crooked lines. I was beginning to buy this version of the cosmos, too many weird things had happened, were continuing to happen. I stacked my chips on the Emerson I saw tagged a few years back in a cubicle in Deptford one cold November night, got the popcorn out.
He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.
Tolstoy, Ana Karenina
Just be a good person in the world, I figured.
What else could really matter.
And then along some distant day into the future, who’s to tell who might sidle round the next corner.
