Bittersweet end of a festival

It’s sad when it comes to the end of a festival. Snoozing on the bus home feeling tired but relaxed and happy. The worries of the world trickle back into my mushy-pea brain as we re-enter the city. 

‘You love this city, and this is your home’, I tell myself, but I can’t help noticing the haggard stressed people who jostle about in the public transport system like flies trapped in a jar. The festival atmosphere was all carefree and fun-loving, wild. 

A woman I didn’t know with a lovely Welsh accent told me over a beer that the end of a festival is bittersweet because she knows it can’t go on forever. ‘Here, everyone’s got glitter on their face and it’s our own little world. When you get back home you see all these people in suits looking serious and you realise God that’s what the real world’s like. Bit of a shock to the system.’

On my way back I see a woman giving grief to a lone TfL worker about delayed trains. ‘It took me over an hour to get here and it was supposed to take 20 minutes. What’s the use of spending millions on this new line if it doesn’t work?’ The staff shakes his head in an ‘I’m not getting into an argument over this’, sort of way and lopes back into the office leaving the woman fuming on the platform. 

I look up at the sign and it reads Next train in 4 mins. At a festival 4 minutes is nothing. You wouldn’t be able to get to the toilet in 4 mins. You might head over to a big tent where the next band you want to hear is playing in about 20 minutes and kill time waiting for their set drinking a beer with your mates. 

Time is wide-open at a festival. 

It took me about 30 hours to accept this fate and embrace it.

Because in the first 30 hours of a festival you have to deal with relieving yourself over a toilet seat suspended over an eco-compost bog, which uses sawdust to cover everyone’s excrement. It stinks. It’s terrifying in the dark when you’re drunk because you worry about falling in or vomiting. I overheard a child in the cubicle next to mine whining to her designated adult, ‘OK. Don’t look down!’ like she was at the precipice of a rollercoaster. 

You soon get used to decanting alcoholic beverages into small plastic bottles which you carry on your persons at all times so that you can have a tipple whenever you want. By the end I was gladly supping shaken-up red wine from a PET bottle because it saved me queuing and spending money at the bar. Although the selection of ales at Green Man were next to none.

You’ve got to get on board with the fact that there’s no bed at the end of the day – only a roll mat in a tent – the thin sides of which shake you awake under fierce winds or make you sweat when the sun comes out because you’re sleeping inside a large waterproof bag. You fetch your own water to brush your teeth in a damp field. Your food staples are bananas and cheese strings. 

All these experiences help set the bar lower than the standard of living I'm used to and as a result made me care less about everything (!) including a lack of phone signal or having any concrete plans. You simply sway to music in the lush green countryside, then scamper over to another bit of a field to watch more musicians banging out their beats, etc. 

Festivals relax you and make you focus on the fun and funny side of things – like, when I was tired and yawning, I woke myself up by falling flat in the mud. Some strangers came over to help me up and said, 'You still look amazing!' which was nice of them. Anyway, I became wide awake in time for the evening entertainment.

Being in Bannau Brycheiniog listening to live music with friends was the best feeling ever. What more could I really want? There was delicious beer on tap and the food was surprisingly good like shakshuka, triple fried chips, Goan fish curries, and so on. 

I spoke to strangers, or they spoke to me. 

In the morning after the torrential rain, I was on the hunt for wellies because I had only bought trainers with me, so went to the festival store to ask the people at the desk. The store worker flashed a quick grimace and shook her head, ‘No I’m afraid we don’t sell them, and I don’t think anywhere in Green Man does, sorry.’ 

A bare-chested bloke standing behind me with blonde hair flecked with mud said, ‘I’ve been doing the rounds all morning looking for a place that sells wellies. This here was my last stop. If there were somewhere that sold boots today, they’d be making a killing.’ 

We trudged back to our own tents accepting our fate of trench foot, but the weather was so much better than yesterday – also the sun had come out –  and today’s line-up was the best one yet, so I wasn’t going to let it hamper my spirits. 

Spirit level

I had to spend the hot sunlit days caged inside an office. Outside there was the repetitive pounding of a crane, breaking up the hard ground beneath the silt under the Thames. I imagined it giving migraines to those walking by, but filtered through my thick walls it was like the quickened strikes of a clock tower, madness. 

I ride the train every morning and some days I can concentrate on reading, other days I cannot and stare past people. There has been a lot of that lately and the views are not great. The backs of buildings and concrete. Scaffolding. As we approach the city there is too much glass. The whole train carriage overhears something that sounds salacious to the speaker - sleeping with a middle manager - but for the rest of us it as a nuisance disaffecting the daily commute.

Amongst one of these days I am leaning against a luggage compartment, blockaded by a rucksack and some shoulders, then holding on to the railing before me I see the back of a hand close-up. In biro it is written SPIRIT LEVEL. I think hard about what this could mean, until I follow the hand up the arms to see it is connected to a man dressed in overalls, with dust and paint all over his shirt. I turn back to stare at the grey everything with an extinguished sense of wonder. 

But for the last weeks I have been thinking about what it could have meant before I realised what it actually meant. ‘How’s your spirit level?’ Is a good question. If I asked myself that recently it would be, ‘Particularly low today. And your’s?’ There have been invites sent in the post sealed with happiness about weddings for me to receive in my pyjamas to feel slightly saddened about. My twenties are over. I have managed to accumulate things, which remind me that I once got that with the hopes of... then I feel a twinge of disappointment in myself or the thing for not following through with it. 

An ex-boyfriend sends me an e-mail about turning thirty and living in Honolulu or ‘Wherever the wind takes me’. The billboards on the side of buses carry slogans that don’t make sense with the aim to make me linger on their messages; I fall for it. The possibility of getting a dog seems distant, while I get invited to flat-warmings and take in the nice scenery and accept that people are moving on.

Though spirit levels are about balance and some days I am high. Like when sitting in the sunshine in a park I have only just discovered and fallen in love with, for it’s the site of a Victorian ruin. Resting a sleepy head on my lap, stretching apart my toes and watching a grandmother fanning herself, as her grandson shows off tricks on his new scooter. Spirit level rising. Later I had a bubblegum flavoured ice cream from a van, which was bright blue and had a similar chewy consistency to gum. Proving that childhood memories can be bettered by current ice cream flavours. 

So things are not all that bad and not all that good. But I do feel slightly off-balance.

First Job Last Day

Worker: So, where are you off to?

Me: Urm. Nowhere in particular.

Worker: Do you have your sights set on something?

Me: Well

Worker: Where are you going?

Worker: What are you going to do?

Me: I want to… I want to write. A writer. Is that alright? I’m just you know having a break - a change of scene.

(sassy woman; mid to late 40’s walks on and off stage)

Joanna: That’s right! You can only make a change during a gap.

(shouting after her)

Me: Are you sure Joanna?

Joanna: Oh my yes. You’ve got spirit, don’t you worry.

(she stares longingly after her presence)

Worker: So any plans? Of what you’re going to do now.

Me: Urrrm

Worker: What are you going to do with your first free Monday?

Me: Oh god.

(Goes to clear away her desk and shovels pens and headphones in to her rucksack)

Me: What am I going to do without structure?

Colleague: You’re doing the right thing.

Me: Am I?

Colleague: Yes. And sometimes hon it’s difficult to do the right thing.

Two Tramps, Unknown

There is a park in Paddington that is inhabited by three tramps. One named Harold, another named Barry and the third is unknown. Two of them now sit on a bench over looking the grass sharing a can of bitter; they overlook Barry who is sleeping on the grass at the foot of a tree trunk. One of them gets up and arthritically stamps towards Barry, standing above him he loudly asks,

Harold: Are you going to give us a song Barry?

Harold: Are you going to give us a song today, Barry?

Harold: ARE YOU GONNAGIV’US A SON –

(sharply interrupted)

Barry: You kicked me and I won’t give you no song no.

After a moment

Harold: I didn’t kick ya

Barry: You fuckin did.

Harold: Ah’ch

Harold waves his hand, indignant, and wanders back to the bench. As he is about to sit down for the tenth time today, back to the bench where he always sits with the other, drinking can after can bought with the little change he finds, Harold turns and looks at Barry in disgust. That miserable wretch curled up in sodden red blankets on a dried out lawn in mid-September. How can he live with himself? How can a man with any sense of decency make proper conversation with such a wretched old pile of rags. How can he think?

Harold: You sleep all of day there and the coppers’ll come and nick you again Barry.

Duly ignored, perhaps he doesn’t hear well

Harold: Bet you don’t suspect a thing but I know I know I know what’s in stall for you. They’ll think you been doing drugs and nick ya and take you away, then you won’t have the sun anymore, and you won't want to sing in the daytime just want to cry in the night. For fuck’s sake Barry - are you gonna give us a song - dammit?

Barry pulls himself together and gathers the blankets up around himself, and leans his scabby back against the tree trunk and belches a little. Then he sings

The pigeon flaps his wings around

But ain’t no fucking sound abound

What we want is light and air

But no one wants us here

and no body knows us here

“JOIN IN – it’s a bloody chorus!”

No body wants us here

Oh, no body wants us here

Sirens ring through the city air and Barry and the unknown one claps.