dicker with cocker…..glastonbury special

Been sprawled out in the healing fields all morning. Not sure why I paid nigh on £200 to sit in a field, but it’s working…..

Having procrastinated for at last a decade over whether to remain faithful, it seems I have compensated by demanding deep tissue massages off shirtless men.

So I strayed to the healing fields, and even managed to blow a didgeree doo or two on the way. I did a reckie on the first day. Telling my compatriots I had an eye for charlatans after an indian man stuck his buttocks in my face, I skulk around the fields looking for some eager prey.

‘Holistic palm reading’. Said one sign.

WTF? You either wear a dickie bow and hang out on the palace pier or you ain’t seeing my lines.

‘Joy’. Said another. ‘tarot’. I peak into the warped yurt that was her cavern. A fat, sweaty confused grizzler sat there. Frick! It’s a client from work who has, shall we say, an ‘adjusted’ state of mind! And there to show the kids the future………..

So now I know the ging-gang-gooleys from the ethereals. And I wanna get me some o that. I see a nice looking woman called Claire offering Indian Head Massage for a donation. She’d do for Samson, I thought. A few crows feet round the edges, but a nice face and a no-nonsense approach. Now who for me?...............

Well, I thought I’d better take two. Just in case. Opted for both with massage chairs; yeah, they’re for real, they’ll grind me into oblivion with a bit of luck. The first, Ben, was a cute kiwi with piercing eyes. I told him of my ailments and he touched me intensely for half an hour, holding my hands whilst caring for my arms, telling me how he gets to make inappropriate comments with his corporate clients, putting pressure on my mid-back and releasing some tears there. Samson looks on and approves of the heavy involvement. That was a bit better. Now for the second. A curly man with his top off. I watch him absent-mindedly kneading a fat girl in her bra and have second thoughts. I want his full attention, or nothing. So up I march.

‘Hi, I need to feel your pressure’. He is good. He gets so far into my back Samson says his hand disappeared into it at one point. Wowzers. He comments that I had ‘don’t fuck with me’ written on my forehead. That’s right. Don’t fuck with me, but give me some cheap thrills matey.

Then I did a portion of poo, like a goat some might say. In the wateraid toilet, a marvellous invention. All composte, (said in US accent), didn’t stink of shit at all, could sit and have a little rest if one wanted to. And just while I was expelling my droppings, a film crew decided to crowd into the next cubicle. Could they hear me pelloting? I wondered. No, it seems - instead the hippy on the bog decided to recite a world peace poem on the wall of the crapper. So there I was, on a toilet, letting out a spicy beanburger, being read poetry. Classic.

Shit is a topic of discussion when I travel. I was going to launch ‘pootube’, but wasn’t sure if it would attract the right kind of audience.

Met a couple the day before in shit chai Bob’s tea shop, they invite us to their tent as it seems shit is all they talk about too….for me, it’s just a conversation. Everyone shits. Everybody loves to shit.

Which leads me onto my first story,

1. The girl with the shitty legs
We were laying around like crocodiles on some stained cushions in a chai den, and Samson spots a couple in the queue looking slightly perturbed.

‘she’s got a tissue and she’s wiping it up her skirt………..?’ he says.

They walk past us briskly, diagonally, outta that hell hole. And I see her legs, she’s wearing a minidress. And there’s brown/red stuff smeared all over them. I start to splutter,

‘there’s stuff smeared all over her legs! It could be blood, but it’s…’ and before I can finish a wave of drug and cider-fuelled stench washes over us.

‘IT’S SHIT’ we cry together! Oh my God, she truly has tried for a pizza, looked at the food and shat her ecstacy-riddled guts out. And she’s probably nowhere near her tent. And she’s off her fucking tree. What are they gonna do?

It was her and her boyfriend. They stood outside the chai den trying to wipe her off. It’s a nightmare. The man uses cider to swab her, but where’s this gonna end?

In a drum n bass field in Arcadia somewhere no doubt. And the sex will be massive. And they will wake up in the morning and realise that her rose really smells like poo poo poo.


2. Things people say in tents with no walls

My abode for the occasion has been nicknamed ‘the crisp packet’. This lends itself to the fact it cost £20 in the year 1999, and is a one-piece with six pegs, not waterproof, and if you move about, the groundsheet sounds like you’re inside a crisp packet. The neighbours named me ‘cheese and onion’.

And we all know, but we all forget. Tents ain’t got no walls, and we don’t need no education.

Had to bloody sing that in a pantomime once. You can take the girl out of the panto….

A schoolgirl dressed as a slightly sluttier schoolgirl, doing some irrelevant ridiculous dance whilst shouting Floyd over a bad big band. Them was the days…..

But tents, yes. My complex relationship with Samson means that play fighting replaces sex. But as we’re both testosterone-fuelled animals, we end up crossing lines it turns out humans aren’t meant to cross…

The neighbours heard too much. And the best thing was, they didn’t clock that it was our late night ramblings they were perving on. Turns out they went round the whole of Glastonbury telling people that they overheard a girl telling the story of how she once decided to ride her boyfriend in a tent in 35 degree heat in Spain, only to find that she completely ran out of air, and to surpass suffixation had to poke herself out of the tent, naked and bejizzed, in the broad daylight of a public campsite.

They recounted this story to us in the late afternoon, over a plastic wine spritzer and a doobie. And Samson and I looked at each other, and I said,

‘that sounds like something that happened to me…’

At which point, the whole cacophony of Luton-based randoms turned.

‘It WAS you’.


3. If you can’t be with the one you love…..

I wash my hands in the standpipe. I see Samson in the distance. But what’s this in the foreground? A sexy man standing on a flower bed with a watering can, cooling people off in the hot sun. I mouth at Samson ‘shall I?’

‘yes’, he approves.

I turn to the man,

‘shower my tits’. And we stand there for about a minute, him spraying my tits with cold water whilst the queue looks on. Cheap thrills eh? Free, actually. It was only later that day when I suddenly freaked out that my tits were soaked that I remembered. And of course, went back for more.


4. Love the one you’re with

I was a bit concerned that I’d need a bunk up for the occasion. I persuaded myself that two can play while my love’s away, but now I was here I wasn’t so sure.

So I compensated with massages, tit showers, and a few other things…..

Puppy love

My phone is half-heartedly on. I can’t really be arsed with it all when I realised the amount of people I knew who’d be there. Impossible. I have learnt by experience that whether in Thailand or at home, honing around to meet someone in a completely different mental state for twenty minutes before somebody MIGHT need a shit, or before they rush to another stage to see a MOR lose their sound in the wind, is more than a waste of time - it’s a fucking waste of essential resources.

So I didn’t reply to any of my texts or voicemail.

I was on a hill, I was relaxing, I needed time to rest my weary legs on that hill, and I had it. But all this,

‘where are you now?’ that I’d look at two hours later, and ‘so and so told me you’re here! Let’s meet up, we’re going to see Gomez on Sunday not Stevie Wonder’. Erm?

So I ignore it all, then send a mass text back a day later to say,

‘not doing plans, just hoping I bump into you in some hideously ridiculous moment’.

But this one guy, friend of a friend, is insistent, and manages to call me during a Thom Yorke secret gig cos he knows somehow I’d be there. And I was, me and Samson had been arguing about the fact I’d been dancing to the irish choir in my moo moo so we’d missed the showers. Suddenly the stage nearby announced a special guest. Samson heard the first two chords and knew....

‘Go!’ I shriek.

I wank about for a bit at the crisp packet and make my way to my hillock. I sit on my own, knowing that somewhere in the crowd Samson is crying.

Then they play Karma Police. And that means a lot to me. And a Scottish clan adopt me on the hill and I tell them Samson will be crying and they stare at me, all high, and say,

‘I know what you mean. I know what you mean.’

And I can’t work out if it’s empty drug-speak, or if somewhere beneath the beanburgers she has a deep connection with my soul. Nah. She’s high.

But Samson rounds the corner, and then I get the call. The guy who’s been texting me is here, and knows I am. He turns the corner. What’s this then?

And he says he’s been told of the boy. And I tell him of the boy, in a way old friends can summarise. And he looks deep inside of me throughout. And I kiss him. And Samson informs me he’s in love with me.

Hm. We’ve kissed, it ain’t that great, and he was a bit of a virgin till a few years ago when he started stringing along vulnerable females for far too long before breaking their necks like battered swans.

So he can probably fuck okay now, and once I woke up with my hand on his cock by mistake so I have felt his sausage. But still, let’s not just let someone need me because I’m unavailable….

I decide in the end it was more of a lament for the love we never had and never will. Which sounds romantic, somehow, but in fact is a load of old tosh.

Up up and away in my beautiful balloon

We’d been adopted by a bunch of losers from Luton. Such is our way. My dad’s yielded from that manor and wherever I go in the world people from that side of town adopt me. Sometimes they fuck me. They never fully understand me, but hey ho.

So this lot have got a gazebo, chairs, and everything inbetween, and me and Samson get well in there.

I remember emerging from my crisp packet in my moo moo and kissing them all a sweet morning. One guy couldn’t stop leering at my arse, and Samson fancied him, so we started a bit of a triangle thing. He had a girlfriend, of course, they always do…..

But little B, ah he was my favourite. Not only did they have cheap rose wine and 7up and cracked plastic glasses, they had gas…………………….rank. No class As, just shit loads of booze and some fucking brainkiller. But my little B, my fave, loved it.

So these normal people, these caged animals waiting for us to unleash them (which, of course we did), got off on hops and gas.

My little boy danced like an accordion chameleon, and it was for this reason I loved him. So I ask him about why he does this ‘gas’. And he and the Neanderthal gently cajole me to do a balloon. Which I decline.

So instead, I sit him down on my knee, and he takes the biggest lungful of this stuff in history. People are worrying about the amount he’s doing, and I’m holding him tight, feeling every vibe coming out of him. And there’s a beautiful picture of me on a canvas, him top off, shorts on, on my lap, us looking intently at each other and smiling serenely.

I would highly recommend passive gassing. Only of the chemical type, of course….

Peeping into a parallel k-hole

Getting high and drinking chai, we were. My two compatriots disappeared into the oblivion of the rank bogs, and I was left on my own to ponder about the girl with the shitty legs. But in walks a tall young man, with beautiful black hair and an interesting stance. In fact, a very interesting stance. He looks like my boy. I want to reach out to him, but he’s so far away in his own mind that no one can reach him.

He had stopped moving. His face had frozen. He fears the can of lager in his right hand as if it were a volcano about to erupt. Everyone else is dancing, he stands rooted to the spot, swaying slightly. Frightening.

So this is a K-hole, my friends. How lovely to have a passive K-hole, fully appreciating the moment when he leaps back into life and becomes the spunky young thing he is.


5. Dicker with cocker

I’ve choreographed a northern irish choir singing ‘sweet dreams’, I’ve performed the riverdance in a cyber-pseudo burnt-out basement, what more can there be to do?

It’s near the end, and eating options are running low. We’ve made few mistakes, the ‘fishfinger fucker’ I ordered on the first day being the worst. But I’ve found a new little contraption that sells jacket potatoes and not much else. It’s near the shortcut we’ve made, and we’ve got little B and the Neanderthal in tow. Let’s do this.

So we head to the public school boys who sweat over the stove, with hippy mum and dad making chapatis and gruel.

‘four potatoes please’.

Apparently they could be up to an hour, the little dish serving us making no promises, but proving willing by prodding the motherfuckers to see if they’re ripe.

The boys we’re on a fake date with look like they’re heading to undercooked jerk chicken land, but me and Samson are standing our ground. And we’re the only ones in there. Apart from, it appears, Jarvis freaking cocker and his bird. Who also opt to stay for an hour.

‘best potatoes in glastonbury’, he quips. Yes, I know, it ain’t no headline joke, but IT’S JARVIS. And I’ve been drinking neat vodka from a cycling bottle and smoking spliffs for four days.

So we all sit on benches. Samson makes polite, entertaining conversation about music and stuff, and then I launch in. what’s he doing here, I want to know. I came in 95, didn’t think he was playing. Whoops. They headlined. Appears I was sucking off drug dealers in tents at the time.

He’s DJing at a place called the rabbit hole, where you go underground in a pit with the unwashed. Cool. What’s his set, I want to know? He says he hasn’t thought. He was up till six in the morning, and isn’t a young snapper any more. So we have a little think about it. He asks if I know an old track called Glastonbury. I don’t, so he tries to sing it. Hilarious. I ask him if he’ll do a creedence. Turns out Suzie Q is his bird’s favourite. We sing it together. Moment. Then I remember there’s an amazing tap dance called the Suzie Q. he has no choice. I get up. There I am, in a shack, waiting on a potato, tap dancing my damaged arse off for cocker. Fantastic.

The potatoes come. We greedily gobble them, Jarvis with simple beans, the rest of us with slatherings of chilli and cheese, a right dicker of a feast. Hence the photo.

Later that night, after a lot of carnage, we end up at the rabbit hole, after seeing the last song of Midlake and me nearly miscarrying due the injustice of a passive crowd not demanding an encore.

Then we hear it, those first few sexy little bars of the credence riff. It’s Suzie Q. it’s time to tap dance…..

Footnotes:

Costumes

Seeing as I didn’t officially take any costume, I did pretty well. Somehow the clothes I had turn into a myriad of personality disorders:

• Cloud moo moo land. No underwear, wet hair, Malaysian flower print moo moo (ref Simpsons), flip flops. Dazed look on face.
• Nora Batty. Pashmina wrapped like shawl, woolly hat, headtorch on top.
• Hindi cowgirl. Wet sarong done up like Indian lunghi ad tucked in. Vest. Standing on the corner I call the lost highway, waiting for no one.
• Whore of Babylon. Short hand-painted stretch dress, thai sparkly vest on top, mod jacket, bare legs, visible panties, diamante trainers. Stetson. One man in each hand.
• Cancer patient. Covering head entirely to avoid sun stroke. Not allowed on camera so as not to upset the masses.
• Mexican. Sarong round head, Stetson on. Jeans, strange Indian poncho garb.
• Middle aged mother – after going in the sea today I ended up with no knickers, a stripy skirt, wet tits and a cable knit cardigan.


Ideas for an act
Wash n blow job: Alternative to hair salon whereupon I wash yer widget, give it a quick suck, deposit the remnants into shot glasses or the fridge for todger jelly, then charge for the gobber and the shot, thus making money and keeping several people happy.

Afterthought

My lonely moments there had been dark. Thinking about my boy. Wondering when I’d stop obsessing about detail and face what is actually lurking beneath this small sailing vessel we’re floating in.

And actually, there are many thoughts, but thank god some thoughts for me and me alone are returning. The filthy masseuse’s hands have grounded me and I’m coming back to my shore. These six weeks are going to be useful.

And so now when I miss him, I miss him as he is now, where he is now, wherever that is. Not as we were, not the sentimentality and nostalgia. That’s not for summer…

The late, great, Kurt Vonnegut for you to finish:

1. Find a subject you care about.
2. Do not ramble, though.
3. Keep it simple.
4. Have the guts to cut.
5. Sound like yourself.
6. Say what you mean to say.
7. Pity the readers.