Sunday 23 August 2009

You'll never get to heaven in a camper van...




T Shirt: Batman, light blue
Weather: Hot, with light rain later on.

What a relaxing day. Partly out of solidarity for Dunk’s driving, and partly as a result of feeling queasy during the day on Saturday, I decided to stay off the booze all day. My knee hurt a little too, so I planned to spend as much of the day sitting down as possible.

We ran into Miriam and the Padmore party, Evan, Clem and Al at the bank by the main stage. In a tumble of hugs and joy, we sledged down the hillside on our backsides.

The group dynamics of the festival as a whole were strange – the parties that we lounged around with were made up of various friendships, some strong and deep, others mild and frivolous, some overlapping, others independent of one another. I know Thom, who knows Spud, but Spud and I don’t know each other at all. The rules of interrupting a conversation between two of your friends are markedly different to those governing interrupting a conversation between your friend and a stranger. With the former, in general, one would wait until they were done, whereas with the latter, in general, one might interject earlier. This difference was very prominent in the festival environment. I found myself interrupted as the stranger, or interrupted as the friend, on more than one occasion. I’m sure I must have interrupted as the outsider too.

There were so many people there, flowing past, who maybe I’d meet again, or maybe not – Sally Pilkington, Evan, Spud, Cassie. Who knows?

I wasn’t impressed with Trembling Bells, whose vocal gymnastics bored me, but I thought Cranium Pie were ace. I might have gotten over my crush on the She of She Keeps Bees – not quite as charismatic when she’s a bit further away. I thought that the Yellow Moon Band didn’t really get going, a difficult trait to succeed with at the tired end of festivities. Dirty Three were fun, and funny. And Wilco? Wow. Stunning.

Dunk’s endurance drive home started at 12.26, and ended at 4.20. What a hero. We tried to keep him awake with classic rock, volume up LOUD, and with a little rhyming game…

You’ll never get to heaven in baked bean tin…

…because a baked bean tin’s got beans in.

The best of which was

You’ll never get to heaven in a bacon sarnie…

….because a bacon sarnie smells like Arnie

“I’ll be BAC-on.”

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