Real world calling

Sunday rolls around with the promised heatwave and already people are taking down their tents and either heading out, or preparing to. Once again, I'm not quite ready to go home, but I think that's sort of the point - "It was a delightful visit . . . perfect in being much too short."

Flogging Molly, doing a passable impression of this blog template, actually.

So as much as I could probably handle another day or so, I will admit that I will be glad not to be camping any more. As my sister has pointed out rather frequently over the course of the last few days, there is 'nothing dignified in camping', and I have to agree with her.  Flopping around like a fish trying to get into clothes, balancing all your weight on her head as you try to put on clean undercrackers, bent double as you try to get in and out of the thing. I don't really see the attraction, sadly.

No matter how organised you try to be, there's no hope. You pick something up, put it back down and moments later it has vanished forever, swallowed into the crease of a sleeping bag, under a carrier bag. There was insects everywhere, air beds are not particularly comfortable, it'd be nice to get a full nights sleep and I'm desperate for a shower.

This morning, despairing at the hair situation I stuck my head under a freezing cold tap and washed it. I've never been more grateful for two-in-one shampoo and conditioner, but even the world slowed to bullet time as I tried to rinse the suds out in freezing water. Feel much better for it, though, although no amount of wetwipes or no-rinse bodywash can get Glastonbury mud off your skin. It's particularly adhesive, a sort of gelatinous goo that you simply can't escape from.

After the stress of getting here, getting the tent here, set up, packing for every weather imaginable and getting all the technology working, I'd just about started to relax before I remembered that I now have to get out of the carpark (have horrible visions of being stuck, wheelspinning for 48 hours or so, or being charged £20 for a farmer to tow me out with a tractor.)

Trying to catch up with another friend today, and have resigned myself to the fact that I'm most likely not going to make it up to Arcadia, Shangri La or Block 9 this year. I keep trying to. I sort of...start heading up in that direction and..

You know that Tolkien quote? (Gosh, I'm literary today..) "All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost..." it sums up the festival pretty well. I don't get lost here, just distracted, in the best possible ways.