Wicker Man ("Burn it Agin! Burn it Agin!")

Well, I'm now a hardened Festival-Goer! And what a weird world it is; all smiley people, tents, enthusiastic eclectic music, moments of sheer grin-at-the-world brilliance punctuating wandering around between non-events, in effect, everything that makes us human beings what we are - creative, stupid, spirited, distracted, elemental, inspired, and, above all, communal.

So, highlights - Arthur Brown stamping his staff whilst singing about "The Fall of the Order of Stone," which if anyone knows the lyrics to, leave a comment! I saw the sound technician checking the 'stamping point' with his foot whilst setting up, so it wasn't an accidental sound. I've never had any time for Arthur Brown, but I'd love to be able to give his creativity a stack of money, time and resource and see what he did with it! Then there was 'Space Ritual' with Nick Turner, the only group I'd partly heard of beforehand, via my hippy past of 'Hawkwind' gigs. Well, they were stomping! When they launched into 'Children of the Sun' with heavy guitar riffs and Nick's flute drifting across the soundscape, I admit to closing my eyes and it was like twenty years were lifted off me! Hyper-Cool moment for me!

As I was on a stall, Tarot Reading, with a friend Tarot-Reader and another friend doing Astrology, I got to meet loads of interesting and interested people. We were right next to the "Mooch" tent with kiddy-winkies being painted up as Fairies, and some adults too, so that was always nice to see throughout the two days! The tarot reading was a little draining at times, mainly 'cos everyone who sat down was so interested and in many cases had interests in related stuff, I kept giving my potted history of Tarot, and my 'Learn to Read Tarot in 5 minutes' talk to anyone who'd listen! My deck actually now smells of suncream, which tells you something about the Saturday afternoon, when the clouds were more patchy!

What else? Well, if you go to the Link above to the Wicker Man site, and click on the Forum, other people thought the 40 minutes of Fire-Dancing was a little mis-judged, as 7000 people were expecting the WickerMan to burn at midnight, and also thought they were missing 'Space Ritual' whilst barely-discernable figures were cavorting and prancing about doing nothing recognisable from a distance. Cries of 'Burn the Fecking Thing!' started at 10 minutes, and continued for the next 30 minutes until it was actually torched, to mass approval. I gather when it had died down a little, another chant started up, "Burn it Again!" which shows the great sense of humour of just about everyone!

On a more mundane level, toilets were pretty good until Sunday, when they were very much 'iffy'. Folk generally good-humoured, but some drunks - not violent - just too drunk to be considerate, were a liability and caused us to close our tent for late-night readings a couple of times. Food fine, as expensive as expected (£1 for a cup of tea). Beer OK. In fact, the beer tent was pretty spot-on in terms of the logistics of serving that much beer to that many people for that long!

What else? Well, the guys in the tent next to mine singing the "Record Breakers" jingle at the end of every sentence, with a tambourine, at 5.30am Sunday morning, ensured I was actually de-camped, packed and in my car for 7.00am, as sleep wasn't an option ... I wasn't that pleased at the time, but having got home, slept and showered, I saw the funny side of it, and everyone else thinks it sums up my weekend!

I would have liked more 'workshopy' events going on and indeed will volunteer my "Learn to Read Tarot" session for 3 times a day next year - oh, I guess I'll be back, then!

Now let's see if the new Blogspot picture system works ...