Bestival!
Packing
repacking
squishing it all in the car.
Driving
driving
queuing
a little bit more driving
waiting in a skin blisteringly hot car.
Driving solo;
a lack of car snacks
a lack of air conditioning
a lack of traffic patience
a build up of hot, sweaty frustration.
Cake at the campsite
greetings, hugs, questions, stories,
tents, pegs, airbeds, long walk to the toilets.
Long walk to the arena,
dusty pathways, dog searches, bag searches
Finally in the festival;
glitter, sequins, funny hats, fancy dress, sore sunburn lines already in residence,
arguing couples, screaming children, funfair melodies, pumping beats, long build ups, disappointing drops, bass bounding back in like a bully barging into my brain.
My bass, our drums, forty odd drummers moving in unison.
Rhythms and beats pounding through me.
Sweat running into my sun-squinting eyes.
The rest evaporating in the midday heat.
Sun cream reapplied,
following the shade as the day draws on.
Tightrope walkers, spinning lights, blinding lights, stages you can only see through the silhouetted crowd.
People.
People everywhere.
Food smells, toilets smells, funny smells the dogs missed.
Fuzzy head from too much sun. Too much heat. Too much everything.
Sleep.
Time to escape.
An early morning escape. Not ten minutes down the country lanes.
Here:
Lulworth Cove. A hidden retreat that was once a haunt of many a smuggler. I imagined the cool, calm water to be a veil over possible forgotten loot and stranded vessels strewn over the jagged rocks, littering the sea bed.
Yet none of this was enough to deter me from my mission. I needed the sea.
The pebbled beach invited me towards the shore and soon my shins were pushing past the lapping waves. The sun was shining but had yet to hit its full stride. I took a deep breath and took my first dive beneath the surface.
Cold, salty water rushed over me and my muscles propelled me on through the waves. The dust, and the sweat, and the aches, and the stresses, and the lingering remnants of festival life were washed away, peeled away from my skin by the cool currents swirling into the bay.
Once I surfaced, I squinted into the sunlight and wished to be below the surface once more. So the process was repeated. Diving, surfacing, pushing through the water until I could no longer feel my fingers. The floating was the best. Lying silently still, staring up at the white cliffs comfortably besieging us. Sculling around so as not to be blinded by the ever-strengthening sunlight. My head submerged below the surface so that the only sounds reverberating through my body were the garbled push and pull of the ocean and the sound of my breathing, pulsing like the tide itself.
I knew I couldn't stay there forever. My numb fingers were reminder enough of that.
And we had to get back to the festival. To the sounds. To the smells. To the people. To the everything.
I could just about manage to steel myself for another festival onslaught because of what Lulworth Cove had given me. I could follow the steps of the smugglers before me and leave the cove with my own personal contraband. Not rum or gold, but peace and reflection.
And the knowledge that the next day would bring another lull from the craziness.
