Lost in notation blog

Though it is rather unusual not having the internet in some ways it is rather lovely.  For the first time in six months there is nothing I have to write.  We appear this morning to have gone back to basics.  Although the boy has been persuaded that daily showering is a necessity unless he wishes to be banned from the tent without the internet and with the phones having died we are in a technical wilderness and it’s nice.

This morning we returned back to the days of hunter gathering and while I foraged for food, at the supermarket, the boy prepared the fire (on his camping stove).  We spent the day trailing in and out of various bands, catching bits and bobs of bands and a lot of comedy which emphasised just how middle class the festival is.  Unfortunately I can’t remember his name to credit him but one of my favourite jokes was about people having changed their own hunter gatherer habits from Waitrose to Asda.  According to the comic those who are new to the store are obvious due to their slightly fearful expressions and their loud comments about people in tracksuits: “Are they athletes? They don’t look like they are, they look quite overweight, why are they wearing sportswear?”

It is rather lovely being at a festival where the food comes from the Scottish seas and forests but there is a slightly more sinister side to the festival.  On the first morning I went on a wonder to find us all coffee, I am grumpy without it and the boy is semi conscious till he gets his.  After finding out that it was £2 for instant coffee at a van with a  massive queue I continued to search for filtered as I had read on the site that it did exist.  Eventually I came upon a promising looking place called the tangerine fields.  Though there was security at the gate I didn’t think much of it at first and happily went over to a little café where they had filtered coffee as well as scrambled egg and salmon breakfast rolls.  They even had a pretty tray for me to carry everything away on.

When I returned the tray later on I discovered the rather ugly truth about the sweetly named field.  Not only did one have to have a special ribbon to enter the tent but the facilities were a far cry from those in the main field.  Where we had trenches for toilets they had flushing cubicles with porcelain silks, hand towel wipes and proper soap rather than the anti-bacterial handwash they provided for our mucky mits.  The showers were not communal and the water that came out from them was more than a trickle.  While there I even heard a woman complaining about the tents threadbare carpets while another laughed at the thought of going out to join the commoners in the real world because the queue was too long.

Perhaps I am naive to be shocked by this as I know that we do not live in a classless society, but I always believed that a festival was a place where barriers were pulled down.  I got over it however and the next day while we sat round our BBQ and little stove, one big happy family mucking in together to make a breakfast of bacon baps.  I felt a little sorry for the tangerine crew and all they were missing out on by closing themselves away in their ivory orange palace.

• Today’s dress is very much all about the flower power and the photos are taken under what was once the marquee.  Earlier in the day we were discussing the mystery of the pyramids and the boy who enjoys winding me up about conspiracy theories suggested the aliens came down to build them theory.  When we returned it seemed the aliens had again visited the earth as a giant pyramid had been built in the middle of our camp.