Sunday, August 3, 2014

How I got really cold at Glastonbury....

Below is a short (working, unedited, rough etc) extract from my forthcoming book about the Glastonbury Festival.

In this bit I'm standing waiting to watch The Rolling Stones...and getting really cold.    



As I stood there watching the field fill up more and more-many people must have been waiting for Primal Scream to finish- I realised that I felt cold. 

I’d gone and got a coffee from the nearest place at the back of hill while Primal Scream were playing, but that hadn’t warmed me up that much. I had my t-shirt on and a thin jacket, my rain jacket, although it didn’t make much difference. 

There was a dampness in the air; not a fog, nor a mist but a bone-chilling dampness. It was if condensation was seeping through to my very core. I couldn’t believe it. It was June and I was cold at 9.00 at night. I had never been that cold during an evening at Glastonbury. I wrapped my coat tightly round me and stuffed my hands in my pockets. It made no difference, I was still freezing. It was ridiculous.

I looked around me at everyone else standing there and walking around. They all seemed to have fleeces, hoodies and jumpers on. Some of them even were wearing woolly hats. I’d have killed for a woolly hat.

I looked at my watch. It was just coming up to ten to nine. The Stones were on at 9.30. They’d be on stage till midnight I guessed. I couldn’t see them finishing much earlier than that. 

What to do? 

Could I stay as cold as this for another 3 hours or more? 

It wasn’t as if it was going to get much warmer. The sun wasn’t going to come up and even if I danced around a bit to the Stones (not that I would) I couldn’t do it for 3 hours and I didn’t think that it would make any difference.

I’d end up in the medical tent with hypothermia, wrapped up like a big oven-ready turkey in a foil blanket and stuck with a bunch of pissheads and kids who’d taken too many drugs. This wasn’t me being overly dramatic, I really was that cold. 

I’d started shivering involuntarily. Wasn’t that one of the first signs? Would I start to hallucinate and lose all sense of where I was? If I went to the medical tent with those symptoms, there’d be a fair chance that I’d be mis-diagnosed and I’d be shunted in a corner with all the acid casualties. 

“I’m cold, I’m so cold,” 

“Of course you are. And you think you can fly as well. We know. It'll pass.” 

I could well imagine the conversation. I had to do something to avoid such a scenario. Even though it would have been a ripe source for writing material, I wasn’t prepared to go that far.

The rest of the (as yet untitled) book should be finished and published sometime before the end of this year.

In the meantime the first two books in the trilogy are available here, both as Kindle e books and paperbacks;

"Turn Left at the Womble" 

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