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"
"Left Again at the Womble"
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Left-Again-Womble-middle-aged-Glastonbury-ebook/dp/B00IBK2V6M
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Left-Again-Womble-middle-aged-Glastonbury-ebook/dp/B00IBK2V6M
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