1st September 2009

An upgrade they do exist, I didn't even ask. I'm pulled out the queue at the boarding gate and told to wait at one side with a group of similarily confused people.when asked why I'm told it's a seat change. Cursing that I still wanted an aisle seat I'm given a club class boarding pass. On we go not even bothering  to conceal my joy I'm virtually skipping. My seat can recline at every angle between vertical and horizontal .I have more blankets and face products than an OAP's coach trip and I am delighted. Sadly I am so excited I still can't sleep. The co codamol and alcohol mix doesn't touch me and I end up feeling cheated because I know I don't belong to this club and never will. Every so often I look back to my future in the economy class  and feel like I may as well be there.I feel like a caged canary with cling film put over its open cage door.

It was good until I realised

Mad getting back from the full time festival atmosphere of India to the greeman festival in Monmouthshire. Madder still arriving back to Cardiff on a Saturday night when Oasis were playing and the whole place seemed godless lawless and helpess. My first sight on leaving the station was a screaming child over her mother's drunken horizontal body. Is there not some sort of charity that tries to prevent this sort of thing happening ? I turned to the policeman next to me and asked what was he was  going to do  "what about ?"

I nodded to the prostrate woman and he finally got out of his van and went over to see who he could arrest I was worried it would be me.

The green man quickly restored my faith in what is great about Britain. The willingness to throw off the last bonds of our victorian straight jackets and let loose. The seemingly limitless resorcefulness of finding ways to show each other that we are free minded spirits and probably just as interesting as anyone found on stage. Through hats, clothes,face paints,hair dye, drugs and dances  thousands of people live a temporal alternative existence, fulfilling  a base desire to sometimes just not care. For me it was a welcome and gentle rehabilitation back into British life. Bless the freaks and the wannabees, the poets and the  drugees the philosophers and the clowns the drummers and the jugglers everyone who is brave enough to once in a while just let go ...

Sent on the move