Memory Lane, June

This month's Memory Lane, appropriately, is from the Glastonbury Festival. The photograph, which has a date stamp in the top left corner, is of me and Ratbert in front of the main stage on Sunday morning. A guy with a lot of VERY expensive looking camera equipment was wandering though the crowd, and in one hand he had a polaroid camera (remember those!), and for a reasonable fee you could get him to take a photo, so that's what I did.

I was introduced to the Glastonbury Festival in the early 90s by some friends who had been going for years, since long before it was famous like it is today, and I loved it so much that I went nearly every year it was on for about five years. I was there the year that someone was shot, with an air rifle I think, and even that didn't spoil it for me.

It is such a magical event; after the first year, I remember that when I returned, as soon as I was walking from the car park to the entrance and I saw the blades turning on the big wind turbine that powers the main stage, I felt as if the Festival had been there all the time since I left, in some kind of alternate universe, and I could just walk back into it.

We generally used to camp up on the hill, overlooking the festival site, so at night I could look down and see lights and people, and hear music, and it always seemed to me that there were great flares of magical energy rising into the night. I am the sort of irritating person who can sleep almost anywhere, and I find it relaxing to fall asleep to the sound of very, very loud music, only to be woken at four in the morning by the sound of people tripping over the tent pegs, giggling stupidly and then, more often than not, puking.

In the clear, early morning light there were usually sleeping bodies everywhere which you had to step carefully over to make your way to the toilets, and at that point I will say no more, because you either know what I am talking about or you don't.

The last time I went to Glastonbury was one of the years with mud, and I have another photograph of me standing in a sea of mud which I haven't scanned. I didn't find the mud very magical, and I prefer to remember the festival as it was for the other years. I guess it must have put me off a bit, because I didn't go the following year, and then after that I met Mr Knitbert, whose views on camping and being woken by people puking outside the tent are not printable, so I have not been again since.

Some years later, when DSOK the intern had just finished his A levels, he suddenly announced that he had got tickets for Glastonbury. Once I had got over being weirded out by having a son who was old enough to go to a rock festival, I began to think I would like to go again some year. This caused DSOK to be weirded out by the idea of his mother being at the same rock festival as him, so we have agreed that if we meet there we will pretend we don't know each other, although I have a pretty shrewd idea that if he ran out of money during the weekend he might change his tune.

Anyway, I have not yet managed to organise myself to get tickets, but DSOK went again the following year, which was the year that there was a great thunderstorm and some people's tents were washed away. This resulted in the following memorable phone call:

DSOK: yuuuuuurgh? (that's his normal phone answering phrase)
Knitbert: Hey, how's it going?
DSOK: uuuuugh? Oh,hey Mum!
Knitbert: There was a storm this morning, did you hear it?
DSOK: You what?
Knitbert: Was there a lot of rain?
DSOK: Whaaatimeissit?
Knitbert: Was your tent flooded?
DSOK: Naaa I don't think so. Ow, my head! Whassatime?
Knitbert: Did you see the flood?
DSOK: Er,my phone's about to - *beeeeeeeeeeeeeep!*

Well, writing about it has made me want to get tickets again, so maybe next year...

Back to real life and the present, and here are a couple of modelled pics of Charlotte's Web, as promised:


Slow but steady progress on the Ribby Shell in Calmer:

And here is a photo of me at Get Knitted, taken by the lovely Granny Smith:

I'm knitting a tension square by the way (she said smugly).