Saturday

Sweet summer night

Past the Kings Cross floral tributes and down Pentonville Road to meet Jo and Heike and wait 50 goddamn minutes for our hire-car which takes us away from Bombed London and out into Oxfordshire, the land of 4x4s and private schools and to the Fest they call Truck. Meet Steve and Alice, Alan, Lawrence, Tanya, Matt, Dom & Jen and assorted others in our little camping circle and wander about, bumping into Alison and Mark, the Chelmsford gang, Rachel Stupidcat and Dave’s friends from Swindon before stomping down to the main stage with the legendary Truck banana milkshakes and plastic glasses of wine to the sound of “SCHLA! LA! SCHLA LA LA!” as the Marilyn-clad Schla-la-las take to the stage and rock through their set, although their cover of Add It Up is replaced by one of Ça Plane Pour Moi. Catch bits of Patrick Wolf (nice piano, shame about the hair), Mötormark (an S&M version of the Primitives), MindLobster (noodling) and MC Lars (a fat version of the Beastie Boys). We go into the theatre tent and watch a feller doing “topical comedy” - if it were 2003. His joke about potential celebrity paedophiles (“Who here has been touched up by Timmy Mallett?”) encourages a lady in a pink cardigan to walk out.

The sun starts to set, spreading out pink, and the trees light up scarlet and lime and the Raveonettes come on to LED twinkles. They have recorded one song with Mo Tucker, another with Ronnie Spector; if only they’d done one with Jim Reid and/or Kevin Shields, then all their influences would be on their sleeves. Still, it’s good, clean 1968-1988 fun and I discover singing backing “wohs-wohs” to each and every song is rather easy. Try out a few of the dance tents (nu skool dance, old skool techno, drum ‘n’ bass, reggae ‘n’ indie) and go back to the camping area at the over-30s time of half past midnight and drug myself into a mini-coma with sleeping pills and antihistamines in order to try to get a few hours sleep through the cross-camp high pitched shrieks, the bafflingly traditional cry of “bollocks” and appalling renditions of Wonderwall that even Motormark would be embarrassed by. You can just tell our fellow campers went to public schools.

Sunday

I wanna be well

I’m woken at 4 a.m. not by the rain, but by the cries of “stop fucking raining”, until 7 a.m. Use a toilet uncleaned for 25 hours and share a teeth-cleaning tap with 4 people. Oh the joys of camping. Being in the same sleeping space with people whose idea of fun is pissing up against someone else’s tent. And either Farmer Alan is spreading silage on his fields or the donuts and banana smoothies are extremely flatulent. This is why socialism fails – nothing to do with economics or desires for consumer goods, but the over-riding human need for privacy. Walk down to the pub, which refuses us entry, and end up in the café with cheese sandwiches and Proper (thank god!) Coffee. The landlord not letting us in annoys the London me who hates the English service-with-a-grimace that makes out it’s doing you a favour by selling you things conflicts with the Yorkshire me who thinks: why work yersen into the ground for a few bob? I sit tucking in and feeling miserable about the rain and reading about England’s daftness in the cricket and what’s on telly next week in the paper someone’s left behind and then Alan suddenly spots a copy of the News of the World (of all things), which tells us that the man shot in Stockwell on Friday was a Brazilian non-terrorist and London slips back into focus and I feel sick. I’m sure a shoot-to-kill policy will please the Daily Mail part of the population, but I can’t help but remember the incidences of an Irishman with a chair leg, the black man with a gun-shaped cigarette lighter…oh and those four people from Guildford – and how about the six in Birmingham? This is before I mention that one of our party was taken in for questioning, and then followed, after taking photos of Canary Wharf. No wonder the police aren’t catching The Actual Terrorists when they spend so much time on nonsense.

Anyway, at 11 a.m., we go to the other pub for juice and more coffee before going back to sit in a rain-filled field. I knew I should have been suspicious when I saw so many people wearing wellies yesterday - fortunately I still have Steve Chem Ex’s yellow mac, which I “borrowed” last year. The campsite in the downfall looks like a refugee camp, except people are called Toby and Sîan and are eating burgers and pasta salads. Watch Trademark for 15 Baxendale-y minutes then use the clothes Tanya’s given me to mop up the water that’s seeped into the tent. I’m pretty convinced that I have trench-foot, club-foot and possible pneumonia. We go for a drive to Abingdon, which is shut, and get warm and sleepy in the ~~carbon monoxide~~ car radiator fumes.

Go to watch A Scholar and a Physican who do a very complicated counting up to 66 song and then !surprise! the sun comes back out, just in time for the highlight of the festival and the only reason I haven’t careered illegally back down the M4 – Ms Piney Gir. She comes on dressed as a Safari Queen (for stalking across the stage, hissing Jezabel) before stripping down to Basque ‘n’ Slip Hussy (for strawberry champagne and karaoke backing on Nightsong) and then changing into a Gingham Frilly Wonder for the Country Roadshow songs, including a hoe-down version of Girl and the still marvellous Greetings! Salutations! Goodbye! complete with sit-down steel guitar and the cast of That 70s Show as her backing band. One last banana milkshake, then we drive home into golden clouds and there’re angels in the nimbus.