A Million Reasons for Wanting to Carry on Living

Cycle over to the Homerton house to leave our bikes in the bike room/Allan's office. He gives us a key so we can let ourselves in to collect them later. We might as well keep they key, we're there so much. Matt is doing something with a vice on the kitchen table; he tells us about being chased by the police for running a red light and then buying some charity mints from Halfords because he felt guilty about it.

We walk down to Victoria Park for Field Day, the nearest festival to our house unless you count the Stoke Newington Common Festival ("crafts, face-painting, bric-a-brac, storytelling"). We have wangled our way onto the guestlist which makes me feel reet posh until I see the long lines for guestlist entrance. We're not special. We get into the queue for the queue and then the queue. The people in front of us have to pay £25 for their wristbands so we're relieved that we seem to be on a free list - until they give Dave a VIP wristband and me a ticket, which then means David sails through a gap in the crash barriers and I have to join yet another queue and suffer the ignominy of being metal-detected, having my bottle of water sniffed and being told I'm carrying cigarettes in my bag (I am non-fumeuse). Tch. I bet Bono doesn't get this kinda crap.

My temper has subsided after we've bumped into Rob, Aline, Gareth and Dom, I've drunk a strawberry Pimms, and eaten a potato roll at a non-festival price of £1.70. We watch some of Steve Mason, once of the Beta Band, and now of rather droning acousticy music. I've not heard of most of the bands on the line-up; fortunately Gareth is like a Field Day podcast: "Post-punk industrial soundscapes" "Nu-folk electronica" and we go to see Amiina, the string-section which backs Sigur Ros. They sound like Sigur Ros. I am bored and wander to the Village Mentality section which is a village fete with tug o' war, cakes, welly wanging, tombola, jumble sale, sack race etc. People are tugging, eating, wanging, gambling, rummaging and jumping very happily. I suppose it makes sense seeing as most Shoreditchy people are from Oxfordshire; they're used to this kind of thing.

I sit down and do some people-watching; festival chic seems to be headbands for the boys, plastic flower garlands for the girls, animal heads or full furry costumes for both sexes. I do feel sorry for boys in summer: unless they've dyed themselves orange, most girls look nice in a summery frock but many boys with their spindly white legs look rather tragic in shorts and trainers with socks or (worse) three quarter length trousers and flip-flops.

Onto mojitos and churros y chocos and Max Tundra (casio 'n' crazy dancing) and Gruff Rhys, ex of the Super Furry Animals, who seems to be hitting things and making a dreadful racket. Leaving this, I pick up a few empty cans and take them to the recycling place for 10p a tin. I see people going around with bin bags, trying to make back their entrance fee via cans of San Miguel and Gaymers. It's probably cheaper than employing litter-pickers.

Dave spots Ms charleston walking past with a gentleman companion. I text "I've spotted you Charley Stone and I claim my £10!". A few minutes later, a new message arrives: "Who is this please?" Later, I spy ultraruby  outside the dance tent where I've just re-lived my youth for 20 minutes to the Fake Blood DJ set. I like democratic dancing to all that 90s techno-house music - it may have cost half a day's wages to get into the super-clubs or be a close friend of P Mandelson to gain entrance to the Ministry of Sound, but I love the way people just dance to the music. There no ooh I like this Orange Juice track but I'm not going to boogie to Belle and Sebastian sort of thing. You dance on your own or with others, it doesn't matter. The DJ lifts you, brings you down.

Talking of indie, we go see the Fall who are pretty much like you'd expect the Fall to be except Sarky Mark doesn't sack any of his Funky Bunch and they don't play any of the hits. After this is the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a bunch of Americans playing funk 'n' soul on brass instruments. They sound like the Go! Team (or rather, the samples the Go! Team use).



Then it's Caribou, Cocteau Twins-esque electro-dreamscapes with two drummers. By this time I'm lying down in a hello clouds hello sky kinda way.



The final thing we see is the Silver Apples, OAP laptop thuggery, which makes sense when I stand at the back of the tent staring at the carousel whirling around and around and around into infinity.