REMEMBRANCE WEEKEND (A rant from the Noughties)

REMEMBRANCE WEEKEND  (A rant from the Noughties)

I can’t remember where it was, or even when?

Just a green hill faraway
where holy-grails and lay-lines lay.

Summer solstice, summer bank holiday
sometime in summertime?

It was raining, we were wet, there was mud.

(Not the 1970’s glam-pop band that did ‘Tiger Feet’,  
but who knows?  They might have been).

I can’t remember who was there

but the Stone Roses weren’t because I read about it later.

Jarvis Cocker asked us if we remembered our ‘first time’

and we all pretended that we did, and I told the girl that I was with

that I remembered Pulp in ’93, but I doubt she remembered me.

I can’t remember why we went?  Why we always went.

But I do recall throwing-up noodles after ‘shrooms in the Cider Bus

and carving ‘the Beatles were shit’ on a tree.
A tree that was actually growing, right in front of us!

Yeah. Twat.

Then I don’t remember much after that.

Except too much oestrogen, not enough oxygen

and the overwhelming stench of shite and doughnuts.
And the Levellers.

And somehow the cow field morphed into Club Trippy-Caner

where the drugs were more expensive, but the hugs were free.

A serotonin-stinking place, where ownership’s a smiley face, and dealers take you by the hand and welcome you to dumb-dumb land, and total ecstasy.

I can’t remember what it was, or who it was that sold it to me?

It wasn’t the bloke who blagged my ticket,
nor the crusty with the ladder and the androgynous girlfriend,
and it definitely wasn’t the space-cake in the portaloo
or the ever so legal-highs.
But perhaps it was the tiny bit of mysticism
oozing from the zit-like Tor
or the filthy naked hippies, bearded and beaded
with sweat and fuzzy-felt bindis 
or the thoughtless wanker that stole my tent?

I really couldn’t remember. 

Then; in ‘the Year of the Storm’
(not to be confused with ‘the year of Floodstock’, or ‘the year of Mudstock  ‘I’ or ‘II’),
I began to remember everything.

Everything.
Every last detail (whilst standing in a never ending queue for a totally empty cashpoint).

The odour. The dry barren daytime
Re-fuelling with overpriced pear-shaped ‘cider’,
square pies, and a serious dearth of entertainment.
The fake stone circle, the endless hum of the generators,
and the in-cess-ant fuck-ing drum-ming
punctuated sporadically by shouts of  ‘Bollox’ & ‘Yer Mum’ at 4am in the morning.

The cold damp evenings. The prison fence.
The rubbish and the waste.
The techno-techno-techno muzak.
Beyonce’, semi-naked but chaste.
Bono. Sky TV. Acres & acres, but nowhere to roam.
Rows & rows of neatly stacked tepee’s, reminiscent of rabbit-hutches we like to call ‘home’.

Contempt bred through familiarity,
and the dawning realization that I no longer belonged here,

fused together in a synapse of clarities,
and drenched in piss weak Budweiser beer.

Here amongst the festival virgins;
smelly, sex-hungry, sunburnt and bum-funky.
Here amongst the Dunlop wellies, “that’ll cost ya guvnor!
Let’s say……..a monkey?”

Memories of a time when money didn’t matter were dismissed.
Memories of the agro, the drugged and the pissed.  

Mobile phone dementia in a sea of Prada handbags

Memories of a vale called Avalon.
Mecca market mania for pills and booze and fags.

Yes! It all came back to me!
(A flashback they say).

I remembered that sense of ‘having to be there’
That rite-of-passage, the Home County diaspora, the must-see event.
Blur at dusk, Radiohead at bedtime,
badgers on the periphery, and strange looking creatures in my tent.

The tent that was stolen
and never replaced.

Consumed,  then forgotten.

Remembered.
Then erased.