by Grace Dent
“Yes, Claude, for the ninth time, we certainly are,” smiles Daphne.
“Sorry,” chuckles Claude. “We’re just so close now, it’d be a bummer if we were in the wrong queue.”
“Don’t fret,” says Daphne. “We’re totally, one-hundred-percent-certainly on the Gate A route. I made sure back at the bottom of the hill.”
“Why is there more than one gate?” I ask. I’d not even noticed we’d taken a specific route.
“Well, they have to divide tickets into different entrances so there’s not a stampede of people,” says Daphne. “Gates B, C, D and E are dotted all around the perimeter fence.”
“There’re more people scheduled to come this weekend than live in our entire town!” replies Claude, holding the tickets to her heart.
“But where’s everyone going to fit?!” Fleur asks as we eventually reach the very steepest point of the hill, pausing on the brow to behold the fabulous view on the other side.
“Well, how about down there?” Daphne laughs, turning to us with saucer-like eyes. We all emit a succession of gasps, cheers and whimpers ...
Astlebury Festival!
Wowwwwwwweeeeee!
In the green valley before us, literally thousands and thousands of tents are pitched already! Hosanna! Tents, tents and more tents as far as the eye can see! Orange tents, blue tents, green tents, red tents, yellow tents, plus a zillion other hues and tones, crowd the two square miles of festival site. Teensy-weensy one-man bivouacs, massive hulking ten-man “field hotels,” swanky Winnebagos with blacked-out windows, battered camper vans covered in spray paint, sprawling makeshift hippie communes fashioned from wood and tarpaulin, as well as, dotted throughout the site, smoky bonfires, yellow twinkling nightlights and occasional exploding fireworks. In the middle of the settlement, we can just about recognize the legendary main Hexagon Stage, where Spike Saunders and Amelia Annanova will be performing this weekend; its angular framework is still being hammered together by a swarm of technicians and roadies.
“It looks just like a proper city!” squeaks Fleur.
“Or a magical kingdom!” gasps Claude, although we can barely hear one another now, as all the various vehicles’ sound systems are battling for airspace. The Kings of Kong are blaring out from a large battered mini bus ahead of us. Behind us, a man in a motorcycle sidecar is letting rip with some African bongos, totally drowning out Panama and Co.’s hideous atonal screeching.
“It all just looks so amazing,” I say, feeling a bit choked.
the great outdoors
As we trundle up to Astlebury’s Gate A, the track divides into five sections, where five different, yet curiously similar, big, burly security guards are examining tickets. In the lane adjacent to us, Panama’s Land Rover glides into view, its electric windows winding down, displaying the gruesome gang in their full glory.
“Wonderful,” Claude smiles, quickly putting on her best polite face to greet our security guard.
Every morsel of space in Panama’s Land Rover is full of bags and cases; in the back trunk area, the place usually reserved for dogs, I spot Zane’s fake-tanned face, squashed and gasping for air.
“Best place for him,” Claude mutters.
“Abigail, speak to the man,” Panama commands, chucking the tickets at her friend as a fierce security guard with a jet black ponytail and a name badge that seems to read “Boris” approaches their vehicle. At the same time, we’re being faced with our own rather scary security guard dressed in the uniform black shirt, black combat trousers and a pair of twenty-holed Doc Marten boots. Hagar, for that’s his name, is a formidable presence with fire red hair, huge hands like clusters of bananas and a nose reminiscent of the Blackwell School caretaker’s prizewinning strawberries. After snatching our tickets and holding them up to the floodlights, Hagar peers at us all suspiciously, raising the right-hand section of his fluffy ginger mono-brow.
“Everything okay?” smiles Claude. “This is Gate A, isn’t it?”
Hagar looks at Claude, sighs, then points at the huge ten-foot, neon orange Gate A sign glowing behind him.
“Oh. Okay!” giggles Claude nervously. “So we’re fine then?”
“Hmmm ... well ... s‘pose,” grumps Hagar, whipping a clipboard from under one beefy arm and flicking through the pages crossly before scratching his head a bit, then smiling in a rather sinister way.
“Right ... okay ... take these,” he huffs, eventually producing four elegant golden wristbands from a drawstring bag. We fasten them tightly to our wrists.
“And don’t you be taking these off before you leave on Sunday, right, ladies?” Hagar snarls. “Under pain of death. Or worse fates.”
Gulp.
“Er ... but what if I, y’know, accidentally lose mine?” ventures Fleur foolishly.
The atmosphere inside the Mini turns distinctly chilly.
Hagar sighs again even more deeply, causing the curly red hairs pouring from his nostrils to flutter; then he pushes his face slightly through Claude’s window, so close that we can practically smell on his breath the small children he’s just gobbled up for supper.
“Oh, well, then, in that case, you just come and find your uncle Hagar,” snaps Hagar the-turning-out-to-be-really-quite-Horrible, swiveling around and winking at Boris. “I’ll just be sitting here on the edge of my portacabin, waiting to give you another one.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Hagar, sir. We won’t lose our wristbands,” interrupts Claude, trying to make merry of Hagar’s sociopathic tendencies. “We won’t be any trouble. And can I just say, by the way, what a great job you’re doing checking all these tickets? I mean, wow!”
Claude sure can kiss ass when she has to.
Hagar looks at us all, allowing a small proud smile to cross his lips before wandering off to spook out the car behind us.
“Let the Silver Mini through!” he shouts at the gatekeeper.
“What a simply lovely man,” says Fleur dryly. “I hope we meet him again soon.”
Meanwhile, over in the other lane, events don’t seem to be going as smoothly for Panama.
“What do you mean, we’re in the wrong lane?” squeals the unmistakable Panama Goodyear in full hissy-fit mode.
“Panama, pipe down,” Derren says, thrusting their tickets again under Boris’s nose. “I think you’ll find you’ve made a mistake. Nobody informed us we had to go to a specific gate.”
“It’s written all over the tickets,” growls Boris, folding his tattooed arms.
“Is it?” squeaks Derren, examining the pieces of paper again.
“And all over the website,” continues the guard.
“Well, we didn’t see any of that! And we’re here now!” flaps Panama.
“And I think you’ll find that those tickets are perfectly legitimate. So if you’ll be so good as to stand aside and let us in, I won’t report you to your boss.”
“I’m not saying the tickets aren’t legitimate,” says the guard firmly. “I’m saying you should be at Gate D.”
“But, but surely ... surely you can turn a blind eye to it?” simpers Derren. “I mean, no one needs to know. Do they, er, ahem, sir?”
This is the most polite I’ve ever heard Derren being, ever.
“Look, that’s more than my job’s worth,” Boris huffs, obviously having had this conversation eighty-five times already today. “We have these rules for a reason. If everybody came through the same Astlebury gate, there would be a safety threat.”
“You should have known about this, Abigail!” Panama fumes wildly, poking her cohort’s chest. “You were in charge of travel plans!”
“Pggghhh ... God help them then,” hoots Claude, loving this unfolding drama.
“Shh ... they haven’t even noticed us yet!” laughs Fleur, putting her finger to her lips.
“If I make an exception for you, then I’ll have to for everyone,” says Boris firmly, although clearly feeling a little guilty.
“Okay, okay!” flaps Derren, fiddling about in hi
s wallet and pulling out a large note. “But are you sure there’s no way we can dissuade you?”
Derren looks at Boris arching one smug eyebrow and waves the money closer to him. It looks like a £100 note to me. You can see Boris is quite tempted; it’s probably more than he’s earning in the entire day. But then a deciding factor presents itself noisily.
“Oooh, that’s right! Go on! Take our money!” sneers Panama, throwing her head back to snort. “Take the bribe! Pah! You should just let us through anyway, you pumped-up gibbon!”
Panama begins leaning across Abigail, pointing at Boris and shouting, “Did you know that my father is the CEO of the entire European wing of Farquar, Lime and Young Pharmaceuticals? He could buy this whole piddling security firm, fire the lot of you and reemploy gibbons in less time than it would take you to pocket that hundred-pound note!”
“Precisely, Panama!” pipes up Leeza in the backseat dumbly.
“Shut up, both of you!” snaps Derren, praying Boris hasn’t heard that bit.
No chance.
“Oh, is that right?” snarls the guard, turning and signaling to his colleagues.
“She didn’t mean that!” shouts Derren hopelessly. “Errr, she has Tourette’s syndrome! She hasn’t had her special brain medicine today yet! Honestly!”
“Land Rover leaving for Gate D!” shouts the guard, signaling to the other guards. “This one’s going to the back of the queue over in Hayward’s Pasture.”
“Hayward’s where!?” squeaks Derren.
“Hayward’s Pasture,” says the guard with an evil smile. “Right back where you joined the queue for Gate A, but approximately a mile to the left. Just follow the signs.”
Derren and Abigail stare at each other in horror as Panama grumpily slams the Land Rover into gear and speeds off, shouting something unrepeatable about Boris’s mother.
“Oh, and one thing, kiddiewinks,” shouts Boris, now standing shoulder to shoulder with Hagar, who is waving them farewell with a murky handkerchief. “When you get there, make sure that the letter on the gate matches up with the letter on your ticket. ’Cos we wouldn’t want all this to happen again, would we now? Bye!”
“Awwwww, bye-bye!” laughs Fleur, waving at the trail of dust in Panama’s wake.
“Come on, Daphne! Onward!” laughs Claude, signaling at the wide-open Astlebury gates in front of us. “Let’s get going before they change their minds about us too!”
“No worries!” laughs Daphne, slamming the Mini into first gear and speeding away.
We’re in!
the magical glade
“So what’s with the change of plan, Claude?” I yell, wrestling a rucksack, a huge cardboard box and two sleeping bags the half mile from the car park to the Magical Glade Quadrant where we’re setting up camp.
“Yeah, Claude. What gives? I thought we were camping near the Hare Krishna fields where it’s apparently more chilled out,” shouts Fleur, carrying a monogrammed vanity case and rolling a black Samsonite suitcase through the long dry grass. Numerous pieces of woodland glade and wildlife are becoming trapped in Fleur’s wheels as she sashays through. However, the shirtless boys hammering tents up are distracting her too much to care.
“Noooo, you must have misheard me,” says Claude, who is lugging the most stuff of all. “The Magical Glade has wonderful facilities! And it’s close to all of the different stages too. And look! They’ve decorated the forest with pieces of muslin and fairy lights! It’s so pretty! We should definitely camp here.”
“Suits me, Claude, as long as we can stop walking,” shouts Daphne from behind a pile of bags and boxes. Her silver one-man tent is in a bag over her shoulder.
“Okay, then ... well, what about here!?” yells Claude, pausing momentarily to survey the setting. “This is the perfect spot! Here by this oak tree! Everyone agree?”
“Yeah!” we all puff and pant.
“So Fleur,” says Claude, holding up the tent instructions, which appear to be in Cantonese, “you could change a tire, fair enough, but can you put up tents? I mean, I’d ask Ronnie, but as we all remember, she was chucked out of Brownie Guides after two weeks for sarcasm.”
I sigh in agreement. I hated that pack leader with a passion.
Fleur lets out a little incredulous chuckle, chucking down the pegs and poles of our four-man midnight blue tent.
“Huh! Does the pope have a balcony, Claudette?” she laughs. “Of course I can put up tents!”
The thing you have to remember about Fleur Swan is, she tells lies.
After ten attempts to erect the impossible tarpaulin puzzle, during which time Fleur proves extremely useful at messing about, doing handstands, flirting with some lads from the nearby camper van and eating the emergency M&Ms, but no use whatsoever with tents, Claude appears to be brandishing a camping mallet at Fleur, who in turn threatens to hitchhike home, taking her spare sleeping bag with her.
Me? I stay well clear, sussing out a nice tree to sleep underneath, possibly in another field away from the pair of them. Thankfully, after a lot of loud arguing, a guardian angel appears in the form of a nice Welsh hippie called Gavin with long flowing dreadlocks. Gavin points out that our outer tarpaulin is in fact, inside out, our main supporting tent poles are through the incorrect slots and, more shameful still, we’re using our tent’s roof as a ground sheet.
“So close, yet so far,” mutters Fleur. “Let us never speak of this again,” announces Claude once our Good Samaritan has wandered off in search of cider.
Minutes later, with a few vital alterations ... we have a home! “Now all there is to do is put this up!” says Claude, unveiling her pièce de resistance: a huge bright red flag standing at just over 1.5 meters high, reading in huge black paint letters:
“Wow!” gasps Fleur. “We’re like our own republic now or something!”
“Yeah, and there’s no excuse for getting lost,” announces Claude, attaching it to the tent’s roof, where it flutters majestically in the evening breeze.
We all pause a second to survey our handiwork.
Agggh! It feels so marvelous to be here!
As Claude and I start to become a touch sentimental, Fleur disappears into the tent to begin commandeering space for herself.
“Ooh my God! It’s actually quite dark in here!” she shrills. “Did anyone bring a flashlight? And I feel a bit hay-fevery too. Has anyone packed tablets?”
Claudette rolls her eyes, then looks at me and winks. We both crack up giggling.
“Right, girls,” says Daphne, crawling out of her tiny silver tent. “How’s it all going?”
“We’re good!” I say, smiling.
“You must be tired by now, eh? It’s nearly ten o’clock. Sheesh, I know I am,” she announces, rubbing her eyes dramatically, not sounding the slightest bit sleepy.
“Er, not really,” I mumble.
“Me neither,” says Claude.
“Oh,” says Daphne disappointedly, looking at her watch.
Then her mobile phone bleeps again. Another text message?
Fleur lets out a little muffled grunt from inside the tent, sounding very much like she may have chanced upon Claude’s stash of muffins.
“Daphne Swan!” she shouts. “You’re not trying to get us to go to bed, are you?”
“No, er ... nooooo!” mumbles Daphne. “Well, not really.”
“What do you mean not really?” shrills Fleur, poking her head out of the tent, with chocolate chips around her mouth.
“Mmm ... well ... ,” says Daphne, looking a little put on the spot, “it’s just that ... er, I was going to pop along to another field and sort of ... ahem ... meet someone.”
Daphne mumbled that last part. I didn’t quite catch it.
“You’re going to what?” squeaks Fleur. “Meet someone? Meet who?”
“Nobody you know, Fleur. It’s just someone I met when I was in Nepal,” stammers Daphne, “who, er, happens to be at Astlebury too.”
“Oh, right! Now, that is convenient,
isn’t it?” scoffs Fleur.
“Did they come all the way from Nepal especially? That’s a long bus ride!” Fleur is clearly loving this piece of gossip.
“No, he’s British,” huffs Daphne. “And he’s called Rex, actually.”
“Rex!” hoots Fleur.
“My aunty had a dog called that,” says Claude seriously, before deciding to stay well out of this conversation.
“Rex!” repeats Fleur. “Well, that’s just great, isn’t it? There you were, groveling up to Dad saying you want to chaperone us! And all the time you’ve got a boyfriend up your sleeve that you want to hook up with!”
“Pgghh! He’s not my boyfriend, actually,” fumes Daphne. “And I offered to escort you out of the goodness of my heart.”
“Goodness of your heart, my ass!” shouts Fleur.
Claude looks at me and sighs.
“Fancy a can of Coke?” she says, rooting about in her rucksack.
“Ooh, go on then,” I say, sitting down on the camping rug.
“You’re just a troublemaker, Fleur. Always have been!” sniffs Daphne.
“Pah, takes one to know one!” splutters Fleur. “Dad would never have known Tarrick was climbing through my window if you’d not reset the burglar alarm!”
“Oh, pur-lease, that was your own stupid fault!” shouts Daphne. “Who in their right mind asks their boyfriend to climb up the front of their house?”
“Oh, shut up, Daphne!” hisses Fleur.
“You’re the one who should be shutting up, Fleur!” snaps Daphne.
“Oh, for the love of Moses, both of you shut up!” shouts Claudette. “You’re beginning to drive me loopy!”
Both the sisters stop bickering and turn around, folding their arms.
“Thank you!” Claude says, standing up and looking like she’s about to knock the girls’ heads together.
“Right,” she says, turning to Fleur. “So, as far as I can gather, you, Fleur, want rid of Daphne, is that right?”
“Hmmph,” says Fleur,
“And you, Daphne, want to go and meet your pal Rover?”
“It’s Rex, actually,” says Daphne meekly. “But yes, I do.”
