by Grace Dent
“Mmm, breakfast!” I say, imagining a big greasy sausage sandwich smothered in tomato ketchup.
“Exactly! Come on, let’s get a shift on,” says Claude. “If it’s escaped your attention, ladies, we have to have another fabulous fandango today. One even more fabulous than yesterday!”
pleasing paddy
Half an hour later, after ten Fleur Swan costume changes and an LBD decision to tape a note to Rex the Evil Giant’s boot telling him and Daphne that we’ve gone for breakfast, we’re ready to rrrrrock.
“Do I look like a dog’s dinner?” asks Fleur, looking utterly stunning in a pale turquoise cropped vest top and black mini kilt. Fleur’s hair is concocted effortlessly into that “messed-up San Fran beach babe look” that I tried so hard to do before Blackwell Disco. It’s knotted at the top with lots of tousled strands spilling out and a deep red silk flower placed in the middle.
“You look great,” I assure her.
“You too, Ron! Hey, fab T-shirt, Claude!” says Fleur, admiring Claude’s striking magenta Lycra number, which shows off her smooth brown skin and voluptuous curves.
We tumble down the lane, this time taking a left into a field marked Pastures New, where hundreds of stallholders are doing a roaring trade selling weird and wonderful food and drinks such as zebra milk and guava smoothies, char-grilled ostrich burgers, organic raspberry ripple gob stoppers and Romanian mung-bean goulash. If the food is weird, the stallholders are weirder; one woman in a long white cloak with a crown of leaves is selling cakes and cookies that promise to give you eternal life because they’re blessed by pagan priests.
It’s a nice idea, but the LBD are craving something greasy and unhealthful with a pint of coffee, so we join the queue at Bob’s Brilliant Breakfast Emporium and wait impatiently as the aromas of frying bacon and sausages drive us wild with salivation. It’s 10 A.M., and the entire site is alive again with hordes of people grabbing breakfast, stretching their limbs and contemplating a day of music and mayhem.
“Shall we eat these by the skate park?” suggests Claude, passing me a gigantic sausage sandwich served by a burly bloke with a buzz-cropped head. Claude nods over to the far side of the field, where Fireboard magazine is sponsoring a makeshift skating area with a huge death-defying ramp. From over here, we can already make out several skatey lads on boards shooting through the air, and the obligatory crowd of ditzy chicks lurking about, trying to catch their eyes.
“Yeah, let’s go and have a quick gander,” I say.
“Er, haven’t you seen enough skating for one lifetime?” asks Fleur, who is breaking her fast with a heap of Moroccan falafel.
“Hmmm, true,” I mumble as we saunter through the crowds to where around 100 totally hot lads with shaven heads, baggy trousers, ripped T-shirts and various battle scars are hanging about. About twenty of them are darting all over the wooden rink on cool customized boards, while the rest are hanging about in little cliques, posing, posturing and egging each other on to do excessively daft stunts. One guy, with green streaks in his hair and a bleached blond goatee, I recognize immediately as pro skater Tyrone Tiller; he was on the cover of last month’s Fireboard magazine, which I read in Jimi’s bathroom. Tyrone, who is well known for his reckless tendencies, is proving this by attempting to leap over six of his mates’ backs on a skateboard. As the LBD slump down with our food on the grass to watch, Tyrone’s followers are all lying down willingly, eager to be hospitalized.
“Gnnnnngnnn! Why are skateboard lads always so hot?” I say as Tyrone whips off his torn, dusty T-shirt to display a buff, tanned six-pack and a bottle-green scorpion tattoo creeping from the waistband of his khaki combat pants.
All the skating girlies cheer and gasp, including Fleur, who puts both fingers in her mouth and whistles.
“I know,” muffles Claude with her mouth full. “It’s a bit like Premier League footballers, isn’t it? I mean, you never see any proper losers doing that either.”
“Or surfers,” sighs Fleur. “Or lead singers in rock bands. Or the lad who runs the resort entertainment when you’re on holiday with your parents. Or the waiters in Italian restaurants. They’re all always hot!” Fleur stops and shakes her head. “So many boys, so little time.”
Tyrone shoots toward his friends, hitting the tiny ramp and propelling past five bodies before diving headfirst into the chest of his final victim. Ouch!
The boys both roll around on the floor, screaming in agony ... before eventually standing up, giving each other a high-five and starting to plan an even more idiotic stunt.
“Aggggggh!” I moan. “See? I fancy Tyrone Tiller even more now that I’ve seen that! What is up with me?!”
“Oh, I reckon that’s just normal, Ronnie,” sighs Fleur. “I only started fancying that awful Tarrick when he got thrown out of sixth form for fighting. I mean, the second he got that black eye, he suddenly started looking like Brad Pitt! It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Errrr ... anyway ... maybe it’s time to move on,” says Claude, suddenly looking a little agitated. I don’t think she enjoys the recklessness of the skate park too much. You can tell she’s dying to shout, “Stoppppit!”
“What’s up?!” I say, cramming the last bit of sausage into my mouth and licking my fingers.
“Ooooh, er, nothing,” says Claude, jumping up. “I was just, er, thinking that we should get on with exploring. There’s stacks we haven’t seen!”
Claude looks a little flustered. She turns around again and looks at the crowd of skaters and assorted hangers-on, then looks at us again and smiles.
“Okay, no worries!” I say as we all stand up to leave.
“Actually, girlies,” cheeps Fleur, “I had a fantastic idea this morning! But it would mean us all walking over to the Land That Time Forgot, then Remembered, then Totally Forgot Again field. It’s a bit of a trek though.”
“Fine by me,” says Claude. “Let’s go right away.”
And so we did. However, you need to remember two things about Fleur Swan and her really fantastic ideas:1. Her ideas, to the untrained ear, always sound verily fantastic. Take, for instance, the time in Year 7 when she decided to cut my hair into a “raunchy bob cut” in a bid to lure snoggage offers ... However,
2. Fleur’s “fantastic ideas” will get you into more trouble than you could ever imagine. In the case of the choppy bob, I ended up looking like I’d drunk a bottle of tequila, then hacked around a traffic cone with a hedge trimmer. Suffice to say, it wasn’t what I’d asked for.
These days, when I hear the term “fantastic idea” spill from Fleur’s lips, I tend to book a one-way ticket to Wigan or somewhere else bleak where I know she won’t follow me. So, all that said, please don’t ask me how the LBD all appear to be lying on our fronts, wearing only pairs of paper panties to spare our blushes, on makeshift treatment tables, in the back of a draughty marquee, coughing away incense smoke, listening to Peruvian nose flute chill-out music ... and having henna tattoos done!
Nooooooo!
“I’d like a really big, amazing, friendly sun shining out of my bum crack, please,” Fleur instructs the tattooist. “And can you put it high enough that my thong doesn’t hide it? Oh, and can you make the sun’s rays sort of shimmery and dancing and ... er, have you seen Spike Saunders’s tattoo?” she asks.
“Yeah, I know the one!” says the beautiful lady mixing powder and water in an earthenware pot.
“Well, I want it exactly like that, please!” smiles Fleur, who isn’t in the least bashful about being virtually in the nude, as she’s always being waxed, exfoliated and massaged for birthday treats back home.
“Any other details I should know?” laughs the lady.
“Ooooh, hang on, let me think ... ,” says Fleur. “Yes! I know! Can you write over the top of the sun ‘LBD Forever’?”
“LBD?” asks the girl, raising an eyebrow.
“Les Bambinos Dangereuses!” laughs Fleur. “Errrr ... it’s a long story. ‘LBD’ will do.”
“Y
eah! Let’s all have that done! LBD Forever!” says Claude excitedly. “And I’m going to have this peace dove, please!” she says, pointing at the menu. “Can I have it just above my belly button, please?”
“No problem at all,” beams the tattooist, throwing Claude a towel to wrap over her upper half. “And what about you?” she says, gazing straight at me.
I feel a bit sick now.
“Errrr ... ooh, now that I think about it,” I mumble, “I’m not so sure.”
“Awwwww, Ronnie!” squeal Fleur and Claude. “Stop being so flaky!”
“I’m not being flaky!” I moan. “How long do they last?”
“Well, up to ten weeks if you treat them well,” replies the lady, almost drowned out by the sound of a Malaysian dream-catcher mobile clanging away behind her.
“Ten weeeeeeeeks! Gnnngnnn!” I wimper. “That’s the whole summer!”
“Ignore her, she always does this,” announces Claude, taking charge, pointing at the menu. “Ronnie would like this fabby Celtic crisscross thing, please. On the nape of her neck, just underneath her hairline. That’ll look terrific, won’t it?”
“It’s a popular choice for petite brunettes,” nods the tattooist.
“Claude! Oooooh! You can’t make me ... my mum will go nuts ... and what if it doesn’t suit me? And ... phhghhh!”
I splutter and waffle, searching for words, before finally muttering, “Oh, okay then.”
In less than an hour, the LBD are fully clothed again, spat back out into the Field That Time Forgot, then Remembered, then Totally Forgot Again, comparing our wondrous henna designs. Fleur has got the rudest, most raunchy bum graffiti I’ve ever seen in real life. The sun looks really minxish and feminine. She’s even winking! Fleur’s thong is perched just underneath it, sticking out an inch or two above her kilt. Paddy will be sooooo pleased.
And me, well, I’m now the proud owner of this weird, punky, ancient Celtic symbol of love, spilling out of the back of my hairline and down between my shoulder blades! It’s a bit like the one Amelia Annanova has on her calf. It looks ... totally incredible!
I look really ... dare I say it ... sexy!
“Ha ha ha! LBD Forever!” shouts Fleur after examining my back and Claudette’s fabby belly-button dove for the umpteenth time, with such great gusto that festival folk turn round and stare at us like we’re crazy. Not bad going, considering we’re standing beside a weird performance artist bloke who thinks he’s a human grandfather clock and keeps shouting Boing! every five minutes.
“‘These are so cool!” laughs Claude, pulling up her magenta T-shirt again.
The reddish henna contrasts really stunningly with her brown skin.
“This was the most fantastic idea ever!” I chuckle. “Nice one, Fleur!”
That’s another thing about Fleur: Sometimes you’ve got to give her stupid suggestions a go ... or you really miss out on some wild stuff. “Okay, now I suppose we should make some contact with other cosmiverses,” announces Fleur dryly, nodding toward a marquee in the corner of the field with a huge fluttering sign written in spiky, silver letters.
It reads:
PEOPLE PODS-MAKING MILES IMMATERIAL IN MILLISECONDS
“What d’you mean?” I say.
“Well, we have to make daily contact with home to prove we’re alive, don’t we?” says Fleur. “Now, Claudie, you texted Gloria yesterday, didn’t you? She relayed the message around Planet Paddy and Magda?”
“Yeah, Mum said she’d give them both a call,” nods Claude.
“Er, what? Did you!?” I say, shamefaced.
Ooh, I feel totally guilty now. For all of my promises, I’ve pretty much forgotten about the Fantastic Voyage from the second I left the city limits. After a few hours here, it feels weird to think that normal life is carrying on outside the gates. Three cheers for Claude! Magda would have been absolutely frothing at the mouth by now. Especially if she’d found my mobile phone.
“So anyway, follow me, ladies,” says Fleur, sashaying toward the People Pod marquee, giving a sultry wave to the hunky promotion lads trying to drag people in. Claude and I totter behind, not certain what to expect. Inside the marquee, there’s a glass dance floor, with some loud, electro-funk music thumping out of hidden speakers. Behind a raised bar area, a lady with a shaven head and big thick spectacles is shaking bizarre-looking bright green cocktails. More strangely, all around the edge of the dance floor are tall metallic boxes, which look a bit like gambling machines. The contraptions are around the same height as we are, with keypads on the front in the center and cameras on the top that swivel round, following you as you pass them. This is all a little bit eerie!
“Wow! What are they?” coos Claude, pausing in front of a machine and stroking its neon pink keypad.
HELLO! WANNA PLAY WITH ME! flashes up a message across the screen.
“Ooh ... I don’t know about that!” laughs Claude, stepping backward in shock.
“They’re People Pods,” says Fleur. “Basically, they make a short film of you, then they zip the images through cyberspace!”
“Where to?” I ask.
“Wherever you want!” says Fleur. “You can send them to any e-mail address or mobile phone. I read about them in ElleGirl. I thought we could send Paddy one and ask him to do a quick ring around?”
“Yeah! How fab is that?” hoots Claude, tampering with the buttons on the pod again.
STOP TICKLING ME! the pod says.
“Hee hee! Look at that!” dissolves Claude. “Awww, poor Mr. Pod. I don’t like being tickled much either!”
“Right, then,” says Fleur. “Hey, who’s got a couple of quid?”
“Me!” I say, passing Claude the coins as I perfect my most over-the-top pout.
“Insert coins here,” points Fleur, grabbing some lip gloss from her bag and smoothing it over her annoyingly plump lips.
THANK YOU! says the pod.
In the blink of an eye, the screen is filled with a huge image of our faces.
It’s just like we’re on MTV!
“Yee-hah!” squeals Claude, straightening her bunches. “Ooh, guys, this camera makes me look really booby though, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, Claude,” I say, rolling my eyes and examining my own deflated balloons. “It’s the camera.”
“NOWTOUCH ME WHEN YOU’RE HAPPY WITH HOW YOU LOOK!” reads Fleur, examining the screen. “Right, girlies ... are we happy?”
Fleur throws her arms around our shoulders.
“Fleur! No doing rabbit ears behind my head!” I say, grinning and sounding a bit like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
“As if!” smirks Fleur.
“Ooh! Hang on a second! I’ve got one wonky bra cup!” shouts Claude.
“Say cheeeeeese!” shouts Fleur, pushing the button.
“Nooooo! Stop! Ooooh ... Cheese!” groans Claude as the camera begins to whir and play a sinister hip-hop tune, eventually slowing to a halt, then emitting a loud trumpet fanfare.
WANT TO SEE HOW GORGEOUS YOU LOOK? asks the pod.
Of course we do! Within seconds the pod is playing the LBD’s small screen debut: Fleur Swan, hogging most of the lens, resembling a Sports lllustrated cover girl, except for a large lump of falafel jammed in her front teeth; me, grinning like a demonic hobbit, with flipping Fleur making rabbit ears behind my head with one hand ... gnnnngnn; and on the other side, Claudie with one mitt down her own T-shirt, groping her left boob, with her mouth lolloping open and one eye crossed! This is all happening to a 132-bpm, garage-music backing track, so we look like we’re in a proper pop video! But we all look sooooo dumb! This has got to be simply the funniest thing we’ve seen for ages; in fact we’re howling so much we have to hang on to the pod to steady ourselves! Fleur sends a copy of the movie to all of our Macs. I’m going to print out a snap from mine and stick it on my wall. Then she quickly types in Paddy’s e-mail address with the message “Greetings from Astlebury!!” and presses “send.” She also sends a still image to Paddy’s and Daphne�
�s mobile phones.
Ping! Gone! Galloping through cyberspace! How cool is that?!
Within seconds Fleur’s phone quacks.
“It’s Daphne!” says Fleur. “She says ta for the pic and we should meet her and Rex by the Hexagon Stage. Ooh, shall I say we’ll give her a buzz when we get down there?”
“Yeah, that would be cool!” says Claude. “So, shall we move on?”
“Actually, I might just do one more,” announces Fleur, arching one eyebrow, fishing in her pink sparkly wallet for coins, and setting the pod’s timer to send out a picture at 10 A.M. tomorrow. Odd? Quickly the pod pings and the camera is whirring as the blonde minx flips around and pulls up her vest to expose the large henna sun in all its marvelous tattoo glory, as well as, naturally, a generous display of her pink dental floss thong. Fleur begins to gyrate like a demented pole dancer in time to the music, then furiously begins tapping buttons as the camera stops.
“Nooooooo, Fleur! Don’t!” gasps Claude. “Don’t send it to Paddy!”
“Oh, shut up,” says Fleur, typing in Paddy’s address again. “I like to keep him on his toes.”
“But I really don’t think ... ,” begins Claude, but by this point the video of Fleur’s tattoo has already hit the little-too-much-information superhighway.
“Now,” beams Fleur proudly, “shall we go and see some bands? If we run, we might just catch the Flaming Doozies! And Final Warning play after that!”
“Okay, to the bands!” Claude and I agree as we follow Fleur’s body art out of the marquee.
a bit of crash bang wallop
As we spill out of the Land That Time Forgot field, through the hectic crowds, hitting a winding track leading eventually to the Hexagon Main Stage, I immediately recognize in the distance Zander Parr, singer with the Dutch rock band the Flaming Doozies. That bloke can’t half screech!? As the crow flies, the Hexagon Stage is about half a kilometer away, but the VIP enclosure separates us from it, and ordinary punters like ourselves have to make a detour around its boundaries.
