Monthly Archives: July 2023

Oh my god. I can't move.
          I dreamed of static. A television tuned to static, distant radio waves, echoes of the Big Bang.
          Bloody hell, my back is killing me.
          And there is no static, just the steady splatter of rain on the canvas roof of my tent.
          I try to get up. My back makes a creaking sound, pins and needles shoot up and down my leg. I gasp, try to move, stretch out my leg. I get on all fours, like a dog, and the pain begins to subside. I bang my head on the side of the tent and I hear water rolling down, puddling. This is no life for a poet.
          What is this madness?
          The big bag of unsold poetry books served well as a makeshift pillow all night, until about four o'clock in the morning, once the cold had kicked in and, in my feverish shivering, I cricked my neck.
          I’m regretting every moment of this. Hating it. Why on earth did I say yes to this?

I was at a music festival, where I had been asked to perform poetry. Apparently it was something of an honour to be asked, and I was glad that the organiser had thought so highly of my work and judged me able to entertain a festival audience. Another poet had brought me in her car, and as we got closer to the bit of countryside where the festival was going to be held, a deepening sense of doom manifested itself deep within me. The rain didn’t help. I’d never seen such rain, and when we parked the car in what can only be described as a swamp, the sense of gloom rose within me and began to devour me whole.
          It was the whitest, most middle class place I had ever been. And this is saying something, because I grew up in Surrey. There were stalls where you could buy wicker baskets, or have your tarot read, or buy crystals, or tie-dye clothing. There were clay pots, or expensive rugs woven from yak. There were more yurts than I’d ever seen in my life, and if that wasn’t enough, you could actually order a flat-picked yurt to take away home with you. There was a stall selling pickle, twelve pounds a jar. There was a stall selling spraghi. I don’t even know what a spranghi is. I’ve googled it, and I still don’t know.
          Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a knees-up.  And some world music can be kind on the ears. But at the end of the day, I’m the product of a council-estate upbringing who lived in a tiny one room flat over an amusement arcade in an impoverished seaside town. I had no money in my bank account. And not for the first time in my life, I felt truly alien to everything around me. I was not in the mood for a knees-up. If anything, I was more in the mood to go home.
          I remember texting a friend in Swindon. Don’t worry, mate, he said, if you really don’t like it, you can come and stay here, we’re only half an hour away. And this really touched me, and seemed much more genuine than all of the hoo-hah around, the plaintive yodelling, the exotic percussions, the families with children called Tarquin and Mathilda. Four days, I told myself. It’s only going to be four days.

I knew that I should have felt privileged, being here at this festival, and being paid to entertain people, that those who bought tickets had spent their hard-earned cash to attend and that I should snap out of whatever misery was holding me back, take a step back, and look at the wider picture. Who else do I know who is fortunate enough to have made a career which allows them to travel, and meet new people, and have new experiences, and all that bullshit? On the other hand, the festival was achingly middle class and wryly excluding. I knew that I had to make something out of the day.
          I shelter under the awning of a huge marquee. At the end of it is a small stage. There's an old man playing the tin whistle on the stage and in front of him are about sixteen people, watching, or else playing with their smartphones. At least he's got a larger audience than I had, last night. Ordinarily I would have been inclined to get the hell out of there, but a sudden shot of philosophical awareness paints him in a new light. Are we not both performers? He has his tin whistle, and I have my poems. Are we really so different?
          I close my eyes.
          The sound of the tin whistle is simple, plaintive, hardly overwhelming. It speaks of loss, and innocence, and something timeless. The simple notes draw me in. Liam with his bluster may have been crowd pleasing, if not a touch self indulgent, but this little old man with his tin whistle speaks of a deeper truth. The old man wears a shirt, jeans, and Wellington boots. He's so ordinary, and yet his music is pastoral, its high notes somehow speaking of the futility of existence and all of human endeavour. He's an artist, pure and simple, not a showman. There's no artifice here, no ego. We could be brothers, me and this little old man.
          At this moment, a marching band walks on stage. Four trumpet players, trombone, euphonium, then a marching drummer, then a saxophone player, and the crowd roars, and people run in from the rain attracted by the razzmatazz, and then two scantily clad dancers, and the little old man with the tin flute puts it down and picks up an electric guitar, and the crowd goes wild, and I go away and leave him at it, the bastard.

The soil at the festival is a dull red colour and it splatters over everything. The canvas sides of the stalls selling their Yak fleece blankets and yurt construction manuals get hidden beneath a layer of red clingy slime, and so do my trousers. I'd worn my finest cream chinos and one of the first people I'd seen that morning had said, ‘Good luck keeping those clean’. 
          I find a cafe set up inside a tent, Himalayan blankets and rugs spread across the floor with rows of bare wood tables, the kind that look as if they could give you a nasty splinter, and I buy a cup of tea for four times the price it might have been on the high street, and sit in the corner, the rain pounding on the canvas roof above and making a dripping sound which makes me want to go to the toilet even when I don't. I find my soggy notebook and I start work on a poem, feeling the need, if anything, to grab something back from what is turning into being a really naff day.
          All poets exist because they have a voice. Language is their plaything, of course, but content and feeling come from the soul. My mug of tea cools untouched as a torrent of words arrive as if from the ether, that mysterious place wherein one mosh capture free form images and themes as they flit and dance, pinning them to the page as they slot perfectly, holding hands with their neighbours to create a sudden magic. I can hear them in my head as I jot them in my notebook, each line arriving with an ease that I have not felt in a long time. And this, this makes up for everything. I may not be the flavour of the month, the new saviour of the spoken word scene, but my poems are written with intent and have made plenty of people laugh. I occasionally intersperse my own output with true feeling, emotion and greatness. You can beat an audience into submission, but not everyone can then reach in and save them, coax them back out with the tender dance of language.
          I can only describe it as a trance. Everything around me dissipates, becomes meaningless, until the whole of existence is concentrated on the nib of my pen, the atoms within the flow of ink. The page of my notebook fills until, oh, until I can write no more. How exhausted I feel as I replace the cap of my pen, take a sip of freezing cold tea, and feel that pounding thump in my chest which only comes when I know that I have written something that might be truly remarkable.

I think part of the problem stemmed from the fact that the festival was so very serious. It was earnest, sickly earnest with its emphasis on experience and culture. My own culture was a mishmash of pop and New York comedy, humour, drag queens and cabaret, snooker, science fiction, sitcoms and sex. The festival was about as funny as Winchester Cathedral and about as sexy as Worcestershire. If it was any more earnest then it would probably have toppled over under its own weight. I felt like an interloper, too broke to afford anything other than the fish finger sandwiches which were ironically churned out from a van shaped as a fish finger, for eight quid a pop, which included a serviette and a paper plate.

The poem is a meditation on the futility of existence. It uses the metaphor of the image of an eyeball floating in a glass of red wine, (Merlot), as a commentary on the internal struggles we all face to justify an enjoyment we might gain from our own amusements. It uses the language of chance to tell the simple tale of a widow in her dacha on the outskirts of the Russian town of Omsk, who pines not only for that one western indulgence - a glass of red wine - but also for her lost youthfulness, ravaged by time and the harsh winters. For her whole life she pines, pines, pines, for the wine, wine, wine, underneath the evergreen pines, pines, pines, so that she can emulate the decadence of the people she sees on her television and in films, that she can hold a glass of wine. And the moment she finally gets a chance to do so, the man in the dacha next door is accidentally vaporised in a freak gas explosion, and his eyeball falls down her chimney and lands, plop, in her glass of wine. It is a stirring and heartbreaking image which says so much about the human condition, and I realise, as I sit there in that lowly festival tea shack, that it's probably one of the best things I've ever written.
          And this puts me in something of a good mood for the remainder of the afternoon. In spite of the rain, in spite of the discomfort, the ceaseless dripping, the intense damp, the pungent and pervasive aroma of mould and bad hippy breath, the endless queues for the chemical toilets and the dissatisfaction of not having had a good dump in days, in spite of all of this, the new poem puts me in a very good mood.
          I leave the tea shack and wander in a happy daze, slowly, carefully, so as not to get any of the red mud on my cream chinos. I submit to the rain. Just like the old lady in her dacha, I let life and circumstance overtake me.

Oh jeez, I really need to go to the loo.
          I'm at a stall selling privet saplings. This is the only musical festival I've been to where someone might decide, hmm, let's go and buy some privet saplings. I'm at the stall not because I am particularly interested in privet saplings myself, but because I've just seen one of the other poets, let’s call her Jade Finch, flouncing like a ghost in the drizzle, all flowing scarves and wistfulness, almost angelic in the pouring rain, and I don't want her to see how damn miserable I am. So I hop into the privet sapling tent and pretend to admire the privets in order to let her past but now someone has stopped to talk to her. I can hear them, even under the heavy thudding of rain on the canvas roof, telling her how mystical her poetry, and how they could all go out some time and buy some crystals together, and perhaps do some incantations and chants, and Jade seems up for it. And if I emerge now from the privet tent, then things would get very embarrassing. And now I need to go to the loo.
          'Can I help you?'
          'No, I'm fine, thank you'.
          'Let me know if you need any help'.
          'Thanks'.
          'Are you in to topiary?'
          'I'm sorry?'
          'Topiary?'
          'Is that like origami?', I ask.
          'No, sir'.
          'I once booked myself some origami lessons at a community college. It folded'.
          'How very unfortunate, sir'.
          'It's a, erm, it's a joke'.
          The pressure in my bladder is building up. Jade is still nattering away. At some point I am just going to have to face her. But the embarrassment of her seeing me wet and miserable in the middle of the day at this sodding festival mitigates against making a sudden exit.
          'The humble hedge is making something of a come back', the salesman continues. 'Privet is a very versatile species.'
          'Have you got a rear entrance?'
          'I'm sorry?'
          'Is there a way out of here that doesn't involve going out the front?'
          'No, sir'.
          Because Jade Finch has never seen the real me. None of the other performers have. The version of myself which stands on the stage is nothing like the real version of myself that I have to live with. I might be jovial and funny and comedic once I'm behind the mic, but when I'm at home or on my own, or particularly in the middle of the day, I'm a miserable bugger. It's why I wear specific clothes in which to perform, it's like putting on a costume and becoming another person. And right now, I'm the genuine Roland Garnier. I don't want Jade to see me.
          And on top of everything else, I really need to go to the loo.
          Rain drips from the sides of the privet sapling tent. It's not a comfortable sound.
          'I'm sorry about this ', I say to the gentleman in charge of the stall. 'I really am'.
          I crouch down on all fours and pull up the side of the tent, wrenching the canvas away from one of the Guy ropes, and I slide myself flat on the damp floor, underneath the canvas, and out into the fresh air. I might even have knocked over a couple of privets.
          'Hey!'
          Bladder full, I run to the row of chemical toilets. Oh, how I imagine the relief of getting there and relieving myself! It becomes the most important thing in the world, and as I run and slide around in the mud and see the faces of the other people, I feel that they must know why I'm running. I'm not running to escape. I'm not even running from myself. I'm running for the one purpose that running was probably invented for. I turn the corner and stop in my tracks.
          There's a queue. It's a long, long queue. It stretches from the chemical toilets right past the shamanic lawyers and the new age holistic car mechanics, right as far as a small stage where there's currently a choir of men dressed in flowing robes, humming in perfect unison. It's too late. I know that I can't queue for this long, and the pressure is building up in a way that probably doesn't happen with the middle classes. There's nothing for it but to head straight for a copse of leafy, verdant rhododendrons just behind the log drummers workshop tent.
          Nobody is looking. I merge myself into the leafy vegetation, it's like a piece of thick rainforest jungle transposed, and suddenly, I feel myself alone amid the fleshy leaves and the roots. The further I move into the thicket, the more the overhanging branches shield me from the worst of the rain. I shuffle myself as far as I can from the prying eyes of the other festival goers, into a small clearing where the noise and the movement seem less pronounced. And then, in absolute solitude, I unzip my fly and begin to urinate.
         And the bliss. Oh, the blessed relief! I close my eyes, and for the first time in ages I feel myself relaxing. Everything bad about the day melts away, even my back pain, and I start to think, well, maybe this isn't such a bad place after all.
          'Oh my god!'
          I look up. Three people, right there in front of me! And there's no disguising what I'm doing. Indeed, steam rises from my pee stream as if accentuating my purpose. The lady in front is carrying a clipboard. The two behind are a woman and a young man. And she's wearing a very purposeful hat.
          ‘Afternoon’, I say, in a very cheery tone.

The cheapest option seemed to be to spend the rest of the day sitting in the spoken word tent. At least here I’ll not be tempted to buy anything. I’ve brought my own fold-up chair with me, and it seems the most exuberant luxury possible to be able to sit down somewhere that wasn’t damp or muddy. During the night, when my back had been at its worst, I’d set up the fold-up chair inside the tent and sat down, my head touching the canvas roof, just for the sheer blessed relief of not having to lie down. My fold-up chair seemed to be my only friend in the entire place.
          The spoken word tent was a medium-sized marquee with a stage at one end. It wasn’t as big as the other marquees. In fact, it wasn’t even as big as those that you might see in people’s back gardens from the railway line. The spoken word stage was the last item listed on the poster that advertised the festival, and as my name was the last listed on the spoken word tent’s own poster, which meant that officially I was probably the bottom of the bill for the entire festival. I didn’t mind that at all. All the pressure was off. The audience would have their expectations automatically lowered.
          So I sat there, and chatted with the other performers, most of whom were incredibly happy to be there, and they regailed me with stories of acts that they had seen, and how they’d stayed up till the small hours partying and drinking and having a fantastic time, and woken to the morning with yak’s milk and a sudden desire to take up the bongos. And I nodded and said that it all sounded wonderful, and that I’d enjoyed everything I’d seen so far, which was a lie, because I’d spent most of my time in my tent watching Netflix. 
          Every day at the spoken word stage, there would be a big name, a headline act. Today’s headline act was scheduled for just after the lunchtime break. I left my fold up chair at the side of the marquee and placed my poetry notebook on top of it, then went for a wander in the rain, wondering why I just couldn’t find any enjoyment in the festival. My back was still hurting. Everyone I met just seemed so fake, and I wondered if the problem was with me. Why didn’t I have the capability to enjoy myself? Was I actually a snob, preferring the comforts of a bed and a hotel room to the rawness of camping? Was I using my working class background as an excuse to suspect all of the other festival goers as faking whatever enjoyment they seemed to be getting from the event? Should I have been more grateful? Well, yes.
          I wondered about the new poem. Should I perform the new poem, when I did my set? It’s always bad news at a poetry gig when someone performs something that they’ve only just written, but on the other hand, not all of these people are geniuses like me. The new poem had been the only good thing to have happened at the festival, although I did have the seeds of an idea for a new poem in the phrase which kept coming to my lips. Festival wankers.
          I queued for a bit for a fish finger sandwich, to match the fish finger sandwich which I’d had for breakfast, and the fish finger sandwich I’d had for dinner the night before. But my cash supply was dwindling. Would they let me have half of a fish finger sandwich? I then decided to save some money and go back to the spoken word marquee, where there were free bottles of water for the performers.
          I was surprised when I got back to see that the place was packed out. A crowd had gathered to watch the big name headliner, and the crowd was so big that they’d had to open up one side of the marquee to let them see in. There must have been about four hundred people at that marquee. A-ha, I thought, at least I have my fold-up chair in there. I rummaged through the crowd, apologising profusely but telling everyone that I was one of the performers, that I just had to get there. But when I got to the front of the stage area, my fold-up chair was gone. The poetry notebook was on the floor. But the chair was gone.
          What the hell, I thought. Has one of these festival wankers made off with my fold-up chair? And that’s when I saw it. The fold up chair was on the stage, and the big name headliner was sitting on it, tuning his guitar. The big name headliner, who was so famous that his name was actually on the main festival poster, was sitting on my fold-up chair.
          I lingered for a bit, of course. But then I wandered out, into the rain, to the rear of the crowd who were gathering eagerly, some standing on tiptoes. The big name headliner started his set, brought the microphone close, and told the assembled crowd that he felt safe there, that he was going to tell us something he’d never told anyone before, not even his closest friends. He was bisexual, he said, and it was such a great weight lifted from his shoulders to tell the world this. There was a small gasp from the audience, and then a ripple of applause, and then the applause became thunderous, and I applauded too, and it seemed a magnificent and wonderful moment because, apart from anything else, this big name headliner had just come out to the world while sitting on my fold-up chair.

I performed the first of my two sets that afternoon. By then the crowd had gone, dissipated back into the drizzle. The overbearing thrum of someone else's music pulsated through the canvas walls of the spoken word marquee from one of the main stages. I had an audience of about five to begin with, and then three left, and then people who were wandering past came in, and I ended up with a very respectable eight. Four of these were a young hippy-ish couple and their two kids.  The kids had kept running around and I had to shout, because the band on the main stage was so loud. One of the kids spilled my wine. And the parents kept shouting at the kids while I performed. The kids were called Aria and Esher. I know this because I kept hearing, Aria, will you stop fiddling with that mic stand? The poor man is trying to speak,  or, Esher, stop that will you, Esher? That’s not nice. 
          I hastily amended my set. I’d wanted to do my poem about Orgasms, and my poem about odd shaped penises, and my poem about snogging an aardvark, but I couldn't, what with the kids there. Who on earth brings their kids to a world music festival, and then to the poetry stage of that festival?  And the moment I finished my set - inevitably, with the Beard Poem - the crowds started coming in on the way back from the main stage where the band had just finished. Random inquisitive souls pumped up by the throat singing and the techno sheltering from the rain in the poetry tent. They poured through the entrance just in time to hear me say, 'Thank you so much, everyone! My name is Robert Garnham, thank you for flying with me!’
          I handed over to the next poet, who now had an audience of about a hundred and fifty.
          ‘Cheers’, he said. ‘Nice one’.
          I’d wanted to perform the new poem. But the more I’d thought about it, the more I realised that it was terrible, it was too conceptual, and apart from anything else, I couldn’t read my own writing. When I finished performing, I stood by a small table where there were a selection of my poetry books for sale. Nobody was interested. Some of the books had probably got wet. I packed away the books, folded up my chair and walked back to my tent. I didn’t even feel like a fish finger sandwich.

The next morning dawned a little brighter, as did my mood. Maybe this was because there were now glimmers of blue sky amid the occasional showers. Or maybe it was because I was now one day closer to going home.
          The occasional showers persisted as I stood underneath my tartan umbrella in the queue for the chemical toilets. Jade Finch was in the queue in front of me, all unnecessarily bubbly and wide eyed and as fluffy as her poetry.
          'Did you see XXX last night? Oh my goodness, I didn't even know he was on the bill', she says.
          XXX was yesterday’s headliner at the spoken word marquee, the chap who had come out as bisexual while sitting on my fold-up chair.
          ‘No, unfortunately, I didn’t. I mean, I saw the start of his set, but there were too many people there and . .  Someone had taken my chair’.
          'He's the best, isn't he?'.
          'He's good'.
          There's nothing worse than toilet queue chit chat, and in any case, I was dying for a dump.
          'He did that poem last night, oh, you know the one, about the importance of recycling. Only halfway through you realise he's actually talking about his ex. And then he really racked up the emotion and the energy, and you'll never guess what . .'.
          'I was there'.
          'He started bodysurfing. I'd never seen such a large crowd at a poetry stage. He started bodysurfing the crowd! Like a rock god genius, and all the time he still had the mic and he carried on with the poem! Can you believe it?'
          'I was there'.
          'They're giving him an extended headline set tonight'.
          'HAAAAH!'
          'What is it?'
          'Sorry. My back just gave a twinge'.
          'I mean, we are just privileged to be on the same bill as him, that's what I say'.
          She was probably right. And thankfully, two cubicles opened up at the same time, so we went our separate ways. Having felt imposter syndrome at the best of times, this was merely another reminder just how low down the pecking order I was in the performance poetry community. But it didn’t matter, because I was determined to have a good day, and a good day started with a good dump.


I thought about having a fish finger sandwich for breakfast, or maybe a trip to the tea yurt and ordering whatever the cheapest drink happened to be on their menu. Instead I went back to my tent and ate half a packet of crisps that I’d found in my backpack. I looked once again at the poem that I’d written the day before and I couldn’t believe how bad it was. But not even this could dampen my increasingly good mood. Indeed, the only thing that could possibly dampen my increasingly good mood was the actual damp.
          I set up the coming-out fold-up chair inside my tent and I started work on the Festival Wankers poem. I couldn’t think of a good rhyme for entitlement. I decided that whatever might happen, the Festival Wankers poem should probably not be debuted at an actual festival, which seemed to make it all the more subversive that it should be written right here, right now. I wrote a whole verse around the subject of disposable income, having seen someone the previous day purchasing a wicker bedside cabinet.
          There was something of a spring in my step as I eventually went outside into the main part of the festival. I went to the tea yurt, but unfortunately, owing to a build-up of maggots in its rafters, the place had been closed down. This, the barista assured me, was merely a temporary setback, and he cited the bad climate along with the natural materials used in its construction as a possible reason why there had been a build-up of maggots. ‘It proves at least’, he explained, ‘That no chemicals had been used in the building process’.
          I went to the fish finger sandwich van and ordered a cup of tea in a polystyrene cup for five quid, then sat on the edge of a dance stage to enjoy it as a light drizzle was reflected in a rather sheepish sun. I took a deep breath and could feel the goodness of the countryside purring its way into me. Things can never be so bad, I thought, as they felt at the time when they were their worst. And just at the moment when you think life will probably get worse, well then, that’s the moment when things have already turned a corner.
          I went to the spoken word marquee. I’d decided that this would be where I’d spend the entire day. I didn’t care about the world music stages, I didn’t care about the stalls, I didn’t care about the expensive food or the fact that my wallet now had nothing in it. I would sit there, and I would watch every single act, and I would damn well enjoy it.
          And that’s exactly what I did. I sat there, for every act. And I felt relaxed, for the first time since I’d arrived at the festival. And the sun was out. They opened the side of the marquee again, just like they had when XXX had performed, and this seemed to draw people in who were walking past. Hello, they said, what’s going on here? They came in and they watched the poets, and they enjoyed it, and the more the sun shone, the more people started to enjoy it.
          It was about this time that I started to realise how wonderful people were. Not just festival people, but all kinds of people. I was there, and I felt a part of the whole show, and this was in spite of the fact that I had been a complete and utter misery the day before, perhaps noticeably so. By the time that it was my turn to perform, the sun was persisting enough for the actual stage itself to be moved outside, which meant even more people were stopping to watch. I had quite a sizeable audience, and they laughed at all the parts that they were meant to laugh along with, and I was brave enough to jump off the stage at one point, and go wandering with the mic, and people laughed at this and there were smiling faces everywhere, and it was so different to the day before. I finished my set to an applause which was far more enthusiastic than I’d probably deserved, but it didn’t matter, because it put me on a high, and even standing beside the table piled high with my poetry books which nobody then showed any interest in didn’t faze me in the least. The applause had felt so sweet. I may have been the very last name on the bill for the whole festival, but right at that moment, I didn’t feel like it.

I’m not a natural performer. People have often said that I change completely the moment that I get on stage. Which is to say, reading between the lines, that when I’m not on stage, then the vibe I give off is of a miserable so-and-so. The Robert Garnham who exists when he’s performing is totally different to the Robert Garnham who exists the majority of the time. The nerves go away and the world brightens, and something weird occurs deep down. And when I stop performing, the old me comes back fairly quickly, but some remnant of the performer version of myself still exists. 
          I sat back down after my set, and my abortive attempt to flog some poetry books, and I could feel the warmth of the world. Somewhere on the main stage, drums were sounding, and they did so with a rhythm which filled my heart with a sudden goodness. Oh my god, I thought, I’m starting to enjoy this festival. What on earth has become of me?
          The other poets performed. Jade Finch performed. XXX performed, and, maybe it was just my memory, but he didn’t really seem as ‘on it’ as he had done the day before. And with an hour to go before the day’s schedule for the spoken word marquee was done, the poet who had driven me to the festival whispered, ‘We’ll be leaving in an hour’.
          This was news to me. I’d assumed that I would be staying the next night and packing up the next morning. But now I realised that I only had an hour left at the festival. An hour to pack up my tent, an hour to pack my bags, an hour to endure the rain and the mud and the continual damp smell of canvas tents and incense sticks.
          ‘Fantastic!’, I whispered.
          ‘You can stay if you like . .’.
          ‘No! Just try and stop me’.
          I was off back to my tent and I think I managed to take it down in about six minutes flat. I stuffed it back into its bag, and I grabbed my backpack and my fold-up chair and my unsold poetry books, and I was ready to get the hell out of there.
          And that’s when I heard the drums again. The same band was still on the main stage. Those same drums that had thrummed into my soul just half an hour before, and filled me with a sudden goodness. And just for that second back then, I’d thought I was enjoying the festival. But I wasn’t, really. I’d actually just become resigned to it. Because the moment an escape route had opened, boom, I’d gone for it. What a fake I was! That just for that short period of time, just right then and there, I had become a Festival Wanker.