Dunno about anyone else, but I hate multipart posts. In my defence, I finished yesterday's at 6 o'clock, at which point I had to leave the office to head off to a writing group meeting.

So anyway, where was I...


God, Saturday was hot. Incredibly hot. Bloody-hell-you-must-be-joking hot. I mean, don't ask me exactly how hot, but put it this way — the incredibly tall bloke who seemed to spend the entire festival wearing a red lycra minidress actually took his blonde wig off a couple of times.

But for everyone else, this meant that lying down with a hat over your face was by far the most sensible option. I think over the course of the day we lazed around in the Body and Soul area (during which a light aircraft circled the site several times towing a banner saying "Bog: Will you marry me? Whip" — and apparently Bog said yes. Awwww.); we idled around Tom's Top Tent, where eccentrically-bearded DJ Tom Middleton (who was sporting a very fetching bucket hat printed with lots of little copies of the Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe portrait) had got one of his mates to play a set of songs everyone's ashamed to like, where we gulped vodka cocktails and listened to some top quality cheese; and we collapsed flat on our backs by the main stage — which looked like this:

— look! Actual sunshine! In England! And no litter! —
and basically inhaled cold liquids to stop ourselves shrivelling up like little shrivelly things.
People were actually dancing during this. And two brave souls took it upon themselves to carry Tom Middleton around his tent in a sedan chair. Presumably, they then had to be immersed in vats of ice.

The afternoon took us over to the vodka bar for a DJ set by the immortal John Peel [note for Americans — he's had a radio show here since the 60s, and he's been at the forefront of pretty much every major musical movement that's broken over here, from hippy, through prog, punk, indie, dub, reggae and all sorts of dance music]. Now, it has to be said, Peely is a crap DJ. He doesn't mix. He doesn't segue. He obviously doesn't hold any truck with working out a set in advance. How do I know this? Because he spent most of the hour or so he was playing grabbing handfuls of 7-inches out of his record box and cradling them like his babies, leafing through them with a dreamy look on his face:

Look! There he is! There, in the distance!
"So you press this button to play them, do you? Marvellous."
But he gets away with it, because there is nobody else who could possibly play nosebleed gabba at a Chill festival and follow it with a Scottish country reel. Then Status Quo. The place was absolutely heaving — so much so that the stewards had to take down the walls of the tent — and I swear the roof actually levitiated at one point. I think it was when he played Abba. Some things never change.
Being Peely, he finished his set with a some folk music, a recording of the Anfield crowd singing 'You'll Never Walk Alone", and 'Teenage Kicks'. Cue exodus of dazed Chillers, some of them looking rather bug-eyed and chewing fruit pastilles with great enthusiasm. Can't think why.

Once things had cooled down a little, burge and I introduced our camping buddies to the delights of Ralph Myerz and the Jack Herren Band, who we'd seen last year. They're a bunch of Norwegian loonies, none of whom are called Ralph Myerz or Jack Herren, and they're the sort of band you only find at the Big Chill. They have the obligatory bloke-with-a-laptop, but they also have a guitarist/bass player, a keyboard player, a mad drummer and an even madder percussionist. And it all comes together in a sort of gloriously lolloping cockeyed funk driven along by the drummer, whose role model is obviously Animal from the Muppets, and the percussionist, who's been known to jump up and down on his congas. Not something you'd want to do without protective equipment.
Here's the funky drummer, telling us that back in Norway, nobody believes that they have so many friends in England:

Note the obligatory Bloke-With-Laptop-And-Turntables.
And all this going on backed with the spectacular sunset I posted before, but just in case you've forgotten (and because I'm rather chuffed with the photo) here it is again:


At this point, the campfire storytelling session which I mentioned before we left was due to start. I'd had a look at the website of the people who organised it, NuPoetics, and it looked like they weren't into my normal sort of stuff, which is short stories, so I'd done something I haven't done for a few years — wrote a poem. So off we trundled, up the hill to the Art Trail, to find this mythical campfire.
Couldn't find it anywhere. After half an hour or so of wandering around bizarre artworks, Andrea pointed out that it might be an idea to ask a steward. Well, it doesn't occur to me. I'm a man. Fortunately, the lad in question pointed out a tiny little spark further up the hill, so we trekked up to find a bunch of people clustered around an oildrum with a few flames flickering around the top and a capable-looking bloke tossing bits of wood in.
'Are you going to stay here and keep this going?' a small, elfin girl asked, hopefully.
'Can't, really,' said Capable Man. 'I'm the Health and Safety Officer for the whole fesitval. But I'll leave you a fire extinguisher."
So, anyway. There were about a dozen people, four of whom were involved with NuPoetics. All obviously well used to reading in public, though not so much used to reading around an oildrum with the paint steadily blistering on the side, on a hill, with the Quantic Soul Orchestra pounding away in the valley (and they're very good, incidentally). Some of the poems were damn good — I particularly liked Jo 'The Li'l One' Burns, who's very cute, Peter AKA The New City Scribe, who's a bit of a dude, and Kate Noakes, who has a mermaid fixation. There was also a very hyper lesbian from Brighton called Annabelle, who kept forgetting her poems because she hadn't written them down, and a sweet Goth called Victoria, who'd been brought up in Germany but had just returned to Britain for the first time since she was little.
I decided that there was no point being intimidated (and besides, at least I wasn't about to forget my stuff, cos I had written it down), so I got up, somewhat terrified, and introduced myself. By this time, QSO were thumping away like a good 'un, so I had to raise my voice quite a bit, which isn't ideal (and always makes me sound more London — I didn't recognise my own voice at all). And the heat from the oildrum was singeing the hairs on my legs. Still, it gave me something to concentrate on.
The poem's about the Arabs in Spain, by the way. I don't want to post it here, but if people are interested, I'll put it in the comments section.
It seemed to go down pretty well — everyone was getting a cheer, and I was worried it didn't really fit in with the other people's stuff, which tended to be fluffier, more optimistic, or more about making damn sure we all knew the poet was a lesbian and she'd travelled a bit. But I got some nice comments and encouragement from Kate and another of the readers, Clare Sudbery, who's a 'Chill Personality' and has just written a novel. I'm still not entirely keen on writing poetry, but I was surprisingly happy about reading in public, and I'm certainly up for doing it again.

Back down the hill for the night's headliners, Lemon Jelly, who are... go on, guess. Yeah. They're two blokes with laptops, one of whom plays the guitar. Actually, they're fab, they do their own animations to go with their tunes, one of which seems to involve Alan Moore floating over a field of Watership Down-style bunnies, and it's a great way to end a hot day.

And the site by night is also rather lovely, with all the stalls lit up. Cue another photo!




Now, presuming I can manage to not knock myself out at lunchtime, I'll write up the rest this afternoon. Beaky Mancs! Ukeleles! Bonkers covers! And Pink Floyd Goes Reggae!