You might be surprised to discover that I am drunk in a lay-by in Penrith.
Worse, I could not tell you much more about my current location if I were to be tortured for information.
We came to Kendal Calling with Lucy.
We have not gone to the festival. I like the idea of festivals very much but will be at work in a taxi for most of this one, and in any case I will not even have heard of any of the people who are singing. Mostly I only really like the jolly sort of music that I can sing along to anyway. Abba is good for this. They are not playing at Kendal Calling.
We worked last night but I realised partway through the sunny evening that I was consumed with longing for a holiday, and so we are having two whole nights off this week. I feel guilty about such idle recklessness but also do not care. This week I am going to be a hedonist. It is because of the sunshine.
We packed the camper van today and followed Lucy up to Kendal Calling.
They would not let us on to the site, so a kind security guard let us park by the gateway to wait for her.
This was a fascinating thing to do, because all of the staff were arriving. The police were there as well. They were making sure that nobody had any drugs.
We made a cup of tea and sat in deckchairs outside the camper van and watched.
The police had a black labrador and a brown and white springer spaniel. They were having the loveliest time, the dogs, not the police, obviously. The police were not enjoying rooting through smelly rucksacks nearly as much as the dogs were.
Next to the gate was a large dustbin, marked: “Amnesty Bin” with a warning from the police that this was your last chance to dump your drugs.
People should really have used this.
Once you got past that then there were the dogs.
The dogs were bounding about with the waviest tails I have ever seen, clearly very pleased and proud of themselves for their terrific cleverness. Roger Poopy watched them with envy and great interest, clearly regretting his own unemployed status. Even in the short time that we were there they discovered all sorts of things, and one poor young man had to stand helplessly whilst the spaniel stood in front of him and pressed its nose firmly up against his pocket with the utmost excited enthusiasm.
The accompanying police were every bit as energetic, praising the dogs and bouncing after them eagerly.
If you are planning to come to Kendal Calling do not bother to bring drugs. Cumbria Police are keen. I mean really keen. They searched everybody.
Some people were not allowed to come to the festival at all, and were sent home again, even after their drugs had been taken away from them.
It was gripping. We sat and watched as captivated as if it had been an episode of A Game Of Thrones.
Eventually Lucy came out having pitched her tent and organised her life, and we went off to have dinner together.
We went to a little village called Askham, not very far away. I had cooked curry and Mark had made fudge, and we had bought a box of promising-looking Spanish wine.
We had just got to the fudge stage when a cross man came stamping across the road and told us that we couldn’t park there because it was The Highway.
We explained that we could if we liked, since it was a marked parking space, and he went away.
A little while later, a very round, cross lady came out, and said that she was a parish councillor, and she did not think that it was appropriate that we parked in their village.
Sometimes I can do middle class rudeness very well indeed, because there is no reason at all why we can’t park the camper van in any public parking space that we like, in any village the length and breadth of the country.
After some assertive explanation the lady went away again, having been insulted, and patronised, and feeling embarrassed.
We thought that the local inhabitants might be feeling worried about having a hippie festival and lots of drugs on their doorstep.
We were irritated that she had come out to talk to us, because we had been almost ready to go, and after that we had to stay a little longer, just to make sure she didn’t think that she had managed to make us go away.
We had got to go in the end, because it was going dark.
We dropped Lucy off at the hippie festival and hugged her and drove away.
We did not want to go back to Askham, because it w in the wrong direction, although we almost did anyway, because it would have irritated the inhabitants.
In the end we did not. We parked in this very lay-by.
Some nice people in another camper van were there as well, waiting for the festival to open tomorrow.
We sat outside in deckchairs in the dark and drank wine with them.
They were really ace company, and now I am drunk.
Mark is snoring next to me.
My eyes are closing all by themselves. I am going to go to bed.
Have a picture of Oliver on holiday with his friends. He has been adventuring by the sea in Northumberland.
We are going to go there tomorrow.
