Secret Garden Party

Kodak Colorsnap 2, a handful of friends, a tent, a straw hat and I took a break from reality and cavorted about in a flag-filled field for five days and nights. In other worlds, this is Secret Garden Party 2010.




Sometimes, something is so wonderful that you completely forget it will ever end. It felt like I had never arrived there, and like I would never leave. It just... was.



A melancholy kind of happiness, appreciating a moment only after it has passed. Sleeping on bales of hay and dancing long past dawn. Dry ice and survival cups of tea. One morning about six we fell into a tent, layered floor to ceiling with rugs and carpets, a lovely cool softness, like arranging yourself on a king-size bed on the yearly family trek through the M and S sale. Disrupting the hushness is a man being asked to move on. "But you can't make us leave! This is our Home!" Floundering and pleading he is escorted from the premises. We return to quiet breeze and the stillness of the Beach Boys. Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder).



Then there are the more sinister moments on piss-soaked knolls behind dancefloors. Lumberingly squeezed into a leather-zipped PVC two-piece suit, an aged member of the press dribbles above my head. "I've just taken three pills, and I'm waiting for them to kick in." Those little jabs of social conscience when you know life can't be like this forever. When shuddering back to reality you remember you're moving house in two weeks and the car has three days left on it's MOT. But that there are the unremitting jaunts of happiness on the wayside. Music, films and dogs. Tea, bread and penguins. Oblique rabbits.


1 comment:

  1. And if a double-decker buuuussss, crashes into uuussss...!

    Nice pics, the festival sounds amazing! Times like those are great, when everything's all otherworldly and dreamlike, like one big otherworldly dream. The everydayness of reality can get us down, but there is always a light and it never goes out :)

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