A friend of mine, a veteran of many festivals in the UK such as Glastonbury, came up yesterday. One of the remarks he made was about how clean the festival site is, in terms of litter and general human debris. I was walking around quite early this morning, long before the gates opened, watching all the scuttling, the fixing, the tidying, and it really struck me how small a piece of the jigsaw performers really are when compared to everything else. The bins are emptied at 4:30 every morning by one of those giant trucks that resembles a mammoth navigating the treacherous lanes and alleys (it wakes everyone up the first morning, as it sounds like giant apocalyptic saucepans being hammered by huge-armed Vikings, but we get quickly used to it). There are gangs out with leveling machines (those big vibrating slabs of metal on pole things) sorting out the track and roads, gravel trucks, bark trucks, electricians, people just replacing a damaged lantern. Every venue has the chairs gathered up, the floors hosed and swept, the stages cleaned. There's an electric milk cart that zips around, loaded to toppling, delivering to all the cafes and of course during this, most of the coffee shops are already open serving breakfast. Backstage water urns are refilled, lost property filed, streams cleared, plumbing fixed, artworks straightened, transfers arranged, water recycled, lasers polished, lost children found, snakes removed, doughnut batter beaten. It truly is an endless list. Kudos to you all.
Today is a quiet one, which works well for us as it's also the anniversary of the passing of Helen. We'll get together a bit later for a drink and a few laughs over memories. We'll be at the ceilidh in the afternoon, then I'll be back on Game On 'due to popular demand' (which is Sandy's nice way of saying I didn't do too badly on Tuesday, despite dropping the C-bomb).
If you're still dawdling about coming on up, please do. The weather is lovely now, everything is open, the program is chokas and everyone is smiling.
Paul. 'Less mud, more doughnut'
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