The Field of Dreams

This morning l awoke to the loud barking of my phone. I was sweating copiously, my legs were cramped, my mouth as dry as a camel’s carcass, dribble crusted to my chin, and an unusually sharp and unfamiliar object poking me in my thigh.  A shopping trolley, as it disappointingly turns out. Completely disorientated, l could  feel  the sun beating through the window, no, four windows surrounding me, and l could just about make out muffled conversations and shuffling footsteps of crowds of people as they walked  right past me, totally unaware of my grimy, alcohol fumed existence. I groped for my phone, locating it in my jeans’ pocket. Clearly l had slept in my clothes last night. “We are up, are you coming for a cup of tea?” The question was met with a grunted response as l attempted a Houdini type escape from my sleeping bag. If Houdini had not had the use of one leg, one arm, and had had elephantitus in his remaining limbs. Eventually free and upright, the truth revealed itself – l had spent the night asleep in the backseat of a car. A fitting end to four days of debauchery that comprise a music festival, most of which had been conducted in the following manner:

7.30/8am : Awake to the sounds of teenage boys screaming obscenities to one another, and/or talking about enjoying sexual relations with each other’s mothers. Try and make sense of this as l was just about to kill a space-crocodile with my bare hands in my dream. Worry l have gone mad. Open one eye to reveal two friends in states of slumber, rolled up in sleeping bags, in my proximity. Roll over and promptly bounce off a half deflated air mattress and land on one of said friends. Receive insults and, as l crawl back onto my bed, wonder why my pillowcase is covered in neon pink smears. Crawl into tent porch in search of water to quench thirst. Can only find cider or warm flat diet coke. And a half eaten barbequed sausage. Gulp the coke. Hope the sausage is an illusion.

8.30/9am: Sunglasses hiding the hangover, stumble the half mile to the toilets and showers. Attempt to negotiate an obstacle course of guy ropes, tents, and empty beer cans. Silently curse the lively looking freaks who clearly have had a reasonable amount of alcohol and a full nights sleep, and who are leaping up the hill from the shower like new born lambs. Utter prayers to the God of Karma that they inadvertently step in a pile of teenage vomit and soil their shiny designer wellington boots.

9.10am: Armed with an armful of toilet paper, hold my breath as l tentatively enter one of the portable toilet blocks. Almost die. Close my eyes and try not to fall into the fetid cess-pit.

9.12am: Take deep heaving breaths as l cover my entire body in pink anti bacterial hand wash. Get some odd looks from passers by who clearly think l am having some drug induced hallucination. Wonder if this is how my pillow turned pink.

9.20am:  Stand naked in a dribbling shower amongst a variety of females in various states of undress. The pleasure of warm water and shampoo is close to heaven. Never want to leave. As l wash my face my hands come away covered in neon face paint. Mystery solved.

9.35am: Never underestimate the life giving qualities of clean pants and clean teeth.  I am reborn. For about 30 seconds.

10.30am: Make up applied (trowled), we trot to the breakfast tent. Free granola and yoghurt = 10 minutes of feeling the picture of health. Shoot disapproving looks to the male teenage colony to our left as they start supping beer and strutting around in their Batman pants.

11am: Open a can of cider.

11.30am: Open another can of cider.

11.50am: Illusion of health has rather dissipated. Reality of possible alcoholism and frightening reality.

12pm: Enter the main arena, all innocence. Maintain wide eyes as security pull two hip flasks of vodka from my wellington boots, and bladder of wine from my bra and two cans of cider from my pants. I claim that being from the West Country, smuggling is in my genes. They grab my shoulders and march me to the Samaritan tent.

1.30pm: Rejoin friends. Sit in sun and listen to music. Sup contraband cider.

1.45pm: Run into nearest tent as rain lashes the ground and God tries to make the point that cider drinking before 6pm is really not quite the thing.

3pm: Hunger strikes. Wander from stall to stall eyeing up organic, fresh, tasty morsels, drooling slightly. However, eat a bag of six doughnuts , freshly fried and rolled in sugar. Wash down with cider.

8pm: As night falls, so do the levels of illegal alcohol. Become the Ray Mears of festival survival by creating ever more flamboyant cocktails. Who knew sour Haribo could turn rose wine into a palatable drink?

11pm: Make lots of new friends in the dark. Slather them in neon face paint. Steal their rum. Drink it neat. Retch and contort as if someone is exorcising a demon from our cider-riddled bodies.

11.30pm: As the cold air seeps into bones, run to the most packed tent and squeeze into the middle of drug addled sweaty bodies. Shout unintelligibly to each other. Get tempted to buy a glow stick and a pair of furry boots. Wonder if this is appropriate attire for ladies post 30.

11.35pm: Jump about in furry boots, a tutu and wave my glow stick vigorously, as if trying to communicate to the DJ via semaphore.

12am: Evicted from dance tent by bouncers. Apparently climbing the struts and attempting to fly using giant helium balloons is one step too far.

12.05am: Silent disco. Dance to my own beat and sing at the top of my voice. Close my eyes and revel in the music.

12.10am: Open eyes and realise l have cleared the area.

3am: Stumble back up the hill. Lose own tent. Find many similar tents. Find lots of irate tent owners.

3.30am: Fall through tent door. Throw boots off and munch on the discarded sausage. Eat some toothpaste and pass out to the stomach rumbling beats of dub-step and the screams of teenagers.

And repeat.

Oh, and the car? Well....

3am (DAY 4): Find tent decimated by wind and/or hooligans. Poles broken. Resit temptation to beat the nearest teen with the tent pole and hand their carcass upon it as a warning to their peers. Instead use all Girl Guide knowledge to fix tent with neon face paint and empty cider cans. Fail, pick up car keys and spend an hour searching for car. Pass out in back seat.

Good times, good times.

You call it a kiss, l call it treason.

Now, after a lengthy absence (moving house, birthdays, blah blah) l was all ready to regale you with tales of DIY fails (four fingers attached to a tube of Superglue instead of two wardrobe doors attached to the wardrobe), end of term antics (passing out head first into a kitchen sink), romance (trying to seduce the rather young and ginger telephone engineer with tea and consequently spilling it down his trousers. Unintentionally, of course.), and other random nuggets of that my entertain you (discovering a remarkable likeness of myself as a slavering sabre toothed dinasour in one of my pupils' sketchbooks). However, having had a few days free from standing at the front of a classroom and postulating on the theory of evolution (or, How You Can Spin An Owl's Head Until It Flies Like A Helicopter) and the like, l am feeling the need to clamber onto my soapbox for a short while.

The thing is, over the past year l have begun to lose my faith in humanity.

Maybe l still hanker after fairytale romance, perhaps it is my Christian upbringing, or indeed a fundamental inherited morality, but l truly believe in fidelity. However, l am beginning to feel like a Victorian virgin clutching onto her iron chastity belt whilst all her friends are testing out vibrators on their noses at an Anne Summers party. Gay or straight, married, affianced, with child or not, it appears that all around me are indulging in some extra curricular entertainment of the sexual kind. Without guilt or remorse.

Now, don't get me wrong, l have not been in some kind of bubble for the past 30-odd years, imagining that celebrities and royals were the only ones caught with their toes in someone else's mouths. My parent's divorce was due to a dalliance on my mother's behalf, l myself have swapped saliva with another's boyfriend, and my recent heartbreak had everything to do with a drunken misdemeanour of the naked kind. However, in each of these cases both inanimate and animate objects (the cat) were thrown, curses of leprosy, plague, and boils invoked, and many tears of remorse and pleas for forgiveness uttered. Thus the infidels acknowledge that their actions are heinous, and become the villains of the story. I like this kind of logic.

Where my brain starts to have a slight meltdown, other than trying to install a printer driver 12 times onto my laptop which then informs me of a 'Fatal Error' 98% of the way through which results in a 'Fatal Error' of the hammer-through-the-keyboard-type, is the view amongst my peers and other acquaintances that infidelity is another badge to be collected and worn, albeit invisibly, on their chest. That it is is somehow an accepted course of action when one is a little bored, or had a little too much to drink. Something that is to be laughed off. Something that is as inconsequential as throwing all your clothes off and swimming across a river to 'rescue' a gnome from a garden on the other side. Maybe not the best analogy, but you get the point. It seems that while lip service is paid to faithfulness, in reality the majority of people are grabbing a handful of forbidden flesh in the broom closet.

So, l remain disappointed and disillusioned. Maybe l have missed an important Public Announcement at some point in my life. Did the Prime Minister suddenly issue a White Paper for polygamy? Are we all allowed several partners at once? With no comeback? Do we need to start rewriting the fairytales? Is Prince Charming about to be found knocking one off over Skype to one of the Ugly Sisters? If so, l have one hell of a lot of catching up to do. Starting with that BT Engineer.

Singing the Blues.

The holiday blues. If l could play more than three chords on the guitar without my fingers seizing up into arthritic balls, and if l could sing without seemingly summoning all the male cats in the neighbourhood for a cheeky mating session, then l would be a-strumming and warbling my woes to any unlucky souls who happened to pass my way.

Yet, here l sit in a shorts, a little tanned, salt on my skin, attempting to lift my spirits by learning the dance routine to Lady GaGa's 'Telephone' from You Tube. No, l have not decided on a new career as a backing dancer. I have no spatial awareness, and controlling all my limbs at the same time without causing carnage requires a huge amount of concentration. In truth, the only work l would get would be in village pantomimes where Prince Charming is played by the local boss-eyed, moon-faced, cowpat-wielding idiot. And then only if l wore a donkey costume and sat in a bath of horse shit and baked beans for the entire show.  But l digress. In truth, the tan came from a bottle (Non-sticky and Streak Free? I think not my friend. I have tide marks across my body that resemble some sort of tribal war paint. I fear that exposing my inner thighs, forearms, or feet in public may inadvertently start the Third World War). And l am merely salty from a rather strenuous game of squash. Too much information? I care not. As for La Gaga? When darkness falls l shall turn the music up loud, turn off the lights off, and dance around my kitchen wearing nothing but rubber gloves and a pair of Onion Goggles waving my glow-stick App around like l just don't care. My own version of singing the blues, as it were.

For, from tonight l will not be:

1.) Going to bed in the early hours of the morning after watching back to back episodes of The Only Way is Essex, laughing hilariously at the total ignorance and idiocy of perma-tanned, fake breasted, gleaming toothed residents. While simultaneously wondering what cup size would suit me. Would 40HH be too much? It could only be a bonus on the rugby field. Either as a distraction or as extra padding.

2.) Drinking alcohol as if in training for a member of the AA. I may try and convince myself (and most people around me) that l am attempting a version of Super Size Me with cocktails instead of the Golden Arches, however, the lack of film crew or video equipment usually gives the game away. Apparently the video function on the phone doesn't count. Who knew?

3.) Greatly increasing the likelihood of a hose pipe ban this summer by embracing fully the luxuriousness of non-time restricted baths and showers. A shower to wake up, followed by a bath for a couple of hours whilst l watch a film on the laptop l have precariously balanced on the toilet lid. Dangerous, l know, but l find the threat of electrocution oddly liberating. Then a trip to the gym to play in the jacuzzi, steam room, and another shower. Then, if alcohol has not been consumed, a bath is required to enable one to fall easily into slumber. On the downside, l seem to have developed the puckered skin of an 80 year old seasoned smoker. Not a look that rocks with denim hot pants and bikini tops. There has been a audible sound of retching as l stroll down the street.

4.) Living a WAG lifestyle on a vastly inferior income. You know it is serious when the global institution that is your bank deigns to call you up personally. At 4am. On Easter Sunday. Not to offer you a golden Easter Egg, as you might assume. No. Quote - " Could you tell me the amount of your last purchase and the name of the place it occurred?". " £145 in the Drunken Monkey you say? And your card has not been stolen? Okay, lets set up an appointment with your bank manager". Slightly unnerving, particularly when drinking mojito straight out of a jug.

5.) Waking up sprawled across a duvet on a friend's sofa bed, smiling smugly as l listened to them getting grumpily ready for work, nursing the Sky Plus remote in my hand, poised for that morning's omnibus of LA Ink. Mind you, nor will l be receiving a swift but well aimed kick to the head as l casually demand a mug of tea and slice of buttered toast before they leave the house.

These things will become a distant memory, replaced by the political debate at 6am, walking to and from work, e-mails, meetings, canteen sandwiches and half drunk cups of  instant coffee. I am not sure l can take it.  So, if the news is full of a teacher who insisted on all of her pupils painting themselves orange and performing the 'Telephone' dance on the school field whilst blowing whistles and waving glowsticks, you will know what happened. The blues got the better of me.

Things l now know.

It has been a while since l last wrote a blog post. It was under another name, in what feels like another life. I shall spare you the gruesome, gut wrenching details, safe to say that the episode in question shall simply be known as 'The Heartbreak'.

A positive event then, and l could ramble on in some life affirming, pump your fist in the air, 'my cancer is cured and l want to make sweet love to every flower l happen upon' type of way. Unfortunately, all that malarkey makes me want to regurgitate my chicken chow mein and form a model of Dante's seventh circle of hell. No, the hours l have spent piecing myself back together are worthy of Humpty Dumpty himself, and have taught me only one thing: basic survival. Therefore, as the Ray Mears of broken hearts, l am about to selflessly share a few tips that may help you through, should you end up in a similar, unfortunate, and unexpected situation.

1.) I am not one for promoting binge drinking as such, but you will need alcohol. In excessive amounts. You will dance into oblivion and sink into a sweet sleep. You will imagine yourself as Grace Kelly amidst adoring suitors. You will be numbed from the heartache and sit on kerb sides stealing strangers' kebabs at 3am. You will rediscover the laughter you thought had been erased from your bank of emotions. It will feel fantastic. But you must be prepared for the feelings of self loathing the next morning, as you peel yourself off a random bathroom floor with one shoe missing completely and the other sailing on a sea of vomit in the toilet bowl, whilst you clutch a cone to your chest on which you have drawn a remarkable (in its abstract qualities) likeness to your ex.

2.) You will need a soundtrack to your pain. You won't be able to listen to any of the music you already own as it will most likely provoke unwanted and rather torturous memories of happier times. So you will find songs that sum up your current emotional state succinctly, listen to them/sing along to them endlessly until someone around you has the sense to misplace the CD and your I-pod in the recycling bin. Under the dead cat and mouldering teabags.

3.) Take up a violent sport. Squash, hockey, rugby, it doesn't matter which. I took up rugby. The reasons are threefold: firstly, the adrenalin and fear of having your body crushed by another human being who is frankly the size and weight of an iron water tank instantly outweigh any other concerns your brain might be occupied with; secondly, the inevitable physical pain of broken bones means that although you are still crying into your breakfast first thing in the morning, it is lessened by the screams of pain you utter as you attempt to scoop soggy Weetabix into your mouth with shattered fingers; and thirdly, the amount of drugs thrust into your arms by the ladies of the NHS to relieve the afore mentioned pain also induce a peaceful sleep, free from the anxiety dreams of attacking your former lover with a dustbin lid and a vacuum cleaner in a quite inappropriate, yet strangely satisfying, manner.

4.) In your vulnerable and tear stained state, it might seems callous to utter the words 'Internet Dating', but l heartily recommend it as therapy. It is a quick fix solution to one's otherwise battered and bruised ego. You can flirt shamelessly via email, and the second party does not need to know that at that precise moment you are sobbing along to 'Mumford and Sons' (or whatever your music choice), wearing your ex's hoodie (still trying to locate his 'smell' in the armpits) and chocolate stained jogging bottoms, sipping lukewarm cup-a-soup as you have lost all will to live like a human being and not as an animal. You are not interested, of course, but  the attention will DO YOU GOOD, as my mother used to say about liver and onions. If you do it well, you may even get a free meal and/or trip to the cinema to boot. Then you can delete the emails and start all over again with a new victim. Mercenary? Most definitely. But curative nonetheless.

5.) My final tip is to throw yourself into an addiction to trash television. There is plenty to choose from: Strictly Come Dancing, X -Factor, One Tree Hill, Desperate Housewives, Glee, Waterloo Road, Skins, This way is Essex, Gossip Girl. The list is endless. You need it. It will rot your brain but the desire to escape the seeming mire of your own life can only be satisfied vicariously through the mewlings of Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowell as they bitch fight about Cher's ability to give blowjobs to the floor staff. If nothing else, it will give you something to distract the supermarket checkout staff with as they insist on commenting on the food in your basket. "Chocolate. Wine. Crisps. Tissues. DVD. Broken Heart is it?".

Indeed it is, my dear, indeed it is.