Glastafari

You know that feeling you get when you’re making your way on foot towards a festival or rave and the music suddenly starts up? You’re still too far away to hear it properly. The drums seem to waft over you, and the vocals dip in and out as if some irritating kid is playing with the volume knob. You can see it, even smell it, but you are still too far away to be a part of it. You just want to get there, so much so that your heart starts to race, and you pick up the pace, as if your heels have suddenly sprouted wings. Well, this is how it was for our special delivery crew, Earnest, Clash Man Keith, and the rest, as they finally neared the edge of the wilderness, the Glastonbury Live Aid event, suddenly starting up and grabbing them all by the hand and guiding them in.

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You can put in your own favourite fantasy post apocalyptic Main Stage performance here. I’m going with Primal Scream and in particular - ‘Loaded’.

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Imagine the effect that this was having on the site? Apart from a couple of bicycle-powered tents in the Green Futures Field, this major rock festival hadn’t known proper amplified sound for days. Beavis’s army of litter pickers had been putting the word out, and everyone appeared to be “well up for it”, every lane chock-a-block with people shuffling toe to heel, drawn by the miracle of sound. The walking wounded, the destitute, the hungry, were all making their way down to the bottom of the site to claim their space at this Glastonbury barely alive Aid event.

There was Yvette from Essex, now with just the one sparkly pink angel wing. There was Star and Nick from the band Solar Warrior. There was Ken (aka Mick Jones) and the rest of White Riot (soon to be known as Big Audio Dynamite). Even Reg, from the disenfranchised franchise known as Greased Lightning Burgers, had joined the growing throng.

Down at the Main Stage, every available vantage point was being snapped up, all along the top of the fences, up nearby trees, beyond the abandoned mushy lowlands of Tent City, with Glastonbury Tor standing ominously in the distance like an idle crematorium chimney.

Our Mistress of Gore, Larr, didn’t like the look of this one little bit. Quite how a Drako audience was expected to sit through hours of life-affirming, spiritually nourishing, emotionally charged live performance, was beyond her. She’d promised Drakonis a world of pain, not a tortured rendition of ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’. But like a gecko waiting to catch a juicy moth, she would just have to sit this one out and reassure her soaking public that Glastonbury’s pathetic last ditch final stand could only end up with everyone kneeling in a ditch praying for mercy.

Mathew Beavis was also wondering about the future. They had pulled out all the stops for this one, betting all they had on the redemptive qualities of getting everyone together in the one space in the spirit of hope and unity. But he knew well enough that you couldn’t fill your belly with hope or quench your thirst by sticking a lighter in the air and swinging it from side to side. For many it had taken what little strength they had left to hobble down to the Main Stage. Who among them could actually conjure up the necessary loaves and fishes to feed the multitude?

Certainly not Earnest. He’d turned his back on a career of ‘miracle making’ and gone in search of what little merry making he could find, finally making it into the festival proper having got busted then busted out then busting a gut to make it to the Tor and back across the wilderness.

He’d bid a fond farewell to the others back at the Main Stage, as they attempted to squeeze their way through the packed crowd of concertgoers, carrying their prize footage towards Sasha Lush’s tiny production studio and editing suite which was tucked just inside the Green Zone.

He was a free man at last, without a cross to tie him down; simply a Mr regular-looking smelly beatnik dude taking a stroll, rediscovering a true sense of self, and checking it out. No smart comments or particularly weird stares to pin him to the notice board of life. He felt like a salmon swimming against the flow of a mighty river, jumping between gaps in the surging crowd, trying to reach the upper levels, and a welcoming gravel bed upon which to spawn some new ideas of personal freedom; even smelling particularly fishy. All he could think about was his lady, and her warm loving arms. His Mary Magdalene, but much more your mystic version than the insanely devoted celibate nun variety. Now, simply Ariadne, to whom he had promised to return all those months previously.

But Earnest wasn’t the only one swimming against the tide. Five men, one particularly large man, were also heading towards the upper levels, jumping across gaps in the on-coming crowd. Beer Gut Barry, and a small contingent of the Barmy Army were in hot pursuit, having tracked Earnest from no-man’s land. Beer Gut Barry was walking in the footsteps of Earnest, the same sandaled foot that had landed such a crippling blow to his manhood, abandoning his sentry duties for a more personal agenda. Each thug moving away from the roar of a newly invigorated Main Stage arena, looking for a quiet spot within which to set about a dastardly deed.

* * * * *

The sudden pumping sounds of Glastonbury Live Aid hadn’t only woken up the living, but also the presumed dead. Chief Inspector Ash hadn’t moved a muscle or opened his eyes since that messy free-for-all four-way scrap outside the gates to the cop shop. Clearly, everything had got a bit much for Ash - severely stressed, sleep deprived, and hepped up on Class A’s. Inspector Bumstead’s grossly irresponsible gun play had finally tipped him over the edge towards some kind of massive seizure.

They’d tidied him away in this single room round the back of the cop shop, and for a while things had been looking pretty dicey for our top cop. But now, after what felt like the longest kip ever, he had finally come to, staring up at the plain whiteness of the port-a-cabin ceiling, trying to process each waking moment. Somewhere, there was loud music playing, the burble of indefinable lyrics, and what sounded like a large crowd cheering. It was Glastonbury Festival. He was at Glastonbury Festival. And the Chief Inspector had to wonder whether it had all been a very bad dream; the one where you break every moral and legal code in the police handbook. But as the recent past entered his thoughts like a slow drip feed, he became more and more awake, and more and more anxious. It was all, in fact, a living nightmare.

“Hello?” he called out, but no-one answered, his High Care looking more like Nobody Seems to Bloody Care. They hadn’t even bothered to change his clothes. It was like he had just been dumped and forgotten like a faulty appliance. What the hell was he thinking, going along with Bumstead’s bullshit?

Slowly and painfully he sat up and took a sip of water and a couple of aspirins that someone had left by the side of his bed. The music was really pumping. But how could that be? Something pretty major was going on, and he suddenly got a flash of the VE Day celebrations. Were they saved? Had help finally arrived? Were scores of ecstatic hippy chicks now throwing themselves at bewildered-looking firemen and snogging the faces off of embarrassed helicopter pilots? With his imagination firing up like a Mars landing, he got up and crossed to the window for a better listen, pulling open the curtains to reveal the narrow courtyard that lay at the back of the nick. A section of fence flanked by two large shipping containers. This was where they stored all the broken-up and mud-splattered display boards and banners from previous years, those long forgotten torn and crumpled remains of past police efforts to reach out to the public; a depressing industrial landscape haunted by the acceptable slightly hippified face of police campaigns past.

He struggled to twist the squeaky metal wingnut that clamped the window shut, suddenly becoming aware of someone shinning down the side of one of the shipping containers outside. It was Soodha, the Krishna’s temple leader, clearly come to finish him off with a massive heart attack.

He quickly snuck back behind the curtain, and grabbed another aspirin, before keeping a watchful eye on this latest audacious move by the Krishna Movement. But Soodha wasn’t alone. Several other temple devotees soon joined him, landing like a troop of Hindu ninjas. They appeared to be looking for something. It was that damn cow, Gita! And the Chief Inspector remembered having Exhibits ‘A’ and ‘B’ thrust under his nose back at the gate, and a certain hungry look in Inspector Bumstead’s eye.

“Oh shit!” he hissed, as Soodha yanked open one of the metal containers to reveal one highly revered, pretty and docile looking temple mascot, quietly munching on a piece of straw.

“Bumstead!” Ash seethed. “That lying bastard!”

* * * * *

The lying bastard in question was finding it difficult to get back stage, Beavis taking the opportunity to lay into him on a number of major issues - the flagrant use of a firearm, the ridiculous cloak of secrecy, the state capture of a number of fast food outlets in Babylon. Beavis punctuating each accusatory line with a “What the hell were you thinking!?”

But after a long and awkward silence, Beavis couldn’t resist asking, “And how is the Chief Inspector?” His tone suddenly far less agro. This was, after all, a day for peace and unity, and, despite the sudden cloak of secrecy, the Chief Inspector had been his friend and working partner for many years.

“Fine, thank you,” Bumstead sighed, welcoming the sudden onset of smoother common ground. “He’s getting plenty of rest.”

The bollocking went on for a few minutes more, after which Bumstead was finally allowed back-stage, and soon found the perfect spot to keep an eye on everything, with easy access to the main circuit board trip switch, which he planned to flick at the first hint of anything remotely inflammatory or sensitive. Though, like many others, he so wished that he could just flick the switch on Big Hair, who were busy molesting their back catalogue in lycra on the stage beside him. What struck him most about Big Hair was that most of the surviving band members no longer had any. But at least he’d managed to get Beavis out of his hair for the time being.

Though no sooner had he dodged the one bullet, then in came another shot, heading straight towards his Master Plan.

“Inspector, where the hell are my rushes?”

It was Sasha Lush, trying to make herself heard above the Day-Glo din, leaning into Bumstead’s personal space like an airborne virus; a particularly stubborn strain that could clearly get very nasty indeed if not treated right.

“Where’s my footage?!” she demanded.

“Sorry, have we met before?” said Bumstead, buying time.

It was that bloody Channel 4 journo, come to claim her footage, a major potential problem that he thought he’d ‘stamped out’ for good in the wasteland. Beside her stood that goody two shoes from Greenpeace, Dr Suzie Meyer.

“You know full well who she is,” said Dr Meyer, beginning to smell a huge dead rat rotting away behind Bumstead’s demeanour.

She’d been greatly surprised to discover that no-one on site seemed to know anything about the deadly glass cordon that their expedition had bumped into just days previously. She would have expected to see the results of a number of emergency committee meetings by now, a concrete plan of action. Perhaps half the Craft Field tasked with building a huge glass and tile cutter. Or every available drop of paint gathered up and turned into massive WARNING signs for helicopters and low flying aircraft. But hardly anyone seemed to know anything about the Glastonbury Dome Experience, which was particularly suspect.

But Bumstead knew that Dr Meyer knew well enough. She’d seen it all. And if there was one thing that you could say for certain about Greenpeace, they didn’t hang about before blowing the lid off things.

“I spoke to my producer,” said Lush, prodding Bumstead in the chest. “And he told me that he hasn’t even seen you. Where’s the material that I gave you for safe keeping?”

It was clear from Lush’s attitude, twisted and honed by many hours of tortuous endeavor over miles of punishing terrain, that playing dumb simply wasn’t going to work. That footage was her baby, and Bumstead needed to find a way to gently break the news to her that he’d not only gone and left it on the bus somewhere, but that he couldn’t even remember the route.

“Oh, I remember,” said Bumstead, unconvincingly. “Look, I’m sorry, but while we were bringing your film back to the site, there was an accident. A landslide. You can ask anyone.” He paused, as if skipping through several key pages of a story book. “The Chief Inspector has been in a coma for quite a while now.”

Lush covered her mouth in total shock. This couldn’t be.

“I’m afraid that we lost everything,” Bumstead continued, sealing the lie with a half shrug.

This was too much. An entire trophy cabinet crammed with Oscars and Golden Globes and Baftas, had been swept away by a landslide. Days of hard slog, of probing interviews and pieces to camera, of more freaky phenomena than a Trump Presidency, or a Leicester City league title win, had been lost in an instance.

Sasha Lush burst into tears and stormed off, leaving Dr Meyer to just stare at the cop. She knew a lie when she saw one. This couldn’t be more of a cover-up than if she’d caught the Inspector coming out of Greenpeace’s solar-powered showers, trying to hide his tackle behind one of their ‘KEEP IT IN THE GROUND’ bumper stickers. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d witnessed the Old Bill lying under oath in court. But she also knew how to bide her time. In the distance she caught sight of Mathew Beavis.

The landowner was tapping his feet to ‘Life’s a Beach’, Big Hair’s best known hit; the kind of chart topper that had once helped a troubled world to bury its collective head in the sand, momentarily forgetting all the horrors of the Reagan and Thatcher era. But Beavis knew that no amount of ridiculous shoulder padding could shoulder aside the people’s right to know exactly what had gone down at Worthy farm. He was expected to announce something major. But what exactly? What could he tell them?

“Hello Mathew,” said Dr Meyer, waving her hand in front of his face.

The two had had a long association over the years, with plenty of fruitful hours in the Greenpeace Field constructing all manner of exciting things. Like that year’s full-sized Apollo 13 rocket with the words ‘There is no Planet B’ plastered along the side.

“Hello Suzie,” said Beavis, smiling. “Sorry, I was miles away. So, you’ve finally returned.”

“Yes,” whispered the Eco Warrior, keen not to be overheard. “And I have to say that I am surprised that no-one seems to know anything about what’s going on. Didn’t they tell you?” she said, flicking her eyebrows towards the Inspector, who was trying not to look too intrigued by their conversation.

“No,” said Beavis, turning around. “They told me nothing. They said it was Top Secret. What the hell is going on?”

“Come with me,” said Dr Meyer, grabbing the landowner by the elbow. “There’s something I want to show you.”

Bumstead made a move to follow them, emergency sirens going off in his State of Emergency plan.

“Not you!” snapped the eco-activist, pointing straight at him. “You stay right where you are!”

* * * **

Sasha Lush had often pulled an all-nighter, pulling fake celebrity gold out of some mumbling mess of a guest’s exclusive interview. It may have been the name of a childhood pony, or a favourite sandwich combo on tour, but she wouldn’t quit until she’d found the right hook upon which to hang the entire brain-dead piece. But that was then, and this was now, one incredibly challenging shoot later, with a missing cameraman, missing footage, and a newly spliced alien insert that was about five billion light years away from her usual crap, both in tone and content.

“Fuck the police!” she’d kept saying over and over again, whacking the edit buttons like an all-out nuclear war. “Fuck the police!”

So, thanks to Channel Four’s tiny edit suite and a back-up generator, Beavis finally got to see the light. Bloody smears on that gigantic glass prison wall. An intriguing puncture wound in the side of the Tor. Roy the Cameraman’s fierce camera light blasting the cramped and damp interior of the Duke of Somerset’s long forgotten bling tunnel. A short rubbery Extra Terrestrial slowly stalking its way out of the gloom towards the lens. And finally, the jerky panic of frantic flight - the first ever alien abduction caught on camera.

Beavis heard it all too. Every mad twist and turn. Daryl the Dealer’s chosen messenger spiel finally finding its way to the one ear that mattered most, the one dairy farmer who could herd everyone back in the right direction. Glastonbury Festival was trapped under glass, a social experiment gone wrong in the right kind of way for a race of despicable aliens, making Beavis’s one hundred and thirty thousand plus punters mere TV dinners served up on a muddy tray, beneath a soggy garnish of green and orange flysheet.

“The people have a right to know,” said Suzie Meyer.

“You’re damn right they do!” growled Beavis. “Whether it’s those damned health and safety officers at the council, or evil space invaders, no-one has the right to mess with my dairy farm. Damn bloody cheek!” He said, stabbing his forefinger towards the screen. “We need to show this video to the people as soon as possible.”

“Mr Beavis,” said Fliss, who’d been hovering around the doorway with Clash Man Keith. “Keith was the first to tell the world about all this. Everyone laughed at him. And he paid a huge price for that, getting kicked out of his band, and losing his best mate.”

“Fliss, it’s okay,” said Keith, growing more than a little embarrassed that Fliss would actually have the nerve to try and blag the rock promoter at a time like this.

“So it seems only right that we get Keith’s band up on stage to play a couple of tunes, and perhaps introduce the video,” said Fliss, flashing her best, “if you don’t ask, you don’t get” smile.

“What’s the name of your band?” asked Beavis, sounding like he was actually considering the idea.

“White Riot,” said Keith. “We’re a Clash tribute band. You know, ‘We’re a garage band. We come from garage land’.” He had to pinch himself. Was he actually auditioning for a slot on the Glastonbury Main Stage?

“Where’s the rest of the band?” asked Beavis.

“I don’t know,” said Keith, suddenly looking sad, remembering that last painful conversation with Ken and the pathetic struggle over his muddy tent flap.

“I haven’t seen them for ages. They could be anywhere,” he said, thinking, “Yeah, anywhere.. hating my guts.”

* * * * *

Ken (aka Mick Jones) and the rest of White Riot had found a spot in the crowd quite a way back from the Main Stage. It was true that he hated Keith’s guts, but he hated Big Hair more. It was painful to find his punky self watching a geriatric from the Thatcher era prance about in tight 80’s stone-washed jeans, and a tucked in baggy pastel pink T-shirt. His onetime best mate Keith had been right to call their music “fuckin’ shit!”. Bon Bon, the lead singer, looked like a gyrating bowl of Potpourri, and sounded like a daytime TV workout session crossed with a holiday timeshare commercial. Like any tribute band that ever stood watching as an act like Big Hair gets booked for nostalgia’s sake, Ken kept thinking, “Why not choose us? Why not take a trip down our memory lane?”

In the distance, he could just make out a bald but bearded looking man [Beavis] whispering something into the lead singer’s ear. Probably begging him to stop. The last thing that this sad and sorry refugee camp of an audience needed was 80’s retro. The people couldn’t be more miserable if they were to play Catcha Feckin Goo Goo. The crowd was hardly moving. No-one had the energy for anything anymore.

Big Hair’s final song came to an end. Some of the crowd clapped. If ever there was a time to announce “women and children first”, it was now.

“Give it up for Big Hair, everybody,” said Beavis, slapping Bon Bon on the back.

“I definitely give up,” quipped Ken.

“Hello Glastonbury,” Beavis boomed into the mic in his best West Country twang. “Now, we have some announcements to make.”

“About bloody time,” said Yvette from Essex, looking more and more like a tortured fly; that last pink sparkly angel wing having been finally torn off in the crush to see Primal Scream.

“Okay,” mumbled Inspector Bumstead, edging a little closer to the Main Stage trip switch.

“And a special guest to make it..” Beavis continued, inviting Clash Man Keith to come out from the wings.

“Who the fuck is that, now?!” said Reg, the former owner of Greased Lightning burgers. He’d hated every minute of Big Hair. Bon Bon had been his ex-wife’s favourite pin-up, and ‘Life’s a Beach’ had been played, not once, but three times at that fateful wedding reception in Stevenage.

In the distance, Ken could just make out someone wearing a leather jacket sheepishly entering the Main Stage. There was something about the guy’s general demeanor that seemed familiar.

“Hello,” said Clash Man Keith into the microphone.

“It’s bloody Keith!” said Ken, straining his eyes. “What’s he doing up there?”

“As this day is about peace and unity,” said Keith.

“There he goes again with the fucking flower power!” hissed Ken.

Inspector Bumstead had outstretched an arm, his finger poised to pull the plug at the slightest sign of anyone about to blow the gaff. He didn’t recognise this punky dude, but figured that people could go on about “peace and unity” all they wanted, just as long as they didn’t mention the gold fish bowl.

“I want you all to turn to your neighbour and give them a hug.”

This massive group hug, perhaps the biggest in festival history, was slow to begin with. For many, it was the first real human contact that they had had for many days. But when everyone is that smelly, hugging a rank and damp stranger becomes surprisingly bearable. People were either laughing or bursting into tears. Even Reg, from Grease Lightning Burgers, found himself hugging Nick from the band Solar Warrior, and Inspector Bumstead succumbed to an awkward high-five with one of the roadies from Iron Maiden, who was also hanging about the main Main Stage switchboard.

DJ Nimbles turned to look at the guy next to him, some Rasta dude who looked a bit like Peter Tosh.

“Hug dis mon,” said the Rasta, passing over a plump blunt of something undoubtedly irie.

Clash Man Keith went over to hug the lovely Fliss; the one person who had stuck by him through thick and thin rubbery membrane. This was all her doing.

“I love you,” he whispered in her ear. “Thank you so much for believing in me.”

“It was a pleasure,” blushed Fliss, kissing him on the cheek.

Keith moved on to her brother Pete, and finally Mr Upside Down Face himself, Mathew Beavis, who had this “It all seems to be working out just fine” look on his face.

“If there is one person in this crowd, apart from Fliss, that I want to hug more than anyone,” said Keith, detaching the microphone, walking to the edge of the stage, and looking out over an ocean of faces. “It is my dear friend, and co-band member from White Riot, Ken Lodge.”

Ken felt a massive rush of blood to the head, immediately sensing two sets of astounded band member eyes boring into the side of his face.

“Hey, that’s you!” said White Riot’s drummer, gripping Ken’s shoulder.

“Ken, I am truly sorry for what happened on the NME stage”, said Keith, the tears beginning to well up in his eyes. “If you are out there, please forgive me.”

“Here he is,” White Riot’s bass player said, thrusting Ken’s arm into the air.

“Here he is!” shouted everyone around them, making a noticeable fuss towards the back of the crowd.

“Ken, is that you?” said Keith, watching as someone was swept off their feet and lifted into the air. “Please forgive me. Don’t break up the band.”

“Okay, I forgive you,” shouted Ken nervously, held aloft like a Jewish groom at a shotgun wedding.

How could he not forgive Keith? Especially, as the next words to leave his lips were, “Come up here and bring the band. Beavis wants White Riot to play the main stage!”

So that was it. Three punks not dead bodies rose from the near-death experience of a Big Audio Dynamite tribute band, and were carried over a sea of hands - hip hop hands, funky soul boy hands, California dreaming hands, slightly pissy smelling hands, towards the edge of the Main Stage. The ultimate entrance. The craziest reverse stage dive in the history of live music.

* * * * *

Earnest also found himself being carried along, up towards the Tipi Field, and hopefully into the arms of his Goddess lover, Ariadne. Once he managed to break free of the hoi polloi of the Main Drag, he picked up the pace, making excellent progress across the now virtually abandoned Rainbow Circle Field. Beyond the next hedge he could just make out the top of a tipi.

“Ariadne!” he called out, panicked at the prospect of just missing her by a couple of minutes. Not knowing if she was even there or not. Dreading the news that she hadn’t made it that year.

But when you’ve seen one Tipi you’ve seen them all. And seeing as the last time he had seen Ariadne’s lodge was at a sunny Glastonbury the previous year when everything had been all bells on their fingers and bells on their toes, this post-apocalyptic scenario felt completely abandoned, as if all the inhabitants had been forced off the land, to tread lightly on the earth someplace else.

“Ariadne!” he shouted, growing more and more anxious. Praying to the Angel of Serendipity to reconnect his sorry misguided life to love once again.

“Earnest!” Ariadne dropped her bundle of firewood and rushed over.

“Ariadne!” Earnest twisted round like a Whirling Dervish, rushing to meet her open arms. The most epic blag that anyone had ever attempted to get into Glastonbury Festival, was finally complete.

“You’re here!” Ariadne squealed, gripping his face. “I’d given you up for lost.”

“I was lost,” said Earnest, delving into her mesmerising eyes. “I was lost. Trapped inside my own personal bullshit. But not anymore.”

They kissed and embraced once again, clamping their heart chakras together like two huge industrial magnets.

“Come on,” said Ariadne, motioning towards the flap of her tipi. “Let’s have a cup of tea.”

Earnest held back. Sensing the strong tang of BO rushing out from his armpits like a startled fox. He hadn’t washed for days.

“I’ll stick the kettle on,” said Ariadne, sensing his reluctance. “If you want to freshen up, there’s a water trough on the other side of that hedge. Where’s your stuff?”

“This is all I’ve got,” he said, thrusting his arms out and smiling. “But you are all I need.”

“Oh sweetie!” said Ariadne, stroking his chin. “I’ll try and find you some fresh clothes. Though ‘fresh’ anything is hard to find round here.”

“Thanks,” Earnest gently kissed her hand. “I won’t be long.”

* * * * *

Deep beneath the Tor, full-time fantasist Dan Sykes seemed to be fresh out of options, his newly discovered escape route feeling more like the long-abandoned tunnel that it actually was. He was going absolutely nowhere, completely in the dark, while all the while grazing his knuckles and knees, and smacking his face on unsuspected chunks of jutting viciousness. There was no light at the end of this tunnel, just a growing sense of entrapment and the certainty of lingering death. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was just about to happen, especially for someone who’d spent years pushing alien conspiracies.

There was a sudden burst and crackle of firelight, just in front of his crawling groping upper torso. Two huge onyx discs of fiendish glare stabbed his heart with total dread. Kneeling down less than an arm’s length away and staring right at him with all the menace of a wrong turn at a serious S&M party, was a Gray alien.

“Aaaaaaarrrgghh!” Sykes yelled. It was very similar to the one that had scared them all shitless back at the cells.

“Who the fuck are you?” growled the alien.

“Aaaaaaarrrgghh!” Sykes yelled again, his heart throbbing like a stress ball. He was about to get mugged by a chav alien.

“Stop fucking yelling!” snapped the alien. “You’re freaking me out!”

That was a bit rich, coming from something so hideous and unexpected, so far beneath the earth.

“I’m freaking you out?!” Sykes retorted. “You’ve been freaking people out for years. And somehow I’m the problem?!”

It was true. Daryl the Dealer had been freaking people out for years, deploying a small army of Blue, Green, even Yellow Alien ‘Ecstasy’ pills, invading blood streams the length and breadth of Southern England.

“Will you keep it down!” he snapped, pulling off his mask. Dan Sykes was messing with his yet to be fully thought-out master plan, which so far amounted to little more than a silly disguise, the element of surprise, and a scene from the movie ‘Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150’ which he’d watched as a kid.

Luckily, he’d found his long-lost Clipper in the tunnel, along with his pipe and what remained of his tin foil stash of quality kiff spliff from the Mountains of Riff. It had to be a sign, right? A calling? His wages of sin for becoming The Chosen One - a protective cloak of puff to help ward off the heebeegeebees. It was time to take off the costume and have another hit.

“Hold this lighter,” said the Alien, handing Sykes the Clipper. “Keep it on.”

“Hah!” Sykes gasped, as the alien began to shape-shift into some kind of crusty humanoid.

“Will you just chill,” Daryl sighed, grabbing back the light and sparking up his little glass pipe.

“It’s just a costume, okay? But the real thing is just along there,” he said, pointing the way with a massive lung-full of draw. “So keep it down.”

“What do you mean?” whispered Sykes.

Neither guy had met before, but like Daryl, Sykes had also been messing with people’s heads for years, pushing his own particular brand of alien trip. But this was no cosy lecture tour or DVD launch, this was getting way too close encounter for comfort.

“What ‘real’ thing?” he asked again, feeling a glacier-sized chill begin to run down the back of his neck.

“I’m talking about the aliens,” Daryl continued, slowly removing the rest of the costume. Not an easy thing to do in such a confined space. “This entire fucked up weekend is down to them.”

“Aliens?” said Sykes, feeling like his brain was being shoved into a blender.

“Yes, aliens,” said the Dealer, struggling to remove the ridiculously tight costume. “Hey, do something useful. Grab hold of the legs!”

Sykes grabbed hold of the legs, the feel of rubber helping to insulate his mind against hectic thought processes.

“All this shit is their doing,” Daryl continued, finally breaking free from his PVC pupa, and tossing the costume over towards Sykes.

“What’s this?” asked Sykes, prodding the limp and rubbery mass.

“If you want to come with me, you’ve got to put that on,” said the Dealer, taking another hit of his pipe. “They’ve been cooking up some pretty nasty shit for us,” he said, blowing out a huge cloud of weed. “And the fuckers fucked my van! But I’ve got some breaking news for them,” he said, picking up a large lump of broken mine shaft that he’d dragged out from the darkness. “There’s gonna be a postal strike!”

* * * * *

Love struck Earnest had also received some breaking news, right across the back of the head. He’d just finished a quick splash around the tackle courtesy of a water trough situated behind the Tipi Field, and was winding his merry way back to Ariadne’s loving arms, when he felt a sudden and most powerful blow from behind, a whack so powerful that it had completely knocked him out. The last thing that he could remember hearing was the distant roar of the crowd as another live act hit the Main Stage.

As several members of the Barmy Army bundled his unconscious body into a filthy blanket and hauled him away from the Tipi Field, White Riot came hobbling onto the Main Stage like a pack of arthritic golden retrievers, reunited Brothers in Amps, Ken and Keith, both determined to retrieve some credibility and burn up every second of this unexpected gift of a Glastonbury festival appearance.

There could be no better choice of track than London Calling, arguably The Clash’s finest offering. No better song to capture the prevailing mood of utter abandonment and distress throughout the site. With an intro like the gradual massing of a huge marauding army. A track packed with one disaster scenario after another - the coming ice age, nuclear meltdown, famine, widespread black-outs, and catastrophic floods. It was a doom-laiden shopping trolley of a tune, poking out from the toxic sludge of a long -stretch of London canal.

And so it went, ‘London Calling to the faraway towns, now war is declared and battle come down..’ Just like the opening night, when the Reptilian shit had truly hit the fan.

‘London Calling, but we aint got no swing, except for the reign of the truncheon thing’. The truncheon blows of hell that had rained down on that usually quiet corner of the Somerset Levels.

The wheat was ‘growing thin’, people were ‘nodding out’, and the ‘Zombies of Death’ with their ‘yellow wee eyes’ could only be the despicable alien scum that had trapped them all under glass, hell bent on mayhem and calamity. Ken (aka Mick Jones) twisting and strangling the chords like some kind of terrifying War of the World’s tripod shriek.

The Glastonbury Goldfish Bowl Experience suddenly had its own title track, the crowd owning every lyric and verse, swapping ‘London Calling’ for ‘Glasto Calling’, and giving two fingers to it all.

“Glasto Calling.. Glasto Calling!” they shouted. ’If Glasto is drowning, I.. LIVE BY THE RIVER!”

Ken didn’t know anything about this particular gig, as Keith had apparently set it all up. He’d suddenly found himself being carried along on a sea of hands towards THE most famous stage on the planet. He didn’t know the whys, but the wherefore was fucking awesome. It was only the frickin’ Main Stage at Glastonbury! And the crippled crowd were giving it all they got, like that last crazy burst you give towards the end of a grueling marathon.

Keith looked like he had just won the lottery of life. He’d met ‘the one’, re-connected with his best mate Ken on the pyramid stage in front of tens of thousands of people, and pulled the best Clash tribute band in the history of punk nostalgia back from the brink of a really BAD decision.

Beavis was loving the way everyone now seemed alive and unified. There would be no better time to reveal the truth, to finally put the ‘fuck’ into ‘what the..!’ So, as London Calling finally came to an end, tailing off with the forlorn bleeps of a desperate ‘S..O..S..’, Beavis stepped up to the microphone.

Inspector Bumstead stepped closer to the main circuit board, ready to shut down anything that didn’t square with the chapter and verse of Operation Brave Defender. This was HIS State of Emergency, his one eye in the land of the blind.

“Good afternoon Glastonbury,” Beavis began, staring out over a sea of sweaty faces. “It seems like we’ve gone and got ourselves into a bit of a pickle,” he said, instantly regretting the association with pickled dead things. “Erm? I’m now going to tell you all I know about what is going on.”

Bumstead’s index finger uncurled from his fist, it’s finger-tip resting on the edge of a very large red trip switch. Half a sentence more from Beavis, and a little more pressure from his extended digit, and all would be silenced.

“Bumstead! There you are.”

Bumstead nearly jumped out of his skin. It was Chief Inspector Ash, in no way looking like a happy bunny.

“Would you mind telling me what the Hari Krishna’s sacred cow was doing in a lock-up behind our station?” Said Ash, forcing Bumstead’s finger to retreat back inside its fist.

“They say that we stole it from them,” Ash continued, jabbing his finger into Bumstead’s chest.

“Shit! What did you tell them?” said Bumstead, his master plan needing a nosy and pissed off senior officer like a crack in a riot shield.

“I had to lie to them and say that the RSPCA put it there,” said Ash. “The bloody RSPCA for Christ’s sake! It was the only thing I could come up with.”

Ash had never felt this low. The wrongful imprisonment of some Christian dude, drug taking, destroying video evidence, and willfully misleading the public was all very well, but stitching up the RSPCA was despicable.

“Quick thinking,” smiled Bumstead. Not even he would have come up with that one.

In the corner of his eye he could just make out something flickering on the huge screen which ran along the back of the stage.

“Hey! Pay attention, man!” barked Ash, clicking his fingers in front of Bumstead’s face, and dragging him away from the stage area. “What the hell were you thinking?!”

“Thirty-eight Hari Ramas per minute for hours on end must constitute some kind of animal cruelty,” Bumstead reasoned, wondering just how he was going to explain away the secret army of soccer hooligans, or the near permanent sight of messed up youth looking to score down at the nick.

“I’m sorry sir, but I did it to keep the peace,” he lied. “With so many hungry people about, I thought it was asking for trouble to have a..”

“Anyhow, I settled it,” Ash interrupted. “They got their Gita back safe and sound and quite well fed and watered by all accounts, and I promised to put in a word for them with Mathew Beavis. All they kept saying was, “Give us the main stage. We want the Main Stage”.”

“Not that again,” Bumstead sighed.

Whatever video Beavis had been playing on the Main Stage suddenly came to an end. Sasha Lush and Dr Suzie Meyer had highlighted their present situation perfectly, the glass cordon, the aliens, the cover-ups. What little evidence there was had been framed beautifully - slowed down, voiced-over and captioned.

For the vast majority of the crowd it had been the first moving image that they had seen for days, at least it would have been, if they had been able to see it clearly. A lot of people towards the back, like Yvette from Essex, just couldn’t make it out above the day light. For those with a better view, like Reg from Greased Lightning Burgers, it had had the feel of an experimental student film. While for many, brought up on a diet of Photoshop and Fake News, it was impossible to know what was true or not anymore, what was real or what was fiction. Critical faculties had long since burnt out through the excessive use of social media. Whatever Beavis hoped to achieve by showing everyone the light, indifference, even boredom, wasn’t it. In the Hollywood Western version of this the entire crowd would have turned into a lynch mob and stormed out of town to exact revenge. Here, quite a number of metal heads were screaming for Iron Maiden to come on.

Dr Suzie Meyer caught Beavis’s eye. He looked disappointed. As a Greenpeace activist she was used to people completely blanking the most urgent and compelling evidence of wrongdoing, ignoring calls to action, however quick and easy they might have been. What did she expect would happen? People were mostly sheeple. Happy to treat environmental and human rights issues like room service. Leaving all the cleaning and tidying up for someone else to do, or hiding behind a DO NOT DISTURB sign, so that all the shit just piled up higher and higher. No-one seemed overly keen to check out just yet, especially as a number of big acts were yet to appear on stage.

“Don’t worry,” said Beavis to Sasha Lush, mindful of all the hard effort she had gone to. “We’ll show it again after Iron Maiden.”

Bumstead had tried to sneak a peep or two, but the Chief had been too in his face for him to get a good look. Plus, one of their officers suddenly appeared on the scene with some urgent news.

“What is it?” asked Ash, yanking the chain of command from Bumstead’s grasp.

“Erm?” stumbled the bobby, surprised to see the Chief Inspector up and about. The last time he’d seen Ash he was being stretchered away.

“Well then?” said Ash. “Spit it out!”

“Yes sir,” said the cop, straightening up. “The Hari Krishna’s are outside. Loads of them. Demanding to be let on stage.”

* * * * *

We haven’t really heard much from the Krishnas lately. They’d become embroiled in a massive punch up and launched an audacious ninja-style operation to rescue their sacred cow from the cop shop. But they didn’t for one moment buy that whole RSPCA line from the police. Why would the RSPCA take Gita? The Temple had a very good relationship with the charity, with many a fond encounter with one of their animal welfare officers in particular, chatting away and feeding bits of straw to their sacred mascot. It just didn’t make sense. So the alternative had to be that the cops had stolen her instead, which was really messed up. Gita was a family member. A highly respected four- legged family member with gentle eyes. Not some menu option down at the police station canteen.

“One should have a clear understanding of the science of karma and apply that understanding to one’s life,” Soodha, the temple leader, had said, as he paraded the newly liberated Gita in front of the other devotees. “You could compare karma to a contagious disease. Sometimes there are symptoms right away, and other times there is a long incubation period. But once you are infected, it’s just a question of time until the symptoms catch up with you,” he had said, scooping up scatterings of loose hay into the saffron crease of his robed elbow, and feeding bits to Gita.

But for one freshly risen Chief Inspector, the symptoms had obviously caught up with him pretty-damn soon. For, in the time that it takes to say the supreme mantra about a thousand times, Soodha, and the entire Temple had clapped and danced their way down to the Pyramid stage to take the Chief up on his promise of a slot.

“What do you want?” asked Bumstead, sticking his head out of the Main Stage side gate, the Chief Inspector trying to squeeze passed him.

“I am the death marching to catch the sins,” said Soodha, knowing full well that pretty much anything the Bhagavad Gita said, had to be perfect for any given situation. “I have come to this world for a climax. So, in the war of true and false, false has no chance to be escaped.”

’And what exactly does that mean?” asked Ash, remembering that very painful conversation that he’d had with Soodha in the Spirit Field.

“The word Hare comes from ‘Haran’ which means to take away or to end,” Soodha continued, as if describing the most delicious meal that he’d ever had. “So, when one says Hare Krishna, one is really requesting the supreme consciousness to take away all your sorrows, shortcomings, failures and pains.”

“Just spit it out, man,” demanded Bumstead.

The last person he’d expected or wanted to see was Ash, there being about a thousand highly dubious and reprimandable police activities going on throughout the site, not least drug dealing and wholesale theft. Unlike the Wee Willy Winky brigade before him, who had apparently stolen back his meal ticket, it was he who would now be forced to run through the town, closing all the windows of opportunity, and hiding all the drug dealing.

“Our Hare Krishna Mantra is actually a little prayer to God for taking away all the sorrows, pains and shortcomings of the chanter, and provide them with bliss and joy,” smiled Soodha, nodding his head and widening his eyes. “Doesn’t that sound useful to you?”

Ash looked about. If there was ever a place that was brimming with sorrow, pain, and shortcomings, it was that year’s Glastonbury.

“They never seem to give up,” he sighed, catching Bumstead’s scowl, as the entire Temple once again burst into song..

“Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna’ Hare Hare

Hare Rama, Hare Rama

Rama Rama, Hare Hare”

* * * * *

At that precise moment, Iron Maiden also burst into song, kicking off their first ever Glastonbury appearance with ‘Wicker Man’ - a barnstorming boot stomp of a tight bulging crotch if ever there was one. This was much much more than a collection of catchy riffs, idiomatic leads, and musical devices. This was the loudest most unequivocal declaration of all out war against the delicate workings of the inner ear imaginable. There could be no better backing track to accompany the sight of poor old Earnest being dragged across the largely deserted site like a sacrificial lamb.

When he eventually came to, he found himself trapped inside what can only be described as a wooden straight jacket - a narrow crate made up entirely of shorn bits of pallet wood. His hands and feet were bound and tied, and his mouth was gagged by some kind of sweaty cast off.

“There, you fucker!” shouted Beer Gut Barry, watching from the ground, as a last cluster of four-inch nails sealed Earnest in. “I’m going to enjoy burning your smelly arse.”

What did they mean by that? And where the hell were they? All Earnest could see beyond this wooden structure, was clear sky. He looked down.

“Fuck!” he mumbled into the gag. He was high above the ground someplace. “Shit!” he mumbled again, remembering seeing this huge wicker man on his way up to the Tipi Field. It appeared that he had become trapped inside a huge pagan effigy; one with a notorious reputation for gruesome human sacrifice and infernal appeasement.

* * * * *