Glastafari

It’s of course no comfort to the people of Japan that since the end of the Second World War really large explosions have been measured in Hiroshima’s - one Hiroshima being equal to 13 kilotons of TNT, or 4.4 square miles of total destruction. The so-called K-T Event, for example, the giant asteroid that struck the Earth about sixty-five million years ago wiping out all the dinosaurs and turning all the vegetation into unleaded petrol, was the equivalent of some five billion Hiroshima’s.

The devastation that had occurred around Glastonbury festival had to be running into nearly four Hiroshima’s, stretched out in all directions. It was like the grim reaper had taken up sewing and produced this vast patchwork quilt of death and ruination, some kind of dastardly throw with which to cover every living thing in the area, throwing this particular corner of the West Country back into the dark ages. It was totally unreal. Everything had gone.

Overnight the gently rolling hills of Worthy Farm had been turned into the battlefields of Northern France. Vast smouldering craters pockmarked the earth. Tufts of lingering flame devoured the last of the meadowland, while a deathly shroud of smoke combed its way through a sizeable maze of charred stumps. Dotted about the grey and blackish landscape was the evidence of perilous and hopeless flight – a melting sneaker, its sole still frothing and bubbling and hissing, a burnt-out backpack covered in the barely discernible scorched flags of Canada, Germany, the USA and Australia - some poor bastard’s round the world trip ending up at the gates of Hell.

About the only structure that seemed to be left standing throughout the entire district was Glastonbury Tor, one of English Heritage’s premier tourist attractions, a magnate to hordes of dewy-eyed tourists getting drunk on the conceits of Arthurian legend, walking in the ghostly footsteps of Joseph of Arimathea, endlessly seeking the Holy Grail of photo opportunities. Despite all the grief and mess, St. Michael’s was still standing tall and defiant, still managing to give Satan the finger.

* * * * *

Daryl the Dealer felt a dullish pain across the middle of his face and touched the bridge of his nose. The pain sharpened considerably. Details were still hazy, but he soon realised that he must have been smacked across the face with something extremely hard, crushing his nose like a lemon meringue pie. Slowly, painfully, he rose to his feet and turned around, taking in the devastated landscape below, opening the flood gates of crazy, crazy memories - weird light, showers of deadly hot rocks, some kind of groovy song and dance routine in Central Park (circa 1979), and a huge burning cross.

He began to stagger towards the tower, the church quite literally being the only thing left to lean on in these troubled times. Three steps later the unseen hand returned once more to smack him across the face, finishing off what his mother once lovingly referred to as his “iccle-bickle, noo-noo nose”.

We’ve all done it, I suppose. Ran into a set of patio doors. Felt that crazy cocktail of excruciating pain and utter disbelief as the very air betrays you, defies all the laws of physics, and lays you out with a sneaky jab. Daryl had now done it twice in one day. What a prat you feel when you finally realise the truth. How outraged that someone hadn’t had the good sense to stick up a warning sign.

As he reeled away, clutching his nose once again, adding insults to injury, he sensed a warm metallic trickle – he swept a hand across his bloody face.

Tentatively, he reached out again to touch the air. It was as hard as nails and as cold as an ice tray. He reached out with his other hand, as if seeking a second opinion, and felt the same sensation. Growing more confident, more familiar with this other-worldliness, probably in much the same way as the South Americans had done when they finally found the courage to pat their first horse, he smoothed his outstretched palm across the surface of this freaky thing in a wide arc, leaving a thick smear of blood hanging in mid-air. High and low, left and right, he probed, rapping his knuckles. It hadn’t even vibrated or made a sound, and yet, judging by the wider perspective, it could only have been as thick as a wine glass. The world beyond equally trashed. Slowly, he began to follow its course back down the hill, a seemingly endless bullet proof barrier of impossibility. For how high, or for how long this solidified wall of air continued, he couldn’t yet say, but from a distance he must have looked like this crazy disheveled mime artist doing the ultimate ‘box’ - the Great Wall of China of boxes.

It was like Glastonbury Tor, and the area behind it had been trapped behind glass, behind some kind of invisible force field. Although, if Daryl was to have continued running his bloody hand along the entire length of this thing, something he neither had the right drugs nor adequate foot-ware to do, after many hours and pitfalls he would have eventually returned to the same spot. From which he might have safely concluded that it was in fact he, and one of the biggest and most famous festivals on the planet, that was trapped behind glass. With the right schooling, he might have even imagined that Glastonbury festival, and the burnt and crispy landscape surrounding it, was now being housed in some vast Victorian specimen jar, sitting helplessly, waiting for some kind of procedure to begin - dissection, observation, categorisation; the kind of experiment that reaps major awards, and gets the share-holders all excited. Exactly who was set to profit from such wickedness no-one could yet know, but with a little extra leap of the imagination and a bit of research, Daryl might have come up with the name of a leading pharmaceutical company, run by someone who looked remarkably similar to that mad professor guy from ‘Back to the Future’. Either him or Vincent Price.

* * * * *

Back at groundsheet control, all hell had broken lose, and a dozen or so police officers, security guards and festival organisers had gathered down at the festival’s makeshift police station to try and figure out a way to coax it back into its cage. But the main power and water supplies had been cut off, and all the lines were down, as if someone or something had hoovered up all the main communication satellites, leaving the site completely isolated, the new powers now struggling so hard to be, cut adrift in a sea of wild speculation.

“It’s too big for a plane crash. It has to be a nuclear attack,” said Inspector Bumstead, as he stared out of the port-a-cabin window. “It’s got to be the Russians or the Chinese.”

Outside it was like a scene from a Hammer Horror film, a vast cloak of thick smog had been thrown down, covering all the puddles and muddy ditches, swallowing anyone or anything within a few yards from the window. Hunched, forlorn figures lurched in and out of the gloom, hurrying to or from their own individual nightmares, their party pretty much over.

Overnight tens of thousands of smart phones had been rendered completely useless, entire networks of families and friends and work colleagues broken up, silenced. Everywhere you looked people were wandering about trying to locate a signal; hundreds of lost souls bleeping and scrolling like crazy, trying desperately to Whatsapp and Tweet and SMS and phone home.

The age of serendipity, of bumping into someone or not, of having to resort to leaving little notes or maps, basically surrendering your destiny to the forces of chaos and chance (believed to have been killed off by mobile technology forever), was back. Absolutely no consolation to a generation of young people grown completely dependent on flashy gadgetry and data. In fact, downright traumatic.

“Why the hell would the Chinese want to nuke us?” snapped Chief Inspector Ash, Glastonbury festival’s main cop, as he tried to access the Police National Computer, getting more and more wound up with each futile stab of his finger. “They own half the country.”

“Then it has to be the work of Islamic fundamentalists? Al-Qaeda or ISIS?” said the Inspector. “They’ve been warning for years about some kind of dirty bomb.”

“Why would Al-Qaeda want to blow up Somerset?” Said Ash, finally throwing his mouse down. “Aaarrgh! I’d get more sense out of a bloody Ouija board!”

Ash rarely got this angry. Colleagues were always commenting about his calmness. However dicey things had gotten in the past he’d always been assured of some kind of back-up, a voice at the end of the line. For the first time in his thirty years on the force there was simply no-one there, a ‘simply’ that was making life incredibly complicated.

Each year, despite being one of the smallest forces in the country, Avon and Somerset police managed to provide enough officers on foot, horseback, and pushbike, to handle the worst the weather, Bristol’s underworld, and smelly hippiedom could throw at it. Glastonbury was usually a doddle, even the muddy ones, just a bit of double bubble overtime, presents for the wife and kids and extra holiday spends. But with widespread mayhem and panic to contend with throughout the site, and apparently no chance of reinforcements arriving from the surrounding towns and cities any time soon, Ash was stretched to breaking point. He had just 250 officers to handle the equivalent of four dozen extremely rammed and pissed-up town centres spilling out all at once for the ultimate closing time.

Behind the huddle of uniforms, the landowner, Mathew Beavis, was still weighing up the nuclear option. After all, one of the original beneficiaries of his festival had been CND, from whom he had learnt that apparently there were enough nuclear weapons to blow the world up five times over; a fact that always struck him as a little redundant. I mean, who’d be counting? God, presumably.

“It’s strange,” said Beavis, following Bumstead’s gaze out of the window. “All this destruction, and yet, from what I can gather the fences appear to be still standing. I don’t get it.”

The police and the local authorities had been hassling him for years over that damn fence, forcing endless ‘improvements’ and ‘modifications’, wasting an obscene amount of cash. That damn fence had been the bane of his life, bringing his vision a million miles away from where Glastonbury began back in the day, when it was just about inviting a few mates round for a jam and a spliff. Somehow, in the midst of all this craziness, all fifteen miles of it remained virtually unscratched.

“No one is allowed to leave the site until we’ve got a fix on what’s going on,” barked Ash. “If anyone asks, tell them it’s… I don’t know, highly toxic. Tell them it makes your eyes burn.”

* * * * *

“It makes your eyes burn,” said security guard Wesley, not really knowing what that actually meant.

He and Spike were growing tired of this game. What was it with some people and their cars? By now they must have turned away at least two hundred people from Gate Two, the closest entrance to the main car park. But still they came with those frenzied expressions and endless sob stories about No Claim Bonuses.

“I’ve told you, the car park is out of bounds,” Spike said, for the thousandth time.

People always say that a Glastonbury weekend seemed to last for weeks. Time did weird things, filled as it was with total excess, exhilaration, passion, paranoia, intoxication, and exhaustion. A security guard’s Glastonbury weekend lasted even longer, perhaps months, filled as it was with plenty of hassles, and bullshit and attitude. So far Spike had had to contend with two mini riots. He’d been sliced across the nose by a long-playing record, and repeatedly smacked across the back of the head with a huge inflatable Cross of St. George hammer, and now this.

“No-one is allowed to leave until we know what is going on,” he said, not even bothering to look people in the eye. He hated this job. “Please return to your tent to await further instructions.”

The trouble was that for every ten people they turned away at least one would stay and hover about a bit to commiserate and whine, and fairly soon a critical mass of disgruntled won’t take “NO” for an answer” types had gathered together to perhaps entertain the fleeting fantasy of an attempted mass breakout.

“We are going to need some back-up,” Spike whispered, sensing the prevailing mood; feeling like a UN peacekeeper on the outskirts of some god forsaken refugee camp. “All this needs is one spark and this whole scene could go tits up.”

* * * * *

Sacked children’s TV presenter, one time Son of God, and full-time alien conspiracy theorist, Dan Sykes, was just such a bright spark. Anyone who had been cast out into the wilderness as many times as he had only to claw their way back, had to be pretty smart.

Looking back, that whole Son of God thing had been a huge mistake. What he should have made perfectly clear was that we all have the Christ thing within us, not just him, but everyone. That we are all the sons and daughters of God, and that every breath we take actually contains an atom of air that was once exhaled by the Good Lord Jesus himself. Though as a children’s television presenter, he shouldn’t have said any of those things. Parents didn’t like religious nutters teaching their kids how to make a princess’ castle out of Fairy washing-up liquid bottles.

Even though he’d gone on to make a new career out of spreading wild rumours, writing ten books, launching lecture tours and hammering home his mutant message inside practically every community centre and New Age book shop in the country, there had always been a tiny slither of doubt in his mind that perhaps this whole ET conspiracy rap was just a complete pile of baloney; that he was really just in the business of exploiting the delusional and the downright lost, people who have filled those spiritual vacuums with so much bollocks.

So, he, more than most, had been more than a little surprised to discover that perhaps it might be true after all. That the King really could be a shape shifting lizard and the head of a foul alien plot to devour the human soul and turn everyone into robots.

But if it was all true, that could only mean that as a long-time thorn in the Illuminati’s side, he was now very much in the deepest doo-doo. His would be one of the first names on the list, attached to one of the first backs to be pushed up against the wall.

There wasn’t a shred of doubt in his mind that the whole ‘Toxic Waste Disaster’ story that the agents of darkness were peddling through their brainwashed servants, the festival police and security, was a ruse to ensnare and silence the whole of Glastonbury.

He needed to get to his car, which was hopefully still in one piece, loaded down with several boxes of his latest book, ‘CHIPS WITH EVERYTHING’ (about an alien plot to inject micro-chips into the necks of toddlers), get as far away from the site as possible, re-group with his army of trained cadres, the Light Workers, and wind the watch forward on Illuminati pay-back time.

* * * * *

Clash Man Keith was now also in the business of trying to sell the improbable; the words of Joe Strummer, in a land that so desperately needed some straight answers. But everywhere he looked, it felt like every conceivable fruitcake theory, piece of mumbo jumbo’d suck it out the airy-fairy pseudo-scientific, paranoiac nonsense had really come into its own, claiming the gullible and downright terrified at every tent flap. Amongst all that fire and brimstone, Keith was just another Loony Toon clocking-on at the factory floor of fear.

“Hi I’m Keith, yesterday I was possessed by the spirit of a dead Punk Rock legend…”

To make matters worse, the post gig bust up with Ken (aka Mick Jones) had been truly ugly, a long time coming, but still shocking never-the-less. Keith had apparently allowed his ego to “run riot” over White Riot. The band were “sick of him”. He was “always late”, always acting as if it was “his band”. And he’d made fools out of them in front of thousands of people. As far as Ken was concerned, it was all over.

So poor Keith had been cast out, band-less and clueless, but determined to raise a little awareness. He’d just come from a totally rammed Festival Welfare Services tent, where trampled limbs were being bandaged. People everywhere were in serious pain. But to Keith, Strummer’s message had ‘festival’ and ‘welfare’ written all over it. Strummer’s message was as vital as a shot in the arm or mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. No amount of patching up would ultimately save the people if Glastonbury didn’t get its head round the basics, and fast.

“…Glastonbury festival is being controlled by a despicable alien race, hell bent on destroying every last one of us for entertainment purposes...”

“Let me stop you right there,” one highly stressed and overworked first aid volunteer had snapped at him, covering his mouth with her outstretched palm, giving the impression that people had been sticking their heads through that flap all morning and spouting complete psycho-babble. Which indeed they had.

“Try and find your friends. Take some rescue remedy.”

Even though Dan Sykes was in a killer rush to escape the site, something, perhaps a certain haunted look in Keith’s eyes, reminded him of his early wilderness years, of travelling about the country pushing the downright ludicrous to day rooms and coffee mornings filled with geriatrics and lapsed Catholics. Sykes’ wilderness years had felt exactly like this guy now looked, lonely and totally desperate.

Something, perhaps the spiky hair and leathers with ’HATE ‘N’ WAR’ daubed across the back, had told Sykes that Keith was not your average Ufologist; had convinced him to suspend his flight for a few seconds and listen to what the kid had to say. But he soon wished that he hadn’t.

“What do you mean ‘entertainment purposes’?” he snapped, sensing some kind of elaborate piss-take. “Do you know me?”

“He just said that they were hell bent on destroying every last one of us for ‘entertainment purposes’,” said Keith.

Whilst having, of course, no problem with the concept of a ‘despicable alien race’, Keith’s end game just sounded totally lame. Like many of us, Sykes was deeply human-centric, unwilling to place humanity anywhere other than at the very centre of the Universe, around which everything else must revolve, and upon which everything else, particularly distant star-wars, good versus evil, light versus dark, that kind of profound stuff, must hinge. To Sykes, the destiny of the human race could be nothing short of pivotal to the whole goddamn shooting match. We were THAT important. “Entertainment purposes” just sounded naff. Keith may as well have been talking about an evil alien plot to turn us all into humus.

“I haven’t got time for this!” Sykes said, brushing the punk aside.

“Don’t go,” Keith pleaded, grabbing his arm, and on the verge of tears. Sykes had been about the only person for hours who had actually looked like they were listening.

“Do you know that at any one time there are over half a dozen fishoid, insectoid, humanoid and reptilian alien species out there with evil designs on this planet?” Sykes said, pointing skywards. “Robotic enslavement, global mineral rights, envy, or just pure and unadulterated spite,” he continued, counting on his fingers. “You name it, and for a myriad of reasons, THEY want to mess with US big time, and our so-called leaders are all in on it. Oh yes they are. Deals have been struck, technological advances traded. We, the human race, are but battery chickens being fattened with banality, plucked of consciousness, stuffed with ignorance, and served up on a flying saucer with relish. And you think that this is entertaining!?”

“He didn’t say anything about common taste and decency,” said Keith, feeling brow beaten. “Perhaps, some people find screwing around with human destiny fun.”

Sykes looked over Keith’s shoulder. In the distance he could see a line of cops coming their way. Either alien walk-ins dressed as cops or the real thing, he couldn’t say. But it was time to go.

“I’m getting the hell out of here,” he shouted over his shoulder, walking away as quickly as he could. “And if you were as sharp as your fringe, you’d do the same.”

* * * * *

But that was no ordinary line of cops. This was an expedition force being led by Chief Inspector Ash, and his second in command Inspector Bumstead, a fact-finding mission that had soon become an everything is totally fucked up finding mission.

It had taken them ages to cross the one field, having to negotiate clusters of day-glow medieval brigands at every turn, the sense of menace not helped by the prevalence of plastic Viking helmets and devil horns, wild staring eyes, cracked and runny face paint. People were getting angry. They’d paid well over the odds for a full-on rock festival, only to be left with a V-dub van draining the last crackly smidgen of voltage from its dashboard. The toilets hadn’t been cleaned for ages, the bins were beginning to overflow, and practically every five yards or so someone would block their way with a “What the fuck is going on?”

And then Bumstead got a message calling for immediate back-up at Gate Two, where the atmosphere had become “highly toxic”; certainly not the toxic waste story that the Chief Inspector had had in mind.

“Sir, we’d better get a move on. Gate Two is about to blow.”

* * * * *

Of course, about the only people who were giving that whole toxic waste story any special interest were the eco-activists, particularly the Greenpeace crew, most particularly Suzie, or Dr Suzie Meyer, the renowned toxicologist.

Despite being ever so slightly out-of-it when she had realised that a disaster of immense proportions was unfolding around her, she had soon stumbled upon the hastily concocted ‘official line’, and lurched into action, trying to track down some clues on-line via the BBC, The Guardian, and CNN, on her solar-powered lap-top. But it was like the information superhighway had been ripped up and grassed over. It wasn’t like they were in the middle of the Nevada desert or somewhere. Bristol was only a few miles away, as were a number of large market towns. The lack of a signal, in one of the busiest and noisiest corners of Western Europe seemed to suggest that something a little more serious than an explosion at a local paint factory, as the festival authorities seemed to be suggesting, had gone down. More likely a giant meteorite strike, or a major nuclear accident.

That said, whilst she was more than a little skeptical about the official version, she felt that the festival goers, from whom her pressure group received quite a sizable cash injection each year, would expect Greenpeace to leap into some kind of action, and at the very least put in an appearance.

But it had taken her at least an hour to coax out some of her fellow activists from within the bowels of the wooden Rainbow Warrior adventure playground that stood in a sea of mud at one end of the Greenpeace Field, and another hour to get them kitted up in the sort of Armageddon chic usually employed to lend their protests that apocalyptic air. By mid-morning they had set off - boiler suits, face masks, clipboards, rubber gloves, the works, on a mission to do what Greenpeace does best – ask awkward questions.

* * * * *

“You have no right to stop me from leaving!” huffed Dan Sykes, railroading security guard Spike with an innate sense of entitlement and superiority, just inside Gate Two. “You’re not a policeman!”

He had had years of experience dealing with jumped up little oiks like Spike at the gates of Television Centre. But the good news was that this burly, surly Illuminati stooge had shown no obvious signs of recognising him.

“This is false imprisonment,” Sykes continued, as loud as he could, hoping to drum up a little interest from a group of disgruntled drivers, as he edged his way closer and closer to the gate. “Now, I’m going to my car whether you like it or not, and if you so much as lay a finger on me than I will have you for assault.”

Just as he had hoped, his outburst captured the prevailing mood of Gate Two, stirring the blood of a potentially unruly mob of 100 or so motorists all determined to discover whether or not their pride and joys had become a smouldering wreck. A huge plume of acrid poison that was rising from the other side of the fence seeming to suggest that they had.

“You tell ’em, pal,” said Rob, a plumber from Hull, eager to find out whether he was destined to spend the rest of his late twenties and early thirties paying for a burnt-out husk. “They can’t stop us.”

Legally speaking, Spike knew that he was onto a bit of a sticky wicket. Only the police could lawfully prevent people from leaving the site. Busting into the site? Well, that was a different matter. He could use reasonable force to kick as may nuts and crack as many skulls as he liked. Physically preventing people from leaving under their own free will was a new one. But it just wasn’t in his nature to stand aside. He was a security guard. This was his post, and those were his orders.

“Listen pal, I’ve told you. No-one is going anywhere,” he snapped.

Years of hunching over a computer and living on a diet of pizza and coffee, had made Sykes pretty weak and feeble. A further fifty thousand years of evolution and his DNA strand would have no doubt been churning out complete muscle wastage - spindly arms and legs, a tiny waist, a thin scrawny trunk and neck, a gangly stooping posture supporting a massively disproportionate head with huge eyes. A further fifty thousand years gazing at computer screens, television screens, smart phones and tablets, soaking up thousands of points of light information 24/7 in a perpetual twilight world, and Dan’s kind would have eventually taken on all the characteristics of your stereotypical alien, “IT – phone home.”

But for now Sykes somehow needed to find the courage and strength to become the Che Guevara of Gate Two, stirring up the masses, trying to persuade the likes of Steve, a boy racer type from Dagenham, and Chris, a door-to-door salesman from Leicester, to physically defy the security.

Like a trusty light sabre, he plucked his car keys from his pocket, pointed them towards the gate, and pressed the button. A tiny red light came on, signaling his defiance, expressing his hope that somewhere out there was a completely happy, albeit slightly muddy hatch-back, waiting to greet him with flashing lights and that irritating “Bleep Bleep” sound.

“Come on,” he said, thrusting his key chub into the air, realising that the police could arrive at any minute. “There’s only two of them. They have no right to keep us here. Let’s go!”

* * * * *

Channel Four TV’s Sasha Lush, Glastonbury Lives hostess with the moistest was now completely amped and frazzled. It was like the story of the century had just snuck up behind her and stuck its tongue down her throat. First in the Green Zone, where it was like every minor-celebrity, overnight pop sensation, flash in the pan rock has-been, and famous for being famous somebody and their lover had just found themselves stranded on the deck of the Titanic, chipping off shards of ice-berg into their margaritas. Sasha Lush was pretty much the only tried and trusted ear to the stars around to capture about a zillion Heat Magazine’s worth of sweaty armpits and bad hair days. We’re talking Exclusive with a capital ‘E’, access to all areas, a passport to the stars guaranteed two-hour Netflix special, with a full-blown TV movie or two, and a cabinet full of Golden Globes, Bafta’s and Oscars to boot.

So what if the satellite link had gone down, pushing everything off-line. The world could only be growing hungrier and hungrier waiting to know what had gone down at Glastonbury. How that scattering of soap stars, minor sports personalities, and celebrity chefs had handled it all.

How ‘mockney’ super-model and rock fashionista Wendy Lane, had been wearing a gold lame micro-dress and black Hunter Wellingtons when the disaster struck. How both she, and her bad boy rocker boyfriend Trevor, also decked in the latest ‘survivor chic’, had been canoodling in a VIP area behind the main stage when “everything went black”. And how she hadn’t quite “shat” herself so much since the time she’d spilt all her charlie over Nelson Mandela’s bath mat.

By first light, she and her crew had set off to capture a few shots of the destruction; something that actually involved leaving behind the rarefied comfort of the Green Zone and venturing out into the site, hounded by acne and spittle at every turn, in the land that photo-shop forgot.

Babylon, Glastonbury’s very own Central Business District, had felt like downtown LA a few hours after the Rodney King verdict. In every doorway of every stall stood extremely anxious-looking stall-holders, waiting for the juice to be put back on, perhaps wondering how long it would take the punters to realise that the entire area was now up for grabs, the police and site security having been redeployed all over the show.

Everybody hated Babylon. However much they tried to jolly up their businesses with funny wigs and signs, to the cash-strapped masses these people were nothing more than evil bread-heads, a cancer eating away at the festival vibe, selling cheap third world imports made by child labour, or fashioned from the tortured flesh of some unfortunate beast.

They’d interviewed Terry, who sold bright shiny objects; trinkets brought in from India and Thailand - Buddha, Shiva, the Eye of Horus, thousands of years of encapsulation now sold in brassy miniature, as well as crystals and dream catchers.

He’d recently read this poll asking people how they would spend their time if a giant meteorite was about to crash into the earth and they only had an hour left to live. Apparently, fifty four percent said that they would spend it talking to loved ones. Thirteen percent would just sit back and relax. Nine percent would shag, three percent pray, two percent binge on fatty foods, and the final two percent would just start looting.

“What’s the point of humping a 78-inch colour television across town with a rock the size of California about fall on your head?” he’d wondered.

But if the rumours flying about were true, and this poll was anything to go by, he kind of figured that some “2,000 plus comfort eaters were heading their way soon, on a suicide mission for burgers and fries.”

It was then that Lush had spotted Dr Suzie Meyer and her small contingent of Greenpeace activists and decided to tag along. Greenpeace had to know what the hell was going on. Glastonbury had environmental shit storm written all over it, and these guys specialised in pointing fingers and blowing gaffs.

* * * * *

Back at Gate Two, a stampeding herd of twenty or so ‘One Careful Owners’ was making a break for freedom, led by a former Son of God. Just two security guards stood between them and their beloved jam jars. All being good, quite a number of them hoped to be feasting on pie and chips beside the A303 within the hour. Spike threw his arms out wide and prepared to rugby tackle the entire exodus. Even if most of them managed to evade him, he would make damn sure that that smarmy jumped-up little twat, Dan Sykes, would eat dirt first.

Wesley, on the other hand, had a completely different take on things. If some damn fool wanted to go out there and catch a dose from the Toxic Avenger then that was their look out. They didn’t pay him enough for this crap. In fact, there was no guarantee that they were going pay him at all.

“Sorry guy,” he called out to Spike, jumping clear of the advancing mob. “Damn foolishness!”

“What…?!” said Spike, taking his eye off the ball at the crucial moment, as Steve, the boy racer type from Dagenham, and Chris, the door-to-door salesman from Leicester, wrestled him to the ground, allowing Dan Sykes to leap across the tangle of bodies like Lawrence of Arabia, seize the huge metal bolt that held the gate shut, and begin to wiggle it free. Gate two was theirs. At least it would have been, if the riot squad hadn’t suddenly decided to put in an appearance.

Chief Inspector Ash, Inspector Bumstead and twelve of his toughest lads had arrived in the nick of time, and instantly set about neutralising the unruly mob with batons and pepper spray, beginning with Spike’s two wrestling partners. Not that Spike needed saving, though. The attempted breakout had soon seen the terror of Spike’s ways.

It had taken them forever to drive to Gate Two, negotiating pot-holes and clusters of panic at every turn. Without some word from HQ how could Ash possibly know what the hell was going down, or how to deal with it? Without some word from HQ, he was now the top honcho, the main man, somehow expected to take overall control of a major disaster with a handful of officers. That said, he was actually quite glad to have something relatively normal to get his teeth into. Police work was basically about forcing people to do something that they didn’t want to do, and in this case a sizable group of people didn’t want to stay at Glastonbury Festival a moment longer. But however strong and understandable their desire was, and God knows that Ash wished that he could leave with them, it was his job to know that letting folks just wander about ‘out there’ was not a good idea. If he messed this up he’d probably spend the rest of his working life filling out Home Office reports.

The plod, like everyone else, had family and friends to think of, wives and girlfriends, kids. Despite outward appearances, they were as anxious as the next man or woman, feeling cut off from those they loved. They hurt. They cried. Okay, they made others hurt and cry a lot more on occasion, but despite it all they remained a focused and disciplined force handling a tough job in a tough situation.

But to the likes of Dan Sykes, they were anything but your friendly neighbourhood coppers, unwittingly thrown into the front line of civil strife. These were stooges, heartless, soulless puppets, brain-washed in early childhood to carry out the Illuminati’s darkest deeds without question or remorse. He’d been expecting this showdown for some time - cometh the hour, cometh the zombie.

“Step away from the gate!” Inspector Bumstead shouted, squirting his sinister canister like a deranged gardener.

Whoever had said that it “makes your eyes burn” wasn’t joking. Pepper spray is a nasty business, causing upper body spasms, coughing and choking, temporary blindness, and severe burning sensations. Though there is no way to completely neutralise its effects, victims are encouraged to blink vigorously in order to encourage tears, which will help flush the irritant from the eyes. It could also be washed off the face using soap, shampoo, and dish washing detergent, just about the last items you’d expect someone to be carrying about at a crusty rock festival.

Although more than capable of killing off what little remained of the festival vibe, a few squirts here and there did wonders for maintaining law and order. The rebellion was soon routed, the blinded rebels soon realising that it was hard enough trying to find your motor on a good day, let alone during Armageddon, with benzyl chloride and xylyl bromide in your eyes.

But Dan Sykes couldn’t afford to give it up that easy. Any amount of pain the Old Bill were dishing out now was nothing compared to what The Illuminati would do to him on ‘the slab’. He was the Hope of the World, and this was a pivotal scene. He had but a few seconds to wiggle and twist the bolt free before the riot cops nabbed him. And even less time before Spike sunk a crafty rabbit punch into his kidneys and brought him crashing to the ground.

* * * * *

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded Dr Suzie Meyer, scourge of the petro-chemical industry, hero of a hundred public enquiries, veteran of the Sandox chemical plant explosion in 2007, and author of five leading papers on leaching.

A thin blue line now stood across the entrance to Gate Two, barring her pathway to the truth, seemingly indifferent to the distress of a number of civilian casualties, some yelping and clawing at their faces, stumbling about blindly, certainly looking like the aftermath of some kind of major toxic disaster.

“I demand to know what’s going on here!” Meyer persisted, going up to one of the victims and grasping his elbow. “Inspector, why are you not helping these people?”

“Lady, please stay back,” Inspector Bumstead growled, stabbing his baton at the ground.

“The bastards attacked us!” said Rob, the plumber from Hull. “Bloody maced us!”

About the very last thing that Chief needed was for the awkward squad to turn up and punch a dirty great hole in his cover story. The whole ‘toxic’ thing had been, he could now see, a tad stupid, especially with practically every eco-nut in the country present, and now totally correct in their suspicions that a cover up was taking place. But just what the hell was he supposed to have been covering up? Apart, that is, from his own total ignorance. He had no better grasp of the situation than the next guy. This, he hated. This, he now feared, was about to be blown wide open by Greenpeace.

“Who is your senior officer?” Dr Meyer shouted. “I demand to speak to your senior officer!”

“It’s okay Inspector, I’ll handle this,” said Ash, stepping forward, all the time thinking “steady… steady”, but becoming suddenly very much aware of the presence of a TV camera poking about in his peripheral vision, perhaps the very last thing that he needed right then.

“This is a lot bigger than any toxic spill or explosion that I can recall,” said Dr Meyer, also noticing Sasha Lush and the camera crew.

“Everyone must return to their camp sites and remain calm,” said Ash, straight into the camera, his strategy to ignore anything he couldn’t possibly answer; deep down wondering if Greenpeace knew something that he didn’t, and resisting the urge to ask.

“We will have a clearer picture of what’s going on when the emergency services arrive.”

Quite unused to proper news gatherings, but loving the sense of getting her teeth into a real scoop, Sasha Lush seized her moment, “And when will that be?”

“Sorry, when will what be?” asked Ash, his cheeks starting to blush.

“When are the emergency services going to get here?” Lush asked back.

“Er?” Ash stumbled, feeling like this giant hand had suddenly appeared from nowhere and plonked a large dollop of runny egg onto his head. He hadn’t a clue. The simplest most assertive answer was beyond him. He felt let down and cut adrift. He so wanted to shout, “Yeah, when the heck are they going to get here?!” But all he could come up with was, “Soon”.

“What’s really going on?” Dr Meyer interrupted, sensing reticence, smearing that egg all over Ash’s face, poking it into his eyes and ears, working it into that five o’clock shadow.

“And if you don’t know, then why don’t you know, and so then why don’t we all just go out there right now and try to find some answers?” she pressed on.

“That is clearly out of the question,” sniffed Ash, setting his bullshit to auto-pilot. “It’s far too dangerous. The chances of surviving out there at the moment could be…”

But before he could finish his sentence, there came a very loud and unmistakable knock on the gate, forcing everyone to practically jump out of their skins. Clearly, someone or something was trying to get in. For what seemed like the longest time, no-one budged an inch or made a sound. Dr Meyer stared at Ash, and Ash caught a glimpse of his reflection in the camera lens. He looked shaken-up, troubled. In classic cop parlance, it seemed that the wheel had truly come off this one, leaving him wondering just where the hell they were going to land up.

KNOCK! KNOCK!

It came again, much louder this time.

“Someone’s out there,” said Dr Meyer, nodding towards the gate.

KNOCK! KNOCK!

“Er… Who’s there?” croaked the Chief Inspector, about as convincing as the arse-end of a pantomime cow.

“There’s somebody out there, perhaps injured,” said Dr. Meyer, taking a step towards the gate. “If you won’t let them in, then I will.”

“No, you won’t,” said Ash, barring her way. “Inspector Bumstead, see who it is.”

Time stood still. All eyes were on the huge metal gate, as Inspector Bumstead started to wiggle and screech it open.

Suddenly, a police Land Rover appeared from nowhere and began to bomb it towards the way out, scattering eco-activists and blinded AA members in all directions, causing Sasha Lush’s cameraman to instantly whip round and smack her in the face with his chunky lens. At the controls? Dan Sykes, a bruised kidney in one hand, a steering wheel in the other, in a last-ditch effort to escape the evil clutches of the Illuminati.

He was SO on that one. When you have spent over ten years pandering to fantasists and conspiracy theorists, reaching out to the far-fetched, stringing up perilous rope bridges between the tangible and the implausible, reflecting upon and refining extraordinary claims 24/7 within a small and largely closed-minded social circle, then why wouldn’t you believe that all this calamity had been laid on just for your benefit, to validate your claims, to fulfill your own individual destiny?

“Wake up! Resist!” he yelled out of the driver’s window, as his front wheels skidded and twisted through the Glastonbury mud, his words mostly lost under the sound of tortuous gear shifts, much splish-splashing through vast puddles and hectic revving. Not for the first time, though judging by the way he was driving towards those huge steel gates, probably for the last, Sykes was mistaken for your average random nutter.

“Oi! That’s my Landrover!” shouted Ash, oblivious to the fact that his children used to delight at watching this lunatic make wondrous things out of egg boxes and pipe cleaners.

Fast cut to Sykes’ frantic point of view; the speedometer rising, terrified faces all around, cops diving this way and that, the wall of oppressive steel towering higher and higher, closer and closer.

BAM!

A sickening crunch. Sykes head-butts the dashboard and is violently thrown back, his eyes filling with tears. The metal gates severely dented but still standing.

“Shit!”

Sykes threw the Landy into reverse, but it stalled, killing precious seconds. Through smeary vision he could just make out several police officers coming at him from all sides, cursing, clawing at the cab door, launching baton blows, and shattering the windscreen.

“Oh for pity’s sake!” Ash cried, seeing the front of his cab disintegrate. “Now, there was no need for that!” He was having a really bad festival.

His Land Rover suddenly shot back twenty feet or so, ready for another go. Sykes slammed it forward. Take Two, aimed as best he could for the crumpled mid-section of the gate, the wind sending rivulets of bloody nose across his cheeks and neck.

BAM!

Where was he getting this courage from? The large metal doors burst open, sending seared bolts and hinges flying into space, the top half of one side crashing down onto the roof of the cab. The Landy pushed on through, swerving and twisting and narrowly avoiding a huge ditch, carrying the former son of god out into the wilderness once again.

No-one, not police, nor media, security guard, AA member or eco-activist could quite believe their eyes. First, this weird and unexpected demolition derby, and now this. So utter was the devastation beyond the gate that it actually made the festival interior look tidy and clean in comparison.

“It looks like we’ve finally gone and truly fucked it,” Dr Meyer muttered. This smelt like death, looked like death, and felt like hanging by your finger nails hundreds of feet up from a slippery piece of rusting guttering.

She had been witnessing the end of the world for some time through the various campaigns she had been involved in. It had come in installments, a chunk here, a slice there. She was used to seeing huge tracts of the countryside, ancient forests, river valleys, marshland and meadows, obliterated in the name of ‘progress’. She’d been broken in slowly to the reality of a broken world, with no guarantees, insurance or warranty. Even so, as she and her Greenpeace colleagues tried to take in the enormity of the devastation, she was still shocked to the core.

And as they all stood there, frozen to the spot, several recent events jostling for the title of ‘The Freakiest Fucking Thing I Have Ever Seen’, it appeared that out of the very clutches of Hell and Damnation sheepishly crept..

“Jesus Christ!”

Earnest was alive, but blackened and singed, and his second coming to Gate Two was beginning to feel way too biblical. All around him people seemed to be weeping and burying their faces in their hands. Many more were drifting towards the shattered gateway, riot cops, people in white boiler suits and face masks, a camera crew. Everyone looked completely terrorised.

“Are you Jesus?” a woman asked nervously, slowly reaching out to touch his sleeve.

“I’m afraid not,” Earnest whispered, smiling awkwardly.

“What did he say?” asked someone towards the back of the scrum.

“Don’t be afraid, I think,” someone answered.

Earnest suddenly felt terribly embarrassed. Could it be, he thought, that they actually thought he WAS Jesus?

“Oh God! I mean… Please, I am not who you think I am,” he blurted out. “I’m Earnest.”

“What did he say?” said a very colourful looking member of the Jesus Army, who’d gone to check on the squad’s mini-bus.

“He says he’s earnest,” offered up someone close by.

“Wow! He doesn’t waste any time, eh?” Said the trooper.

“Fuck me! There’s a severed leg!” screamed the nervous sleeve-tugger, pointing into the distance.

Everyone followed her finger. Not ten yards away, on the edge of huge crater, there was indeed a severed leg.

But Chief Inspector Ash, only had eyes for this ‘bearded one’, clearly some kind of religious fanatic. Why was it that when every other living thing out there, trees, hippies, rabbits, seemed to have got it in the neck, Osama bin-basket-case here had somehow survived?

“Inspector?” he pointed, desperate for any kind of lead that he could find. “Take him in for questioning!”

* * * * *