) Sunday, July 29, 9:45 PM WOMAD Festival, Swindon, England.

This year’s WOMAD was in Swindon, a town at the edge of the recently flooded area of central England. I was extremely lucky; the weather was fine by the time I got there. But the unrelenting rains had left the festival grounds a sea of mud; mud that was a malevolent, science-fiction entity. Ankle deep, with the consistency of wet cement, it easily sucked the shoes right off your feet, after staining you a smelly brown up to the knees.

Since I didn’t have adequate footwear, I stepped into two large black garbage bags, which a kind soul taped to my pants legs (formerly white) with duct tape. The bags ruptured within minutes of slogging through the muck, so it took me almost an hour in the bathtub back at the hotel that evening to make the shoes clean enough to pass a cursory inspection at Heathrow Security on Monday.

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(Show me the muddy…)

one local camper threatened to gouge our eyes out if we didn’t turn don’t the bass

(TURN OFF THE F*CKING BASS ITS JUST TOO LOUD)
(DO YOU WANT US TO TURN IT OFF AND SING YOU A LULLABY INSTEAD?)
(THEY PLAYED TILL ELEVEN THIS MORNING, ELEVEN O CLOCK!!!)
(DON’T WORRY WE’ll TURN IT OFF BEFORE THEN,
WHY DID YOU CAMP HERE NEAR A RIG ANYWAY)
(THIS F*CKING SOUNDSYSTEM WASN’T HERE WHEN WE ARRIVED!!)

she wasn’t amused but eyes are still intact. that was a lot of friggin mud