Day 93 - The Glastonbury Recovery (Part 1)

An upgrade from phone notes perhaps, but writing on Wordpad from bed in a room scattered in leftover Glastonbury shrapnel with blackened drawn curtains, is the babiest of baby steps. Hiding from an imminent visit from my landlord due to a broken washing machine, I can hear Sharrow Festival, a local miniature festival which my friends are at but I am not. It's not the most devastating festival to miss but still, I've been in this room for so long.

Let's analyse how I got here. There is a lot to write so I'm grammar and structure is going to have to take a hit here.

On Monday I woke up in my Tent at Glastonbury, incapable of drinking water without it resurfacing in a more disturbing form. Disorientated and dizzied, I miraculously managed to pack my tent and bag before spreading myself onto whatever bit of ground I happened to be on at that moment in time, a pillow beneath my head. As the sun began to beam with a greater vengeance, my friend Sarah took pity on me and kindly guided me and my pillow to some shade, where I again optimistically attempted to drink water. It didn't work. I lay there for almost an hour before Sarah, Georgia, Elinor and Robbie appeared above me which meant only one thing. It was time to walk, with all our luggage, to the coach. How the hell am I going to survive that coach journey?

The walk took about an hour. Due to my inability to not throw up any morsel of anything which entered my body, combined with my extreme feelings of dehydration, I spent the walk sipping and spitting out water to temporarily offset my Riveta tongue. We arrived at the coach terminal, a hectic mess of people periodically switching between sitting and shuffling through what Georgia aptly described as pig-pens, metal barriers guiding a so called queue. It was 11:30, our coach was at 12:00, so I went for a final piss before joining the cattle walking towards the slaughter in the unforgiving sun.

Delays on top of delays and noises that whatever time your booking was made for was irrelevant because people had been getting on any coach meant that all order had been lost. It was every man for himself. We had to get as close to the front of that queue as possible. Still feeling like vomit was a strong possibility, I was occasionally granted rest time in the pig-pen when at a standstill. In between pauses, I had to rapidly pick up my large rucksack, my smaller rucksack, my hand luggage and my tent. In some moments it wasn't entirely clear whether it was or wasn't a standstill so I regularly asked Sarah for permission to sit down. Permission was sometimes granted.

After a gruelling 2 hour delay in which we were constantly taunted by announcements to drink water which was available at the side, despite "the side" being a 2 minute walk away which would mean you lose your place in the queue and therefore your chance of getting home (not that I could drink it anyway), the Sheffield coach was announced. A surprising twist of fortune arose as my inability to drink water came up trumps when on boarding the coach it was immediately apparent there was no toilet. Result! Now all I needed to do is not be sick for the next 6 hours on a type of vehicle in which I'm prone to sickness at the best of times.

I intended for my week to be covered in one post but this has turned out longer than expected. Tomorrow I will continue from Tuesday.