annanotbob2's Diaryland
Diary
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Coooeee! Honey, I'm home!
- I'm home after a week living with Daughter in a tent in the lovely fresh air. We came home early as it was too hot on Sunday and we had no shade, but we endured the big thunderstorms on Monday night, with no water coming in and Shirley, though terrified to the point of violent trembling, was able to be comforted by snuggling right up close to me, wrapped in my arms.
- It was so tiring, more than we thought. I'm old. I really had to recognise that. Camping is very ground based and it's harder and harder for me to get up or even to shuffle about on the ground. And we moved half way through - taking it all down, driving for a few hours, including being stationary on the M20 for an hour in the full sun, then setting up again in the hottest weather of the year so far. So tiring.
- Both places were beautiful. The first was a groovy kind of camp-site, proper old school hippy, lots of fields separated by high hedges and trees, right in the countryside - all we could hear was birdsong. We were on our own mostly. The second site was a hayfield on the edge of a clifftop on the north Kent coast, part of a working farm, blissfully beautiful at first but impossible to shelter from the increasingly strong sun. So we came home a day early.
- I felt sad to have missed Glasto, though I find a hot Glasto unbearable. My ideal is cloudy with a bit of a breeze. Perfect. I've watched some since I got back. Yusuf/Cat Stevens made me cry when he sang I Love My Dog - I didn't even have a dog to love when I bought that single, in 1966 or so, and I was listening to it on Shirley's sixth birthday. Elton was good too - I only changed channels to have a peep and see what he was like but ended up watching his whole set. I've never been a big fan - I've never owned anything by him but find I know the words to almost everything he did.
- It was good to be back in writing group. I wrote this:
That summer we were the only people left in the (nameless but real) boys’ prep school where we worked in the kitchens. The boys had all been collected and driven away in big shiny cars, the teaching staff followed soon after and even the head teacher had disappeared, leaving just the five of us. M and P, me and D and J, D’s well dodgy brother. A multicultural bunch of ne’er-do-wells and a whole building to explore. We soon discovered that the entrance hall, the head’s study (viewed through a window) and the sitting room opposite had had 95% of the money spent on them, resulting in them having 100% of the available comfort. Plush carpets, rich wallpaper, comfortable chairs, art on the walls. Beyond the connecting door, it was a different story – dusty floorboards, tatty undecorated walls, and hard iron beds for the boys, in dorms with no curtains, no rugs, nothing. No wonder they cried at night. Our rooms were as bad – a mattress on the floor, take it or leave it.
Once we’d explored we settled down to our usual hedonistic lifestyle, playing music as loud as we could – Who’s Next was our fave “Meet the new boss – same as the old boss!” Yeah, man. We smoked loads of dope – P sold it, only to our mates, nothing really iffy – and soon there was a stream of long haired, loon-pant wearing stoners wandering in and out to score. The school was out in the countryside, opposite another big grey building, HQ of a sect I will not name, who had a useful shop where we could stock up on essentials. 40 No6, two packs of red Rizlas and a big bar of Dairy Milk, thanks you very much. The bus from the town often held a mixture of religious hopefuls and ‘heads’ coming to buy dope, listen to some sounds, hang out. We also had (unauthorized) access to the abandoned outdoor swimming pool, hidden behind tall overgrown hedges, full of water, but untreated. Over the course of that long, hot summer, as the water grew greener and greener, we bickered over how safe it was, whether we should stop swimming in it. I seem to remember the Spanish lads stopped pretty early, but I kept going, keeping my head out of the water, hoping for the best.
12:01 a.m. - 27.06.23
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