Mud and mayhem at the Green Man Festival

If it's Summer in England, it's festival season. And everyone has to experience a festival at least once in their life. It's the unwritten rule. 
The trendy festival scene started with Glastonbury. But now there are so many festivals, it's hard to go anywhere in June, July or August without passing marquees being set up in muddy fields and signs featuring the names of bands  you have never heard of in big red letters.

So a few years ago, in order to cross it off our " things to do before we die," list, my family ( us and my brother and sister and their families ) decided it was time. So we  bought tickets  for the Greenman festival in Wales. We chose the Greenman partly because  we had actually heard of some of the bands, partly because it's very family friendly, but mostly because it's very close to where my brother lives so if the weather was too bad and the toilets too disgusting, we had an escape route.

The Greenman Festival takes place in the grounds of a beautiful house, nestled in the foothills of gentle mountains. On the rare occassions that the Welsh sun shines, it is breathtakingly beautiful. We We arrived on Friday night as the first twang of live music vibrated through the peaceful Summer evening. The hardier festival- goers had already been there for days, colourful tents and painted camper vans crowded together, like a holiday refugee camp.

 We inspected the compostible toilets, which on Friday evening, still weren't too bad and  leaving our van in the hope that we would be able to find it again, we wandered through the happy crowds to try and find the rest of our family. Children with painted faces, wearing nothing but flowery wellies, weaved in and out of tents while their (mostly) long haired parents, also wearing flowery wellies,  hammered in pegs, laid out bedding and set up chairs and tables.  Teenagers in cut off jeans tried to catch the eye of other teenagers in cut-off jeans and smells of barbecue and curries and compost drifted over from the stages where the bands were already playing. And the evening was warm, the food we  ate together at " base camp," delicious, the cousins delighted to see each other and the first multi-talented band we heard that night:  Bellowhead, were amazing. 

                            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZjnxFMQACk
 The main stage was built at the foot of a hill,  creating a concert basin with slopes to lounge on and the perfect backdrop of mountains and sunset. We danced and wandered around listening to music, poetry, stand up comedy and watching the enormous bubbles from the " bubble shop," drifting by with the beautiful relaxed festival-induced sense  of peaceful aimlessness.

And that's how the whole weekend was. 
 Full of good music, delicious food, bubbles and so much " love and peace," that it was hard to believe that bad things could ever happen in the world.  
The kids loved it. 
It was small enough for them to roam freely wherever they wanted without getting lost but big enough to feel like an adventure.       
We grown-ups based ourselves at the Chai Wallahs tent with a constant stream of beer, chai and amazing, as yet unknown, musicians from all over the world.
By the time we had to leave on Sunday evening we were so chilled it was impossible to believe that anything could ever stress us out again.  The kids, faces painted, flowers in their hair and huge bubble wands in their hands, all declared it had been the best weekend of their lives. 

 And we thought so too and as soon as we got back home we booked our tickets for next year.
The whole of the next year was spent in anticipation of the " time of our life," we would re-experience the next Summer.  We looked up the bands who would be playing so that Ninesh and I could listen to them beforehand and pretend we had always liked them.  We planned our food, our wanderings, our Chi Wallah nights. 
And the weekend arrived.
And it rained and rained.  
The mud changed from squelchy and earth coloured to compacted and unpleasant runny  brown.  
Walking was like a game where, if you made it to the other side of the path without losing a welly in the mud, you felt that you should win a prize. The toilets were brown streams and by Sunday, if you didn't keep walking, you sank!

The music was still amazing and we heard Linton Kwesi Johnson, which in itself made the weekend worthwhile.  The kids still loved the freedom of roaming unwatched, the mountains, when you could see them through the rain and clouds, were still beautiful and the food just as delicious, even the ice creams!

But somehow, the magic was gone. 
Perhaps the novelty that comes with "first-time,' experiences was missing.
Perhaps you should never do the same thing twice.
But mostly, it was the mud. Cloying and ( by the end ) stinking, we are still finding it in our clothes and van and wellies and tent a year later.
The truth is, that us " oldies," are fair-weather festival goers.  Deep down inside, I know that mud and dirt and blocked toilets are an integral part of the true festival experience but I have always preferred green grass and cleanliness and toilets that flush. 
And I can't help feeling relieved that I can now tick the  " go to a festival," box on my life plan.
I am glad it has  moved from my: " to do," to my: " have done," list.  
And when our kids are ready to festival on their own, I will willingly help them pack their bags with wellies and flowers and toilet paper, while I dream quietly of  weekends away in sweet smelling hotels with crisp white sheets and unmuddied bathwater.

Letting go

The strange thing about your own children is that however much they exhaust and frustrate you, letting go of them is one of the hardest things you will ever have to do. The wrench is almost physical. A cutting of the ties, a loosening of the knot, a lowering of the safety net you have created for them.
Yesterday our 15 year old daughter, Mia, started her work experience for You Magazine in London. The offices are in Northcliffe House, just off Kensington High Street, the building  huge and never ending with escalators that  reach to the sky.

On the train and tube, Mia had towered over me in her heels and "smart/casual," blue dress but as I watched her disappearing through the spinning glass doors , she suddenly looked so small and vulnerable. A miniscule blue dot against the imposing brown brick and reflective panelled glass.  
It was hard not to chase after her - just to check she was alright.   
But that would never do.  
It was uncool enough that I had come.
So I stood and watched her disappearing along the shining hallway, taking her first step into adulthood. 
Watched the emptiness where she had been standing.
Watched the doors spinning constantly, rotating people in and out.
Watched the world that, at 15, Mia will now know more about than me.
And I couldn't help wondering when it is that we stop being the centre of our children's worlds and start becoming mere observers, standing outside, watching their lives unfold through the reflective glass.

Perhaps it starts with the first day of nursery or the first day of school. 

Or the  first time they go to a party without you or sleep at a friend's house. But I think that maybe it starts the day you are walking down the road together and they see a friend waiting for them and shaking off your hand, they say:
"you're not going to walk all the way to the end of the road with me, are you?"

I spent the rest of  yesterday pacing the grey London pavements, breathing in the fume-filled air, feeling old and slightly unnecessary. 
And at the end of the day I waited inconspicuously at the tube station.

Until I saw her, smiling and waving through the crowds in her blue dress and high heels.
And she was fine.
And I was fine. 
And I waved back, smiling too.  
The slightly sad smile of someone who is learning to let go.

To A Daughter Leaving Home

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye. 

Linda Pastan

One perfect peony

The thing that I love best about Spring and Summer, is the way that gardens, which have spent all Winter looking brown and boring, are suddenly filled with splashes of colour.  Red and blue buds poke through hedges and paving stones, sweet scented pink and white roses tumble from trellises and window boxes are filled with the deep pinks and velvet reds of geraniums, so bright that it is hard to believe they are real.

 To a chaotic gardener like myself, each new bloom is a pleasure and a surprise.  I never remember what I planted  last year.  I don't plan for flowers that bloom at different times, I don't plant flowerbeds with the tallest flowers at the back grading down to the smallest at the front. I don't think about what colours would look good together.  I just see flowers that I like and put them in the ground and hope that they will grow. And each year, if they reappear, my joy at seeing them again is not just the result of their colour or beauty or scent but is filled with the pleasure of a reunion, of meeting old friends who you had almost forgotten about but now you have met them again, you remember how much you liked them.

But there is one flower that I always wait for amongst the colourful chaos of our garden. One flower that, for the short time it blooms, seems to hold the rest of the garden to ransom. Nothing seems to me to be as beautiful as our peony. When it opens its rich, red petals, I always breathe a sigh of relief. It has been growing here since we first bought our house and the small wilderness that was its garden.  If flowers had been planted, they had long ago been strangled by weeds and overshadowed by knee length grass and bits of rubble. But when we had tamed the grass, waged war on the weeds and kicked aside the odd chunk of brick, I was amazed at the flower I found, nestled in the shadow of the crumbling shed. Its deep red petals formed perfect swirls of colour. Against the peeling green of the shed and hay-like brownness of the grass,its beauty seemed almost luminous.
 In the house our newborn son was crying and our 2 year old daughter was demanding 
" more milk." But I remember standing in front of that flower and for just a moment the exhaustion of sleepless nights and relentless demands that come with being a parent, disappeared  There was no epiphany. I wasn't suddenly filled with inner hope or enlightened courage but just knowing that something so beautiful could survive despite the odds, made me think that we could too.
When I asked my gardening guru neighbour Gill what the flower was, she laughed.
" That's a peony," she said, " needs replanting though. Look at those roots! And it needs more light."
So with her help, I replanted it in a better place. It was the first planting  I did in our garden, the first change I made ( after cutting the grass ). And it did feel symbolic, as though by replanting a beautiful flower I had taken the first steps towards replanting our lives in our new home.
And so I will always feel linked to my peony.  I will always wait anxiously for it to bloom. Each year I watch as the spiked red edged shoots break through the earth, hold my breath while the strange puppet fingered leaves grow longer and thinner, hunt hopefully for the buds hidden amongst all the foliage.  And there is a lot of foliage!
" Too many leaves," said Gill disparagingly, " that's the trouble with peonies."
And I suppose she's right.  
Once again this year, the leaves have taken over most of the flowerbed but they are nurturing only one flower, deep, deep red against the green.
 But I don't care because it is beautiful and perfect- and one perfect peony is all I need. 

Murder most unfathomable

Sometimes spine-chilling things happen at the most unexpected times.  Ninesh was in London this week, visiting his dad in hospital. My father-in-law is just recovering from major surgery and Ninesh was sitting next to his bed, chatting quietly when the hallway outside the door suddenly filled with policemen armed with machine guns. As Ninesh and his dad watched, a young man, handcuffed to a wheelchair was pushed past the door.

" Who's that?" asked Ninesh.

" One of the Woolwich murder suspects," whispered the nurse... " did you see. He looked straight at me."

For a moment, no one could speak. What is there to say when an alleged murderer, who just a week ago might have stood in the street, in the middle of the day hacking someone to death, passes your door.

There are no words. 

Just raw fear

It is impossible to fathom what drives someone to commit the cold-blooded murder of an innocent man.  
It is easy to blame religion, to accuse Muslim preachers of rousing followers to hatred.
It's always easier when we have someone to blame.
But there is never one reason that causes individuals to act in the way they do.
It is never that simple. 
We are, all of us, complicated products of confusing pasts and our reaction to the here and now is always part of a bigger picture. In these times of unemployment and economic crisis there are many disenfranchised people wandering the streets feeling that their existence is pointless, that their life has no meaning - no job, no money, no reason to get up in the morning, nothing to make you believe that you matter.  Easy prey for extremists whose passionate words can fill the emptiness inside with meaning and a sense of purpose.  As young black men living in England, the alleged murderers will probably have spent their lives feeling like outsiders.  However multi-cultural and open-minded 
(superficially at least) the country we live in might be, our colour and ethnic background will always define us. Even as he was being charged with murder, Michael Adebalejo, described himself as a "British citizen," as though by being suspected of committing such an unforgivable atrocity he had at last proved that he belonged.
There is no defence, no justification for the murder of an innocent man. The fact that someone can stand in the middle of a street in broad daylight and proudly hack a man to death is the stuff of horror movies, except that it happened in Woolwich. Perhaps the murderer was mad, it is not the action of a sane man, perhaps he truly believed he was doing it in the name of his religion, perhaps it was the moment that his whole life had been leading up to. It is hard to believe that as he was pushed along the corridor of a London hospital, handcuffed to a wheelchair, the suspect felt fulfilled. 
There is a difference between faith and religion, a difference between extremism and quiet belief.  But until we can give the disenfranchised and disillusioned a sense of purpose, until they rediscover their self-esteem, it will continue to be easy for extremism to fill the gap and give their life meaning.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

 Steven Weinberg-1933

 Lee Rigby's family's request for peace, for  people to remain calm and not to allow his dmurder to be the excuse for racist attacks and religious unrest, is the greatest and most courageous tribute they could have paid to him.

Nothing can bring him back.  

Nothing can justify his death. 

Let building bridges and growing understanding be his legacy.

Lee Rigby  RIP