Nowhere Notimes (part 2)

The pirates have taken their ship and their cannon and gone raiding. I'm in the kitchen washing potatoes but I see them go, and I also see one of the guys from babysham pulling an Elmer Fudd and sneaking along with the signs from their camp while they left it unguarded.
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 I'm talking to a drag queen called Jessica behind the Italian camp's luxury. I say I don't know what a lapdance actually involved, and she says she's never given one, so we rectify that.
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The pirates get back and a big roar goes up when they realise their signs are missing. I come out just in time to see a tricorned and gilded posse advancing with their ship towards the Pervy Whims cottage, now boldly displaying the Pillage Village sign and with its garden filled with gay men, exuberantly breasted women, and sympathisers swinging their handbags menacingly before launching them in a volley.
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A couple are saying their wedding vows under the main stage in the Middle of Nowhere. This community means a lot to people. I sit near the back with my new friend Jack. #I could never get married', I say to him. He asks why and I say I was in a relationship for five years and I was so happy, and I thought it was great and perfect.. and it ended and I'd been so wrong about the whole of it. And I cry quietly and my voice breaks up and I'm apologising as he says 'Come here, you', pulls me over for a hug and holds me until it's bearable again.
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 The pirates get past the wall of handbags and discover that the happiest camp in the world are pretty good with their tools and have screwed their stolen signs to their territory. They are a bit nonplussed until they remember they came armed and make with a shower of ballpool balls, cutlasses and jets of water.
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 I'm feeling the heat and ask for easy, shaded work in the afternoon. Chris leads me to the gate where Natalie is painting, and says I can cut her stencils. She sketches some evil grinning little sperm and I cut them from tetrapaks so we can spray them on. The gate is designed by Ellen and spreads like a red cone, opening as a square-fronted temple and tapering to purple and pink drapery. The theme of the event is Rebirth Earth, and the gate will begin like Indian temple and finish as a vulva.

As me and Natalie talk it becomes clear we have similar phallic, curlicued visions for the temple freize, and we roller and draw the pieces together and they match. It's a novel experience for me to work with anyone artistic, let alone someone whose lines go the way mine do.

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Krampouz, the French camp, are doling out exquisitely thin proper french crepe. I eat mine with chocolate from teh biggest jar of nutella I have ever seen while wearing a leatherman style peaked cap I find around, and they let me borrow it to wear for the evening. So I paint on a moustache and strut around.

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There is a rope bondage jam and I always have more to learn, so I head up to the camp and partner with a beautiful lost boy with orange stripes on his cheeks. He's never been roped before, and he's so young: I tie his arm across his chest like a patriot and his other arm behind him, and check in with him every other knot to see how he's feeling. He seems to like it and his friends laugh in surprise to see him so bound up. I think he looks beautiful, and then I let him tie me.

I hope he keeps exploring.

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Babycham has a cabaret and Megs comes on stage and sings Minnie the Moocher acapella. Her voice is like granulated honey and she stomps and owns that dusty stage.

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I've been drinking and dancing all day but I don't want to stop and so I'm dancing like a mad thing, jumping up and down and climbing platforms and doing some burlesque of pole dancing on a rough squarecut pole. As people wander into camp friendly puppy me goes over and asks them to dance with me, I want to befriend everyone and make them happy. 'Nah,' says one girl,  'It's funny just watching you.'
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I get hold of the laptop and put on the Cramps I've been jonesing for all week. I dance and mouth 'tomorrow we'll fell like we've been hit by a truck'.. He smiles and drags out in a voice like the purr of an engine 'It's sooooo hard to imagine you as a psychobilly fan.'

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Now, I wanna be face-to-face.

Nowhere Notimes (part 1)

 The buses have arrived and I rush down with the crowd to meet them. I don't know what I'm doing but I'm genuinely thrilled to meet a new batch of people who I trust to be cool, show them how excited I am and show them what we have built for them.
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On the ukelele it says 'this machine kills diminuitive fascists'. __________________________________
The firespinning pit is opened up. I've had a few drinks but I've been spinning years, and fire is irresistible.. I pick up a heavy staff and realise The billowing cotton skirt I'm wearing is incompatible with fire, so I strip it off and spin in my pants. The area is surrounded by leds and onlookers chatting and half watching. I step in and let the familiar sensations of shifting weight and momentum, and the zip of roaring fire past my head, take over. I only hit myself in the leg once.
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Ginger Dave *is* hotter than Malaka.
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 After a day at the presses working on the newsheet, Abi is spinning feel-good soul and rock and roll to the Werkhaus. Tristan tells us proudly 'That's my wife. Isn't she something? Go, Abi, go!' Wearing a dust-covered duster, Til (who's been working on lighting all week) takes my hands and we spin out into my best attempt at a swing dance. I don't know the moves but spinning round like kids in a playground and being whirled into twirls and passing over and under and weaving round hands is really fun, and whenever I go the wrong way I just dissolve into laughter, because I can't stop smiling and everything feels golden.

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 "This is exactly the right place in the world for me to be right now", I message home after a first day working until I'm tired with sexy, energetic, practical dreamers, sick, helpful cynics with genuine smiles.
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It's Pride and we take to the playa dust to process after the converted-caravan pirate ship as it bears along the Samba crew, decked out in rainbows for the occasion. I can't say no to the samba beat and I bounce along beside and behind for an hour or so, wearing blue body paint and chainmail. We finish up at Ubertown and a DJ breaks out a mix of mid-nineties cheese from the back of the radio and speaker studded art car. It's golden hour as the sun sets over the rocky mountains surrounding us, and the crowd try to remember the moves to the macarena. Eventually, pirates, post-apocalyptics, dusty freaks and holiday makers wiggle their hips, jump, clap and turn ninety degrees as one, with not a hint of post-modern Shoreditch irony to be seen.

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YOU CAN'T *MAKE* ME STOP DANCING, I write on whatever I can find. ___________________________________
 I'm delivering the paper to smiling, welcoming faces at each camp I visit in a desert-blow parody of surburbia. 'We don't have paper boys and girls, we have paper freaks' comments someone.. it hadn't even occurred to me that my outfit was outlandish. Pinstripe shorts, red fishnet stockings, boots, 10cm long spike collar and a cargo-net top is what I'd wear normally, given free choice.
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 All is full of dust and love.
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The last day starts with a hot mess served by an unnaturally cheery Nurse and a team with pink facepaint lipstick smeared round their mouths. It's lush and accompanied by whiskey and Annika declaiming 'First proper food I've had all week. I don't know who's running this kitchen but they're shit. Proper food at last.'

Annika runs the kitchen. She raids our ice freezer for bottles of booze people have stored there and declares them destined for punch.

'It's not stealing, it's non-consensual sharing!'

She aims the judge at unsuspecting mouths.

 'Do you consent to this punch?'

'Yes...?'

'NO! THIS IS NON-CONSENSUAL PUNCH.'

And whatever, we drink, and the punch keeps being racked up, and Werkhaus has a party going with vodka and juice on ice at fucking 10 o clock on the last day because we can. And also because we can we hijack the music and put on some non-electronic music. Those of us who love our rock smile as the real instruments make the air shake just like they did when they were recorded.

'I didn't realise how much I missed guitars', says Natalie. Fuck it's good to hear guitars again.

You've gotta FIGHT. for your RIGHT. to PAAAAAAAAAAAAAR-TAY!

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I lose my heart on the burning sand.