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.