t h e l o n g e s t d a y
the shortest day
This years's Stonehenge Festival from June 17 to June 22, will feature the main bands playing on the last three days. The bill, which has yet to be finalised and will be extensively added to, so far includes: Hawkwind, Omega Tribe, Action Pact, Popular History of Signs, Barracudas, Tony McPhee, Sam Mitchell, The Skiffle Band, The Impossible Dreamers, Ekone, Arizona, Snake Review, Poison Girls and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Melody Maker, June 11, 1983.
*
Stonehenge before the road-blocks, and injunctions, and exclusion zones; before the helicopters and the cops dressed in riot gear.
*
A voice I don't recognise: "It's s'posed to bring good luck."
My eyes, sealed with tiredness, I blink them open, stick my head out the tent: a lassie with hair that looks like day-glo seaweed is talking to Ellie. The lassie hoicks up her tee-shirt and displays a wobble of pregnant stomach. Tattooed, a design in black difficult to make out circling her belly button. Possibly two fish. Dolphins maybe. Ellie says, "Hope it does."
There's a kind of funny calm across the site: a dog yelps, two hippies share a spliff and tap on bongos, weans run helter-skelter round the remains of a fire. Quiet, certainly by the standards of last night. Ellie sees me awake and waves, waggling her fingers, and I waggle mine in return. She says something else to the lassie, gets up, and walks over to me; a breeze flapping the dress she's wearing against her body. She sits down, cross-legged. "You all right?"
"Aye, yeah, fine. I think." I give her a smile. "Some day."
"Forecast is for sun: sun, sun and more sun." After a moment she says, "Who's this guy Ritchie Havens?"
"Played Woodstock apparently." I stretch out, yawn. "Seem to remember he did a set here last year."
"That girl says he might show up here today."
"She mention what other acts are on?"
"Yeah. All sorts of obscure stuff. Forget the names."
"What else'd she say?"
"What'd she not say? Magic mushroom tea's fifty pence. The speed's dodgy. Something about ley-lines and someplace in Dorset that's meant to be the centre of the universe. A whole lotta stuff."
Ellie looks me straight in the eyes, all serious. "Do you think this place is weird?"
"Aye. That's what I love about it. Y'know me party before the bomb drops and all that. What d'you reckon?"
"Dunno. I think maybe it's not. Maybe it's everywhere else that's actually weird. Like Tufnell Park was weird, the whole of London's weird. Scotland's weird."
"You're sounding the convoy folk already."
"May-bee," she says, hardly above a whisper. She seems to debate something in her head. "Like I was kind of dreading coming here. I used to think if you lived in a city, you stayed there. I thought you had to deal with it. You didn't just tie-dye your clothes, paint peace signs on a van and drift."
"And now?"
"And now? Who knows? Maybe I'm just seeing it is another possibility: albeit with contradictions."
"Contradictions?"
"Aye; like the way everybody's selling stuff: candles, passion fruit drinks, superman acid, haircuts: it's like a dropouts' version of the Barras."
"But you don't mind staying on for a while?" She gives her left shoulder a wee shrug and nods. "I'd like to."
I blow out my cheeks, snort, smile, begin to laugh, then, when she raises her eyebrows, force the laugh into a cough. "We could jump into Amesbury right now if you fancy. Sign on. Get us some food tokens."
"Food tokens?"
"Uh huh. You get a choice: food tokens for a big supermarket in Salisbury, or else some wee cafe or other."
"Okay," she says. "First though, I think you better put on some trousers."
"You won't regret staying on," I say. I'm grinning again; smug, I bet, as a crappy Saturday night quiz-show host. But I don't care. I'm happier than I've been for ages. "No way will you regret staying on," I tell her. "No way."
