guftonbury. the aftermath

There is something inherently wrong about a grown man walking into a plastic toilet, cracking open a pink pack of baby wipes, graphically illustrated with giggling infants pawing at their doting mothers, and wiping your helmet with one. Not satisfied with this, you know that minutes later you’ll be getting all shit on them from the horrific clean up operation following the uncomfortable passing of a bright orange beer and bean based stool…

I think I’m having some sort of shell shock resulting from my excursion to that place I went to, last night waiting for my Myfwt to come home I actually giggled in my armchair for no other reason than the fact I was actually in it. It’s been a week since I departed, two days since I returned and my entire experience has been replaced by the last four lines of The General by Siegfried Sassoon, allow me to indulge you, ‘“he’s a cheery old card” grunted Harry to Jack as they slogged up the Arras with rifle and pack, but he did for them both by his plan of attack.’ I think it sums it all up rather well, the crepuscular optimism, the effort of moving through ones muddy, hilly environment, resulting in death by the design of others, in this instance, Michael Eavis, the half bearded half wit.

When I arrived home on the Monday afternoon I was in the process of unpacking my stuff when Myfwt called just as I was lugging two rucksacks, a sausage bag full of shitty clothes and a the remnants of a wine box from the van towards my front door. Needless to say said items were spurned in favour of the call, I clicked in the hands free, reassembled the baggage and located my front door key in one complicated act of multitasking. Horror of fucking horrors, when I opened the door Cunt was stood in the communal hallway, inexplicability wearing dark glasses and baseball hat, clutching a can of lager and grinning obsequiously. ‘Woah, how was Glathsonburry?’ he fucking burped. Furious at this invasion of space I gave him a withering glance and curtly informed him I was on the phone. He retreated back into the dark of his grief hole, his revolting visage fading into the blackness that surrounded him.

For one split second I wished I was back there, far, far away from my fucking neighbour who stalks the exterior of my flat like retarded vermin, but not even he and the nearby semi-world he occupies could dampen my joy at being back home and to the comforts therein. Even more poignantly, this exultation at coming home has actually intensified, I’m now consciously taking nothing for granted, nothing, every time I micturate, excrete, masturbate, sit down, cook, clean, they are joyous, even tantalising experiences that I relish.

This must be seen as a positive thing, something that has been arrived at through adversity, but fundamentally resulting in something good. Or, has my experiences over the past week simply unbalanced my psyche, disturbed the very fabric of my being resulting in my laughing at endless streams of clean dry toilet roll following a freewill shit.

I could relate this tiny acknowledgement of my home comforts to those that suffer over the world at the hands of tin-pot dictators or the desire of Western politicians to interfere with foreign policy resulting in the displacement of peoples and their subsequent, nomadic, hand to mouth survival in conditions too disgusting to even contemplate for a mere second…

But I can’t be pissed.

I’d rather listen to this.