Glastonbury Festival - Lost Lunchtime

Lost Lunchtime

25 Jun 2004

My trip to the Lost Field starts fairly sensibly. I go to the Swingdance workshop in the red and gold ballroom, which is decorated with giant lampshades for some vague reason. Here fifty people gather to learn proper dancing-with-a partner. Most are in jeans and tees, but a few are appropriately in full evening dress on this glorious sunny Friday lunchtime.

At first there is hilarity (especially in the walking like a chicken bit), and we are told "Embrace your partner at lingerie level. We think it's not hot and steamy enough today. We want to practise getting into a close hold." Soon, however, the mood settles down into one of near-seriousness. The Swingdance instructors really do care about dance, and are determined that by the end of the class everyone will be able to perform a pretty complicated routine. And it works. Gradually they transform the crowd - or at least, most of the crowd - into proper dancers, step, step, rock-stepping and striking a pose to smooth 50s jazzy stuff.

Very impressive, but hard work, and I leave before the end and go in search of something less demanding. I find it in Eco Arcadia, an arcade with lovely old pinball machines running on recycled vegetable oil. This is properly called BioDiesel, and the lovely old machines are there to promote this environmentally friendly stuff as an alternative to mainstream fossil fuels. You can make it yourself and run your car on it, so Eco Arcadia is definitely worth a look, both for the good idea and the great fun of playing retro pinball.

Now my lunchtime does become truly Vague, as the chapel bells ring out, announcing a wedding, and this is something I can't miss. Alex and Emma are united by a vicar who works in the style of a mad American televangelist - or perhaps he simply is one. The ceremony is conducted with fullest audience - or rather, congregation - participation. At this point I begin to want, really quite badly, to be married in the Chapel of Love and Loathing, with attendant fetish-nuns in wimples and leather, and hundreds of people shouting Praise The Lord! as often as possible, and very loudly. This is odd, because the idea of getting married has never really occured to me before.

After lots of good one-liners and community cheering, Alex and Emma are joined in "unholy matrimony, until I say so - sorry, I mean until death they do part." I'm feeling sad after all this, as my long-term beloved is working here, and I'm having trouble extracting him from his backstage portacabin. I can't imagine how I'm going to tempt him all the way to the Lost Field to be married by nuns in suspenders. So my mental state being what it is, it's a shame to find the Lost and Found tent closed. They have an emotional baggage handling department that would have come in handy. You can leave your confusion, your guilt and your broken hearts. For future reference, they have the only designated parking bay for emotional cripples (max waiting time 30 mins).

Since I can't leave my worry about my overworking partner in the baggage store, I go to see agony aunt Arantxa in the Laundromat of Love, and ask her advice. How, I say, do I get my problem man to stop working and marry me in the Vagueness chapel? Simple, she says. He needs to be disconnected from his work. So first of all unplug or break his computer. Then hide his mobile phone, put on your best underwear and propose. I ask if I can do the underwear bit in the portacabin, and she says Yes, that would definitely be the best place to do it. Waste no time, she says. "And if that doesn't work, bring him down here, and we'll tell him off for you. We're very good at telling off boyfriends. And if he still won't marry you, we'll see to it that he can't marry anyone." So, You Know Who, marry me now or else ....

Nemone Thornes

LostVagueness.com

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