barefoot earlier

When we arrived at the Camber Sands Pontins for All Tomorrow's Parties, the rows of identical double-stacked chalet blocks were a novelty. At least, thinking of them that way rescued you from finding their ugliness just, well, ugly.

In the middle of the night, the drawbacks of the set up became clear,

where the fuck is 658?

fucked if I know, don‘t even know who I‘m phoning

(hammering) let me in (hammering) let me in! (hammering) oh you’re not 261?

Here’s what I’ve learned with F today: we each have a set of beliefs we use to interpret everything and they can give us a critical view of ourselves. My task was to work out some of mine and challenge them. An example:

Belief 1:
If I dislike standing for 40 minutes, hemmed into a smoky gap between four tall men and a wobbly girl spilling beer, feet stuck to the carpet, listening to relentless ear-splitting noise and having lights flashed in my eyes, I must be dull, old and have unadventurous taste in music.

Challenge:

1. This is the ‘music’. Tell me that you wouldn’t want to stick your fingers in this man’s eyes after 40 minutes of this. He is also flashing different bright lights directly in your eyes every few seconds.
2. There are far more young, interesting people that would walk out instantly than have ever heard of this man
3. He sits centre stage, in dark glasses, motionless, coordinating his "noise music" on an Apple Mac. I think he hit play at the start of the set and sat back to snigger at people cheering about being tortured

I became convinced about half way through the set that it was all a dastardly plan to murder the lot of us: that the climax would soon be a final gut-thumping burst that would collapse our lungs or make our bowels writhe right out of us.

After another 10 minutes, I wished I had been right.

Why didn’t I leave? Because:

Belief 2:
If I go and stand outside here I’ll stand out like a sore thumb because I’m old and frumpy.

Doh!