Rocking the daisies 2011

 (Because every now and then you experience a weekend that sits like a burnished blimp on the surface of your year. You feel compelled to write about it quickly, before it seeps away into your wash bucket of tousled memories. )

It started with a frantic phone call on Wednesday. A friend’s lift had bailed out and a free ticket was on offer in exchange for a driver. Keen, I said. It has dawned on me lately that life is too short to let the good things go.

Then in an eye- blink I was standing in throbbing crowd, surrounded by shrieking girls and the tang of sweaty bodies. Jack Parow was waving his armpits in my face, which is what you do when you’re cooler than everyone else.

There were squeezy bottles being filled with gin dry lemon, beer, vodka coke, redbull, and lots and lots of water in between. Hot air wrapped like a blanket around us. A sweaty, close blanket that could only be temporarily escaped by a plunge into the dam; in bikinis, onezies or your summer dress. Or starkers.  There was dancing waist- deep, toes squishing in the mud and wondering what the poor ducks must think of these crazed beings.  

 There were porter loos: Solidarity in lack-of-toilet- paper, and long queues. Volumes could be written on the twisted expressions

of people bursting for air on exit from those blue cubicles.  

Most of all there were very many musical treats: Shadow Club was my fave, Jacques Moolman swallowed the crowd who were ignoring their hangovers and scrunching their eyes into the sun, just rock n roll. Aking was grand, I’ve never seen a drummer whose face was such a reflection of his sound. Civil Twilight and Band of Skulls (visiting from the UK) infected the crowd with a bizarre energy. And I fell a little bit in love with the dramatic Inge Beckmann from Lark .

Life is too short to not-

Roll around in the grass, in the electro tent, getting twigs in your hair.

Let music infect you as you watch time frames shrink and stretch.

Notice the kaleidoscope of colours and people, of mannerisms and expressions that bounce and smash into each other

Eat falafels and Hudsons burgers and Doritos chip rolls, with beer.

Wake up at 6 30 to watch the rugby with 10 thousand other people who threw their beer on the floor when the ref messed up and rose to their feet when we scored.

Write down the great moments. Plato said it:  A life unreflected is not worth living.

Sakitumi. 

 Thanks Andrew Pullen for photographs.