Chapter 6
morning has broken
“Well, that’s just flipping charming!” huffs Fleur Swan, sticking her head through the tent doors.
Fleur appears to be wearing a baby-pink turban over her blonde locks and a pair of large, glamorous dark glasses.
“Wah ... gnnngn ... wha’timeisit?” I grunt, sitting up in my sleeping bag, realizing I’ve been sleeping with my face precariously close to Claudette Cassiera’s exposed brown rump.
Bleeeeeee!
Claude’s a good pal and all that, but this level of intimacy is beyond the call of friendship.
It’s Saturday morning, our official first day at Astlebury ... and I feel like absolute poo! My back is stiff and aching. Claude and I were far too idle to blow up the air mattress and then drag Fleur on top of it, so we’ve kipped on the cold, hard ground. I also seem to have Cheesy Footballs, the remnants of last night’s midnight feast, embedded in my forehead and a mouth like a pilgrim’s flip-flop. To make matters worse, our neighbors at the twenty-four-hour dance tent are still thumping away, accompanied by an emcee with verbal diarrhea who’s yelling, “Wakey, wakey, party people! Oi! Oi! Oi! Big shout going out to the Astlebury Massive! In da areeeeeee-a!!!” again and again and again.
It’s only 8:15 A.M.!
I am sorely tempted to storm over in just my grunderwear and cut the plug off his microphone.
I am not a morning person.
“So, I’ve just walked over to the Karma Quadrant to begin my beautification progress,” huffs Fleur, “and I asked the security oompa-loompas where the shower block was ... and they just laughed at me! I mean, how incredibly rude!?”
I shuffle out of our tent in my sleeping bag like a giant slug, blinking in the bright morning sun. Fleur, dressed in a pristine white fluffy terrycloth dressing gown, kitten-heel slippers, and holding a luxurious lemon-colored bath towel over her arm, is glowering back at me.
“You went looking like that?” I ask, suppressing a smirk.
“Of course I went like this,” says Fleur, gazing at me like I’m an imbecile. “And yes, obviously it raised a few eyebrows with the great unwashed out there, but I just told anyone who commented that it was style, darling, and nothing they needed to worry about ... Oh, and Ronnie, suffice to say, that Karma Quadrant shower block doesn’t exist. It was just an Astlebury myth. What am I going to do now?!”
“Er ... rough it for a few days?” I say.
Fleur gives me that look again.
“Time to hit the wet wipes?!” I venture, chucking her Claude’s bumper-sized pack of antiseptic wipes. All around us Astlebury folk are crawling out of tents and vans, clutching their heads, making unpleasant remarks about DJ Retinal Migraine over at the dance tent and begging for ibuprofen. Near to us, three guys with shaven heads and goatees who have been crammed into what appears to be little more than a child’s playhouse are glugging down bottles of water and staggering toward the porta-loos. Last night, it seems, was a big night for everyone.
It’s like a scene from Zombie Hell IV.
“Morning, campers!” zings Claude’s smiley face, poking out of the tent.
“Ahhhh! What a beautiful day! What a great day for seeing some bands, eh?” she cheeps.
“Morgen, Frauline Cassiera,” flounces Fleur, turning to me again to continue her rant. “Oh, and don’t even start me about those disgusting portable toilet cubicle thingies! They’re absolutely covered in ... in ... well, I can’t even say it ... they smell really, really gross! And some bloke was asleep in the first one I went in! And there are no mirrors anywhere ... or any toilet paper! And nowhere to wash your hands afterward except the occasional primitive water outlet pipe with a queue of about fifty hippies beside it. There was a woman in the nude soaping her bits when I walked past too! It’s just ... just ...”
“Exactly like we warned you it would be!” smiles Claude.
“It’s worse! It’s like I envision Earth after an all-out nuclear attack!” gasps Fleur. “There’s nowhere for me to plug my straighteners in! My hair’s going to be like a static badger by the end of the day!”
Fleur pauses for a second, then gasps as the most hideous thought of all crosses her mind.
“Oh my God! If my hair does that mad woo-hah thing at the front again, well, I’m simply going to kill myself!”
“Oh, shut up, you insane old goat,” chuckles Claude, standing up and strrrrrretching with a small satisfied groan.
“Ooooh, that’s right, just insult me! Everyone pick on me as usual!” says Fleur, pretending to be offended. “It won’t be like this when I meet Spike Saunders and he says, ‘Yes, Fleur, I did used to fancy you! Yes, I was going to marry you and let the LBD have an annex in my Mayfair mansion for you all to live in, and let you have a splishy-splashy in my Jacuzzi with the gold turbo-bubble buttons ... but now that I’ve seen you looking like a Sasquatch that’s been run over by a tractor, I think I’ll pass, thank you!’ Pghhh ... That’ll serve you all right!”
Claude and I stare at Fleur; then we all burst into fits of snottery giggles.
Fleur crawls into the tent, dragging her makeup behind her.
“Now both of you shut up and leave me alone!” she huffs. “I have to unleash the magic.”
When Fleur’s in good form, she can make you pee your pants laughing. But then suddenly, as I’m reaching for some toilet paper to blow my nose, I notice something strange about Daphne’s tent. It appears to be emitting two sets of loud snores! One little girlie one and another big boomy one. On further inspection something highly irregular is poking out from underneath the door.
“Claudette! Look!” I shout, pointing at two rather large size 14 black boots. “There’re extra legs in Daphne’s tent!”
Whoever is in Daphne’s tent must be absolutely enormous; he can’t lie in her one-man tent without spilling out onto the grass.
“Wow!” laughs Claude. “When did he arrive? We were still awake at five!”
“Is that Rover?” gasps Fleur, sticking her head out. “Has he infiltrated LBD HQ?”
“It’s Rex!” Claude says, her eyes wide with delight. “Ooh, I wonder what he looks like. I can’t wait to see! Shall we throw sticks at his feet until he sits up?”
“He’s not an evil giant, Claude,” I say.
“Oh Gawwd, he’ll be some stinky new-age type with egg in his beard and a ‘Free Tibet’ T-shirt, no doubt,” smirks Fleur. “I bet he plays didgeridoo too.”
“Shh, he’ll hear you!” I shush as Daphne’s tent reverberates with a particularly hearty snore.
“Hmmmph ... don’t care,” says Fleur. “What’s he going to do? Garrote me with his friendship bangles?”
“It’s nice to be nice, Fleur,” says Claude, pretend-primly.
“Oh, whatever,” says Fleur, brandishing a large blusher brush covered in pink powder. “So anyway, ladies, evil giants aside, what’s the sketch for today? Claude, have you got an itinerary worked out?”
“Who, me?” says Claude unconvincingly. “Nah ... I just thought we could, y’know, go with the flow? just see what happens?”
“Really?!” I say, feeling disoriented.
“Er, well, sort of ... I mean, sure, I took the liberty of printing off the Astlebury timetable from the website and making a few markers of stuff we might like to see.”
Claude grabs her Astlebury file, producing three charts, all marked in a variety of felt tips with squiggles and arrows.
“Now, I’ve put a gold star beside bands, et cetera, that we love, and added a point system to bands when there’s a timetable clash.” Claude puts her plan down on the grass. “For example, Brassneck Ruffians are on at noon on the Hexagon Stage, but we’re not that keen on them so I’ve given them a low rating. I thought we could go and hang out at the Astlebury Fun Fair then. I’ve rated that as choice two ... or we could go to the new-band area, as long as we get more central for Final Warning at four P.M. We all love them so they’ve got a gold star. And then the Losers are on after that.”
“The Losers?! Wow!” I say. “I’d forgotten about them! They’re ace!”
“It’s Carmella Dupris that I absolutely have to see!” says Claude excitedly. “That’s a must. I can’t miss that.”
“Oh, and then it’s Color Me Wonderful,” says Fleur, taking her schedule and looking at it. “They’re meant to be so amazing live!”
“Er, but Claude, you haven’t scheduled bathroom stops,” I say dryly, looking at the plan.
“Of course not,” smiles Claude. “I’m not that bad now, am I?”
“Pgghh, well, that suits me fine, girls!” sniffs Fleur. “After seeing those poo-traps, I’m not drinking or eating another morsel until I get home. I’m just going to wear lipstick and look pretty instead.”
Fleur smears on some plum-colored lipstick and blows us both a kiss.
I don’t think she’s joking.
“But anyway, girls,” coos Claude, “basically, we can do whatever we want! That’s the bestest part!”
“Oh, really?” I say, delving into my rucksack, trying to work out which creased items I can throw together to create “festival chic.” “So we’re not hooking up with any lads later on then? Any tattoo-covered, shaven-headed guys? Guys called Damon, by any chance?”
“Oooooh, shut up!” blushes Claude.
“Eh ... what? What’s going on here?” says Fleur, sitting up on her haunches, waving a mascara wand. Fleur Swan can sniff out hot gossip at 500 meters with a clothes peg on her schneck. “Have I missed something?”
“Nooooo!” says Claude.
“No, not really, Fleur. Claude only snogged Damon last night!” I blurt out.
Ahhh, isn’t it great to be the first to tell someone gossip?
“Whahhhh? When!?” squeals Fleur. “And how ... how do I not know this?!”
“You were zonked out!” I laugh. “It was when they were walking back to the tent. They ended up playing face invaders over there by that tree. And she felt his bum. She said it was so firm, you could take the top off a pickle jar with it.”
“Noooooooooo!” squeals Fleur. “That is soooo contravening Rule Four of the Parent/LBD Behavioral Contract! For shame, Claude! For shame!”
“Gnnnnngnnnn,” groans Claude, covering her face.
“And Damon said she had a better bod than his favorite Sports Illustrated model!”
“Oooooh my God!” hoots Fleur. “Then what happened?!”
“Then she floated into the tent and waffled endlessly about him till her throat nearly packed in,” I smile.
“Hee hee!” hoots Fleur. “Was she being all mushy?”
“Totally!” I say. “She sounded like one of those padded valentine’s cards you get in Clintons Cards. She is sooooo in love!” I conclude, opting for my favorite ripped denims, a little black vest top with lacy straps and a pale blue patterned headscarf.
“I am soooo not in love!” protests Claude, burying her head in her hands. “Stoppit! You’re giving me a headache!”
“Ahhh! See? The headache ... ,” says Fleur authoritatively. “A classic sign of being in love! Love hurts, y’know, Claude?”
“Phhhhgh, tell me about it,” I groan, suddenly recalling Jimi’s contorted face as we pulled away in the car twenty-four hours ago.
Right. Forget about that, I tell myself.
“Okay, everyone shut up about me and get dressed!” says Claude, changing the subject. “Now, chickadees, my itinerary denotes that the Beyond Las Vegas Casino opens in half an hour. I quite fancy a few hands of blackjack ... you can win amazing stuff like the entire top one hundred CDs or your body weight in chocolate. Actually, this map says there’s a stall next door where some folk are giving out free breakfasts from seven to eleven A.M.... well, it’s free as long as you promise to listen patiently while they talk about their religious beliefs. No, on second thought, that’ll be just like being at home,” Claude says, rolling her eyes. “Let’s just buy breakfast instead!”
“Mmm, breakfast!” I say, imagining a big greasy sausage sandwich smothered in tomato ketchup.
“Exactly! Come on, let’s get a shift on,” says Claude. “If it’s escaped your attention, ladies, we have to have another fabulous fandango today. One even more fabulous than yesterday!”
pleasing paddy
Half an hour later, after ten Fleur Swan costume changes and an LBD decision to tape a note to Rex the Evil Giant’s boot telling him and Daphne that we’ve gone for breakfast, we’re ready to rrrrrock.
“Do I look like a dog’s dinner?” asks Fleur, looking utterly stunning in a pale turquoise cropped vest top and black mini kilt. Fleur’s hair is concocted effortlessly into that “messed-up San Fran beach babe look” that I tried so hard to do before Blackwell Disco. It’s knotted at the top with lots of tousled strands spilling out and a deep red silk flower placed in the middle.
“You look great,” I assure her.
“You too, Ron! Hey, fab T-shirt, Claude!” says Fleur, admiring Claude’s striking magenta Lycra number, which shows off her smooth brown skin and voluptuous curves.
We tumble down the lane, this time taking a left into a field marked Pastures New, where hundreds of stallholders are doing a roaring trade selling weird and wonderful food and drinks such as zebra milk and guava smoothies, char-grilled ostrich burgers, organic raspberry ripple gob stoppers and Romanian mung-bean goulash. If the food is weird, the stallholders are weirder; one woman in a long white cloak with a crown of leaves is selling cakes and cookies that promise to give you eternal life because they’re blessed by pagan priests.
It’s a nice idea, but the LBD are craving something greasy and unhealthful with a pint of coffee, so we join the queue at Bob’s Brilliant Breakfast Emporium and wait impatiently as the aromas of frying bacon and sausages drive us wild with salivation. It’s 10 A.M., and the entire site is alive again with hordes of people grabbing breakfast, stretching their limbs and contemplating a day of music and mayhem.
“Shall we eat these by the skate park?” suggests Claude, passing me a gigantic sausage sandwich served by a burly bloke with a buzz-cropped head. Claude nods over to the far side of the field, where Fireboard magazine is sponsoring a makeshift skating area with a huge death-defying ramp. From over here, we can already make out several skatey lads on boards shooting through the air, and the obligatory crowd of ditzy chicks lurking about, trying to catch their eyes.
“Yeah, let’s go and have a quick gander,” I say.
“Er, haven’t you seen enough skating for one lifetime?” asks Fleur, who is breaking her fast with a heap of Moroccan falafel.
“Hmmm, true,” I mumble as we saunter through the crowds to where around 100 totally hot lads with shaven heads, baggy trousers, ripped T-shirts and various battle scars are hanging about. About twenty of them are darting all over the wooden rink on cool customized boards, while the rest are hanging about in little cliques, posing, posturing and egging each other on to do excessively daft stunts. One guy, with green streaks in his hair and a bleached blond goatee, I recognize immediately as pro skater Tyrone Tiller; he was on the cover of last month’s Fireboard magazine, which I read in Jimi’s bathroom. Tyrone, who is well known for his reckless tendencies, is proving this by attempting to leap over six of his mates’ backs on a skateboard. As the LBD slump down with our food on the grass to watch, Tyrone’s followers are all lying down willingly, eager to be hospitalized.
“Gnnnnngnnn! Why are skateboard lads always so hot?” I say as Tyrone whips off his torn, dusty T-shirt to display a buff, tanned six-pack and a bottle-green scorpion tattoo creeping from the waistband of his khaki combat pants.
All the skating girlies cheer and gasp, including Fleur, who puts both fingers in her mouth and whistles.
“I know,” muffles Claude with her mouth full. “It’s a bit like Premier League footballers, isn’t it? I mean, you never see any proper losers doing that either.”
“Or surfers,” sighs Fleur. “Or lead singers in rock bands. Or the lad who runs the resort entertainment when you’re on holiday with your parents. Or the waiters in Italian restaurants. They’re all always hot!” Fleur stops and shakes her head. “So many boys, so little time.”
Tyrone shoots toward his friends, hitting the tiny ramp and propelling past five bodies before diving headfirst into the chest of his final victim. Ouch!
The boys both roll around on the floor, screaming in agony ... before eventually standing up, giving each other a high-five and starting to plan an even more idiotic stunt.
“Aggggggh!” I moan. “See? I fancy Tyrone Tiller even more now that I’ve seen that! What is up with me?!”
“Oh, I reckon that’s just normal, Ronnie,” sighs Fleur. “I only started fancying that awful Tarrick when he got thrown out of sixth form for fighting. I mean, the second he got that black eye, he suddenly started looking like Brad Pitt! It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Errrr ... anyway ... maybe it’s time to move on,” says Claude, suddenly looking a little agitated. I don’t think she enjoys the recklessness of the skate park too much. You can tell she’s dying to shout, “Stoppppit!”
“What’s up?!” I say, cramming the last bit of sausage into my mouth and licking my fingers.
“Ooooh, er, nothing,” says Claude, jumping up. “I was just, er, thinking that we should get on with exploring. There’s stacks we haven’t seen!”
Claude looks a little flustered. She turns around again and looks at the crowd of skaters and assorted hangers-on, then looks at us again and smiles.
“Okay, no worries!” I say as we all stand up to leave.
“Actually, girlies,” cheeps Fleur, “I had a fantastic idea this morning! But it would mean us all walking over to the Land That Time Forgot, then Remembered, then Totally Forgot Again field. It’s a bit of a trek though.”
“Fine by me,” says Claude. “Let’s go right away.”
And so we did. However, you need to remember two things about Fleur Swan and her really fantastic ideas:
1. Her ideas, to the untrained ear, always sound verily fantastic. Take, for instance, the time in Year 7 when she decided to cut my hair into a “raunchy bob cut” in a bid to lure snoggage offers ... However,
2. Fleur’s “fantastic ideas” will get you into more trouble than you could ever imagine. In the case of the choppy bob, I ended up looking like I’d drunk a bottle of tequila, then hacked around a traffic cone with a hedge trimmer. Suffice to say, it wasn’t what I’d asked for.
These days, when I hear the term “fantastic idea” spill from Fleur’s lips, I tend to book a one-way ticket to Wigan or somewhere else bleak where I know she won’t follow me. So, all that said, please don’t ask me how the LBD all appear to be lying on our fronts, wearing only pairs of paper panties to spare our blushes, on makeshift treatment tables, in the back of a draughty marquee, coughing away incense smoke, listening to Peruvian nose flute chill-out music ... and having henna tattoos done!
Nooooooo!
“I’d like a really big, amazing, friendly sun shining out of my bum crack, please,” Fleur instructs the tattooist. “And can you put it high enough that my thong doesn’t hide it? Oh, and can you make the sun’s rays sort of shimmery and dancing and ... er, have you seen Spike Saunders’s tattoo?” she asks.
“Yeah, I know the one!” says the beautiful lady mixing powder and water in an earthenware pot.
“Well, I want it exactly like that, please!” smiles Fleur, who isn’t in the least bashful about being virtually in the nude, as she’s always being waxed, exfoliated and massaged for birthday treats back home.
“Any other details I should know?” laughs the lady.
“Ooooh, hang on, let me think ... ,” says Fleur. “Yes! I know! Can you write over the top of the sun ‘LBD Forever’?”
“LBD?” asks the girl, raising an eyebrow.
“Les Bambinos Dangereuses!” laughs Fleur. “Errrr ... it’s a long story. ‘LBD’ will do.”
“Yeah! Let’s all have that done! LBD Forever!” says Claude excitedly. “And I’m going to have this peace dove, please!” she says, pointing at the menu. “Can I have it just above my belly button, please?”
“No problem at all,” beams the tattooist, throwing Claude a towel to wrap over her upper half. “And what about you?” she says, gazing straight at me.
I feel a bit sick now.
“Errrr ... ooh, now that I think about it,” I mumble, “I’m not so sure.”
“Awwwww, Ronnie!” squeal Fleur and Claude. “Stop being so flaky!”
“I’m not being flaky!” I moan. “How long do they last?”
“Well, up to ten weeks if you treat them well,” replies the lady, almost drowned out by the sound of a Malaysian dream-catcher mobile clanging away behind her.
“Ten weeeeeeeeks! Gnnngnnn!” I wimper. “That’s the whole summer!”
“Ignore her, she always does this,” announces Claude, taking charge, pointing at the menu. “Ronnie would like this fabby Celtic crisscross thing, please. On the nape of her neck, just underneath her hairline. That’ll look terrific, won’t it?”
“It’s a popular choice for petite brunettes,” nods the tattooist.
“Claude! Oooooh! You can’t make me ... my mum will go nuts ... and what if it doesn’t suit me? And ... phhghhh!”
I splutter and waffle, searching for words, before finally muttering, “Oh, okay then.”
In less than an hour, the LBD are fully clothed again, spat back out into the Field That Time Forgot, then Remembered, then Totally Forgot Again, comparing our wondrous henna designs. Fleur has got the rudest, most raunchy bum graffiti I’ve ever seen in real life. The sun looks really minxish and feminine. She’s even winking! Fleur’s thong is perched just underneath it, sticking out an inch or two above her kilt. Paddy will be sooooo pleased.
And me, well, I’m now the proud owner of this weird, punky, ancient Celtic symbol of love, spilling out of the back of my hairline and down between my shoulder blades! It’s a bit like the one Amelia Annanova has on her calf. It looks ... totally incredible!
I look really ... dare I say it ... sexy!
“Ha ha ha! LBD Forever!” shouts Fleur after examining my back and Claudette’s fabby belly-button dove for the umpteenth time, with such great gusto that festival folk turn round and stare at us like we’re crazy. Not bad going, considering we’re standing beside a weird performance artist bloke who thinks he’s a human grandfather clock and keeps shouting Boing! every five minutes.
“‘These are so cool!” laughs Claude, pulling up her magenta T-shirt again.
The reddish henna contrasts really stunningly with her brown skin.
“This was the most fantastic idea ever!” I chuckle. “Nice one, Fleur!”
That’s another thing about Fleur: Sometimes you’ve got to give her stupid suggestions a go ... or you really miss out on some wild stuff. “Okay, now I suppose we should make some contact with other cosmiverses,” announces Fleur dryly, nodding toward a marquee in the corner of the field with a huge fluttering sign written in spiky, silver letters.
It reads:
PEOPLE PODS-MAKING MILES IMMATERIAL IN MILLISECONDS
“What d’you mean?” I say.
“Well, we have to make daily contact with home to prove we’re alive, don’t we?” says Fleur. “Now, Claudie, you texted Gloria yesterday, didn’t you? She relayed the message around Planet Paddy and Magda?”
“Yeah, Mum said she’d give them both a call,” nods Claude.
“Er, what? Did you!?” I say, shamefaced.
Ooh, I feel totally guilty now. For all of my promises, I’ve pretty much forgotten about the Fantastic Voyage from the second I left the city limits. After a few hours here, it feels weird to think that normal life is carrying on outside the gates. Three cheers for Claude! Magda would have been absolutely frothing at the mouth by now. Especially if she’d found my mobile phone.
“So anyway, follow me, ladies,” says Fleur, sashaying toward the People Pod marquee, giving a sultry wave to the hunky promotion lads trying to drag people in. Claude and I totter behind, not certain what to expect. Inside the marquee, there’s a glass dance floor, with some loud, electro-funk music thumping out of hidden speakers. Behind a raised bar area, a lady with a shaven head and big thick spectacles is shaking bizarre-looking bright green cocktails. More strangely, all around the edge of the dance floor are tall metallic boxes, which look a bit like gambling machines. The contraptions are around the same height as we are, with keypads on the front in the center and cameras on the top that swivel round, following you as you pass them. This is all a little bit eerie!
“Wow! What are they?” coos Claude, pausing in front of a machine and stroking its neon pink keypad.
HELLO! WANNA PLAY WITH ME! flashes up a message across the screen.
“Ooh ... I don’t know about that!” laughs Claude, stepping backward in shock.
“They’re People Pods,” says Fleur. “Basically, they make a short film of you, then they zip the images through cyberspace!”
“Where to?” I ask.
“Wherever you want!” says Fleur. “You can send them to any e-mail address or mobile phone. I read about them in ElleGirl. I thought we could send Paddy one and ask him to do a quick ring around?”
“Yeah! How fab is that?” hoots Claude, tampering with the buttons on the pod again.
STOP TICKLING ME! the pod says.
“Hee hee! Look at that!” dissolves Claude. “Awww, poor Mr. Pod. I don’t like being tickled much either!”
“Right, then,” says Fleur. “Hey, who’s got a couple of quid?”
“Me!” I say, passing Claude the coins as I perfect my most over-the-top pout.
“Insert coins here,” points Fleur, grabbing some lip gloss from her bag and smoothing it over her annoyingly plump lips.
THANK YOU! says the pod.
In the blink of an eye, the screen is filled with a huge image of our faces.
It’s just like we’re on MTV!
“Yee-hah!” squeals Claude, straightening her bunches. “Ooh, guys, this camera makes me look really booby though, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, Claude,” I say, rolling my eyes and examining my own deflated balloons. “It’s the camera.”
“NOWTOUCH ME WHEN YOU’RE HAPPY WITH HOW YOU LOOK!” reads Fleur, examining the screen. “Right, girlies ... are we happy?”
Fleur throws her arms around our shoulders.
“Fleur! No doing rabbit ears behind my head!” I say, grinning and sounding a bit like a ventriloquist’s dummy.
“As if!” smirks Fleur.
“Ooh! Hang on a second! I’ve got one wonky bra cup!” shouts Claude.
“Say cheeeeeese!” shouts Fleur, pushing the button.
“Nooooo! Stop! Ooooh ... Cheese!” groans Claude as the camera begins to whir and play a sinister hip-hop tune, eventually slowing to a halt, then emitting a loud trumpet fanfare.
WANT TO SEE HOW GORGEOUS YOU LOOK? asks the pod.
Of course we do! Within seconds the pod is playing the LBD’s small screen debut: Fleur Swan, hogging most of the lens, resembling a Sports lllustrated cover girl, except for a large lump of falafel jammed in her front teeth; me, grinning like a demonic hobbit, with flipping Fleur making rabbit ears behind my head with one hand ... gnnnngnn; and on the other side, Claudie with one mitt down her own T-shirt, groping her left boob, with her mouth lolloping open and one eye crossed! This is all happening to a 132-bpm, garage-music backing track, so we look like we’re in a proper pop video! But we all look sooooo dumb! This has got to be simply the funniest thing we’ve seen for ages; in fact we’re howling so much we have to hang on to the pod to steady ourselves! Fleur sends a copy of the movie to all of our Macs. I’m going to print out a snap from mine and stick it on my wall. Then she quickly types in Paddy’s e-mail address with the message “Greetings from Astlebury!!” and presses “send.” She also sends a still image to Paddy’s and Daphne’s mobile phones.
Ping! Gone! Galloping through cyberspace! How cool is that?!
Within seconds Fleur’s phone quacks.
“It’s Daphne!” says Fleur. “She says ta for the pic and we should meet her and Rex by the Hexagon Stage. Ooh, shall I say we’ll give her a buzz when we get down there?”
“Yeah, that would be cool!” says Claude. “So, shall we move on?”
“Actually, I might just do one more,” announces Fleur, arching one eyebrow, fishing in her pink sparkly wallet for coins, and setting the pod’s timer to send out a picture at 10 A.M. tomorrow. Odd? Quickly the pod pings and the camera is whirring as the blonde minx flips around and pulls up her vest to expose the large henna sun in all its marvelous tattoo glory, as well as, naturally, a generous display of her pink dental floss thong. Fleur begins to gyrate like a demented pole dancer in time to the music, then furiously begins tapping buttons as the camera stops.
“Nooooooo, Fleur! Don’t!” gasps Claude. “Don’t send it to Paddy!”
“Oh, shut up,” says Fleur, typing in Paddy’s address again. “I like to keep him on his toes.”
“But I really don’t think ... ,” begins Claude, but by this point the video of Fleur’s tattoo has already hit the little-too-much-information superhighway.
“Now,” beams Fleur proudly, “shall we go and see some bands? If we run, we might just catch the Flaming Doozies! And Final Warning play after that!”
“Okay, to the bands!” Claude and I agree as we follow Fleur’s body art out of the marquee.
a bit of crash bang wallop
As we spill out of the Land That Time Forgot field, through the hectic crowds, hitting a winding track leading eventually to the Hexagon Main Stage, I immediately recognize in the distance Zander Parr, singer with the Dutch rock band the Flaming Doozies. That bloke can’t half screech!? As the crow flies, the Hexagon Stage is about half a kilometer away, but the VIP enclosure separates us from it, and ordinary punters like ourselves have to make a detour around its boundaries.
“Ooh, I wonder what’s going on in there?” Claude says, pressing her face up against the mesh fence. From here, all we can see is tour buses, some mysterious marquees and production people dressed in black, darting about with clipboards and radios.
“Oh, just all the most exciting stuff, obviously!” sighs Fleur. “That’s where all the stars and their entourages hang out. And the TV crews. I mean, just imagine?! Right now, CeCe Dunston from Final Warning will be knocking back Jack Daniel’s and chatting to Jocasta Jemini from the Losers ... And Lester Ossiah from Color Me Wonderful will be facedown in his macrobiotic vegan buffet getting an aromatherapy shoulder massage. And I bet Zaza Berry and Cynthia Lafayette the supermodels will be chilling out in the Jacuzzi and ...”
“Erm? You’ve really given this some thought, haven’t you, Fleur?” smiles Claude, examining a huge stern sign above our heads, which decrees:
STRICTLY NO ACCESS PAST THIS POINT EXCEPT FOR PRIVILEGED WRISTBAND HOLDERS
“Just a soupçon,” mutters Fleur.
At this instant, a ginormous triple-decker black tour bus with a sleek red flash along the side sweeps up slowly to the gates, followed by a gleaming long white stretch limo. The security guards immediately spring to action, yelling at each other agitatedly while beckoning the VIPs inside.
“Nooooooo! I can’t believe it!” squeals Fleur, gesticulating furiously. “It’s Carmella Dupris! In there! In the limo!”
Fleur’s right!
Claude, who owns every one of Carmella’s CDs, as well as all of Carmella’s old-school stuff from when she was part of girl group G-String, begins to leap around squawking too. Wow! Can this really be true? I crane my neck to get a glimpse, but now people are surging all around me, knocking me out of the way.
“Carmella!” squeals Fleur, ringleading the riot, slapping the limo’s side windows as it passes. “You rock, Carmella! I love you!”
It is her!
Inside the car, Carmella Dupris, who’s about as big as a saltshaker in real life, waves one tiny caramel-colored hand from underneath her huge floppy hat right in our direction. She’s teensy-weensy!
“Dolce and Gabbana hat!” screams Fleur to anyone listening. “And Gucci shades! Carmella always has the most amazing wardrobe! She’s so cool!”
“And she waved at us! She waved at the LBD!” hoots Claude, touchingly unaware that there are about five squillion fellow looky-loos hanging around us, going equally as berserk with adulation.
“I know! I know!” agrees Fleur. “And did you see Big Benson!? Carmella’s boyfriend? The boss of Big Benson Records? He was in the back with her! He gave me a peace sign!”
As Claude and Fleur hyperventilate, I stand with a silly grin plastered all over my fizzog, staring as the back of the limo disappears. The very second the vehicles are safely through the thick mesh gates, they crash shut firmly and a heavy bolt is thrown across, leaving the lowly LBD very much outside of the VIP enclosure.
“Operation complete! Ms. Dupris is inside the enclosure!” shouts a belligerent-looking security guy into his walkie-talkie. “No intruders have entered the enclosure! Repeat: No intruders! Well done, everyone!”
After some persuasion, we drag Fleur away from the VIPs, floating around the peripheries of the hallowed enclosure, intoxicated by adrenaline, drawing closer to the Hexagon Stage, where the crowd grows denser and more intimidating. The dry ground is reverberating with a pounding bass line. There must be about 50,000 people gathered here watching the music. Swarms of bodies are screaming and cheering, leaping up on each other’s shoulders; dancing and laughing and falling about, while up on stage Zander Parr caterwauls, albeit tunefully, like a cat in a combine harvester.
“This is the band that sets off fireworks, isn’t it?” I shout.
“Yeah!” yells back Fleur as a thunderous crash rips through the air, making everyone duck for cover, then rise up again cheering.
On stage Zander Parr is leaping up and down in wild glee. Zander looooves pyrotechnics! He gets banned from every venue he plays at for taking things too far.
“Wow! Look!” gasps Claude as pretty scarlet and ivory paper petals shower the audience; the crowd cheers wildly, picking them out of their hair. On stage, a vast pyrotechnic display is kicking off with all the requisite shooting flames, silver sparkles, bangs, whizzes and crashes. Eccentric Zander, looking practically robotic in his black T-shirt and skintight gold-mesh trousers, is jumping about like a man possessed, setting off Catherine wheels and waving around flaming torches with such abandon that he keeps totally missing his cue to sing lines.
“He’s really lost the plot this time!” laughs Claude, pointing at the huge video screens on either side of the main stage.
“Thank you, Astlebury! I loooooooove yer!!” Zander screams while his lead guitarist looks on in mild dismay, shaking his head. At this point I notice Zander literally has no eyebrows left, just singed strips above each eye. Living proof that you really shouldn’t play with fire.
“Let’s get farther forward!” shouts Claude.
“Cool!” beams Fleur, never satisfied as a spectator to the mayhem.
“Er, okay,” I say gingerly.
Traveling anywhere in this field is no mean feat; it’s like treading through a maze of bodies, bags, coats, beer cans and burger boxes. Worryingly, whenever you spot a sneaky shortcut and shoot through it, your friends have all vamoosed in the blink of an eye, as they’ve taken another route entirely. That’s a total freak-out. Lordy, I’d hate to get lost here. Astlebury is so unbelievably massive, I don’t think I’d ever find our tent by myself.
“C’mon, Ronnie!” says Fleur, linking my arm tightly. “I’ve got you!”
On stage, the Flaming Doozies are cranking up their biggest hit, “Dead and Dirty,” and the crowd is surging forward in response: bodies slamming toward each other, people tumbling over and struggling to gain a foot up again. Some kids are throwing plastic bottles at the stage, narrowly missing Zander Parr, who’s retrieving them from behind the speaker stack and lobbing them back. This is so wild! Scary wild, but wild all the same.
“Wooooooow! Look at him!” squeals Fleur, pointing out a hairy lad clad in baggy tartan shorts and a ripped tank top with a blue Mohawk being propelled by the willing crowd, right at the front of the stage. Change is pouring from his pockets.
“Oh my God! A real-life crowd-surfing dude!” says Claude.
Eventually, after twenty minutes of bobbing and spinning through the fuss, we emerge far nearer the front, but at the side where it’s a little calmer. By this point, Zander’s rolling about on the stage, screaming and sobbing, seemingly in the midst of some sort of total nervous meltdown, which the crowd is really lapping up because, well, let’s face it, he always flipping does it. (Whenever Zander is on Top of the Pops, my dad always huffs theatrically from behind his Daily Mirror, before yelling, “I don’t pay my license fee to watch this sweaty pillock jumping around screaming! Gimme that remote!”)
Fleur is loving all the drama; she whips out her mobile phone and takes a picture of sobbing Zander to send to Josh in Amsterdam.
“My brother loves Zander Parr! He’ll be so jealous!” she hoots, staring at her handiwork on the screen, then frowning a touch. “Ooh, hang on a minute. What’s up here?”
Fleur turns the handset off, then on again, the phone booting up with a perky polyphonic flourish of Spike Saunders’s “Merry-Go-Round” and a screen saver of Fleur and her gorgeous mum on holiday in the south of France. Blondie pushes different combinations of buttons impatiently, with growing annoyance.
“There’s zilch bars on the antennae screen,” she shouts. “Stupid flipping phone! I knew I should have pestered Paddy for that upgrade! Claude, you got any signal?”
Claude pulls out her handset, an ancient, rather bedraggled implement manufactured at some point when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
“Oooh, no,” shouts back Claude. “We’re both on Fusia network, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” frowns Fleur, smacking her phone off her thigh, like it will help.
“Errr ... sorry for butting in, ladies,” chirps up an elfin girl with denim dungarees and spiky blonde hair, rocking to the music beside us. “If you’re trying to use Fusia, you’ve no chance. The whole network crashed. Been down for over an hour.”
“Oh, for crying out loud!” gasps Fleur. “Again? How?”
“Er, about one hundred thousand folk in a remote field trying to send pics and messages at once probably!” shouts the girl. “People say it might be gone for the whole weekend.”
“What!?” gasps Fleur.
“Calm down, Fleur,” whispers Claude. “It’ll just be one of those Astlebury rumors.”
Fleur gets very antsy indeed when her phone doesn’t work.
“Well, forget meeting Daphne,” says Fleur, sounding genuinely a bit narked. “She’s on Fusia too. That’ll be my fault, I bet.”
“Not much chance of bumping into her here,” I say, looking around us. We all look at one another, trying to weigh up how much trouble we’ll be in for officially 100 percent losing our “grown-up,” but somehow we’re distracted by the antics of Zander Parr. The singer has decided to finish the Flaming Doozies’ final number by whipping off his clothes, one item at a time, chanting “La! La! La!” to a tune that sounds suspiciously like “Baa Baa, Black Sheep,” while the rest of the band struggle to keep up with him, resorting to pure improvisation.
“Zander! Zander! Zander!” chants the crowd, egging him on.
Just as Zander begins removing his underpants, which I’m sorry to say are a rather saggy, mottled pair of beige Y-fronts that have certainly seen numerous world tours, a posse of flustered security guards rush onto the stage to try to remove him.
“Thank you, Astlebury and goooooood-byeeeeee!” Zander yells in his cute Dutch accent as the microphone is forcefully removed from his person and someone in a headset places a clipboard over his delicate nether regions. “This is the best day of my life!” he yells. “I’m Zander Parr and I am as ne-kked as zee day I was born! Good night! Have a good flight home!”
The crowd goes absolutely nuts as he’s carried off stage.
“Aggghhh! That was so much better than on TV! It’s so wild when you can actually see the fireworks!” laughs Claude.
“And smell Zander’s singed underpants,” I laugh.
“Hey, and Final Warning are on next,” reminds Fleur. “It’s their first British gig for two years.”
“Yeah, that’s going to be huge,” says Claude. “We were so lucky to get tickets for this!”
And then there’s a bit of an awkward silence as the LBD all know exactly whose total favorite band Final Warning is. Let’s not even go there.
“Two ... two ... two ... testing ... two ... two ... okay?” repeats a roadie on stage, sound-checking CeCe Dunston’s microphone. “Can you hear that? Two?”
Uggggh ... , I think. I wonder what Jimi’s doing right now, while I’m here having fun. Crying on his tear-drenched pillow? Counting off the hours till I come home?
Or doing more normal Jimi activities, like retrieving a wide array of boogers from his nose, then smearing them on stuff? Or staring at pictures of women with massive moshee-moshees in Maxim? Or finding the hilarious hidden extras on his Dude, I Sooo Blew Up Your Mom II! DVD?
Suddenly a firm hand cups my waist, almost sweeping me entirely off my feet!
“Ooooh,” I say.
“Fancy seeing you here!” says a familiar, rather deep voice.
I turn around with a gasp.
“Oh my God! Joel, hello!” I smile as the hazel-eyed hottie stands before me, surrounded by his motley crew. “It’s you!”
As I give Joel a small friendly hug, Claudette Cassiera is letting out a big not-playing-it-cool-at-all whoop.
“Damon! You’re here!” Claude laughs, then whispering more to him, “I didn’t think you’d remember.”
“You were pretty specific!” whispers Damon back, giving Claude a sloppy peck on the forehead. Fleur, Nico, Franny and I all pretend not to notice. “You said you’d be near the front on the right for Final Warning.”
“Ronnie! Fleur!” cheeps Claude, turning to us. “Look, it’s the lads again! Fancy these guys finding us again ...”
Fleur and I swap “Does this bird think we fell off a Christmas tree?” glances and begin laughing. Soon Fleur’s roundly abusing a slightly green Franny about his vomit-regurgitation antics, and Nico is off at the bar getting us drinks, while up on stage, there’s a flurry of movement as hairy roadies tape track-running orders to the amps at the front of the stage, and fiddle about, tuning up guitars.
“Er, incidentally, Ronnie,” Joel says to me, looking slightly bashful. “Can I point out that I’m not stalking you?”
“Er, yeah, whatever,” I say cheekily. “Tell it to the judge, Stalky McStalkerson.”
“I’m not!” laughs Joel. “It’s just that Damon wanted to ...” We look across at Claude and Damon, who appear to be having a play fight, of all things. “... oh, you know.”
“Yeah, I’m only winding you up!” I giggle.
“Good,” he says, half smiling, poking me in the stomach gently. “ ’Cos, I mean, who’d walk out of their way to see you anyhow?”
“Precisely,” I agree. “Perish the thought.”
But then the emcee cuts in, telling us to make some noise for the one, the only, the legendary FINAL WARNING!
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
the pit
The next few hours prove to be the most incredible ever.
First, Final Warning crash through a fabulous set, playing all of their most famous songs accompanied by a totally tone-deaf crowd singing along enthusiastically. During one song, lead singer CeCe Dunston, with his trademark floppy, curly black hair and big blue-bottle dark glasses, divides the 50,000-strong audience up into two sections, making both sections battle to be the noisiest! I almost lose my voice yelling. Then CeCe pulls an amazingly lucky girlie out of the front rows onto the stage and serenades her with a raunchy song about her peachy bum! She isn’t offended, of course; in fact she pulls out a pen and asks him to sign the washing instruction label in her panties.
By now, the sky is clear, the sun is blazing down and a soothing breeze is breathing gently through the fields, cooling us all down wonderfully. It’s so cool that we met up with the lads. They’re a brilliant laugh as well as top eye candy to boot. And just to make matters more amazing, between songs, the verily lovely Joel and I have been giggling and gossiping about life (okay and having a bit of a flirt too!). I’ve been uncovering some pretty impressive “boy data” on my new friend. Stuff such as he’s taking A-levels in physics, chemistry and math next summer (wow?!) and he lives with his mum in a small town called Charlton-Jessop approximately ninety-seven miles from the Fantastic Voyage. I’ve also uncovered that the scruffy yellow van with the graffiti isn’t Joel’s, it belongs to Franny (which makes much more sense), and also that Joel drives a black Volkswagen Polo. Hey, but most impressive of all, Joel’s biggest ambition is to be a surgeon. Oh, and not just any old everyday surgeon ... a brain surgeon!? Apparently, according to Joel, that takes about ten whole years!
Yes, Joel knows what he wants to do with his life for the next ten years!
I haven’t even planned the rest of this summer!
(Jimi wrote “cosmic spaceman” as his ambition on his last career advice questionnaire.)
And if all that isn’t enough, Joel also works at Charlton-Jessop’s municipal pool on Saturdays as a lifeguard! Gulp! I can only surmise from this information that beneath Joel’s combats and T-shirt nestles one of those toned, smooth lifeguard bods that totally distracts the LBD during Blackwell swimming lessons when we’re supposed to be rescuing bricks from the bottom of the pool, dressed in pajamas.
My mother would soooo love Joel.
She’d be sizing him up for a bridegroom’s top hat the millisecond she set her beady eyes on him. He’s totally the type of guy I suppose I should be going out with.
After Final Warning stagger exhaustedly off stage, the Losers, an Australian four-piece band with two boys and two girls, replace them. The Losers play lots of synth, string and flute lullaby-style songs, which seems to lull the audience into a catatonically calm state. Some of the Losers’s songs are so sad, they actually make you want to weep, especially when Jocasta Jemini, the minuscule, rather depressed-looking lead singer, plays her flute and sings lyrics about being “lost at sea” and “dying of a broken heart.” Some people wave lighters backward and forward during the most maudlin songs; some seriously, as they love Jocasta, others sarcastically, as they think she’s a miserable old trout. Oh, and some people just throw plastic bottles at her. I’ve figured by now that some people just throw plastic bottles whatever the occasion. By the time the Losers finish, then run off stage, then run back on and play all of their biggest hits, then finish properly, the sun has set and the air feels much crisper. It’s almost 8 P.M. Where has the time gone? Everyone in our gang is in high spirits, especially Fleur, who’s utterly determined that for the next act, Color Me Wonderful, we should all move farther into the center of the crowd, then push to the front, against the stage barrier, where the rowdiest action always is.
“Oh, come on!” Fleur scoffs. “Stop being such wet farts! This band always has the most amazing laser show! We have to get right to the front, so we can really dance!”
Franny and Nico agree immediately. Joel, Claude and I aren’t so sure. It looks pretty rough down there to me. I’ve already seen kids who’ve fainted or been crushed being pulled over the barrier by security guards. Saying that, I know that Fleur will go anyway. Then I’m going to miss out on one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
So I agree to go.
“You sure, Ronnie?” asks Joel.
“Yeah, let’s do it!” I say, sounding reckless. Fleur lets out a little victorious squeak.
We begin weaving our way through the excited crowds in the direction of the front barriers, Damon with his arm around Claude’s shoulder, Franny and Nico forging ahead, clearing our path, Fleur in her black miniskirt drawing wolf whistles and appreciative glances at her henna tattoo as she tiptoes through the bodies. Joel bringing up the rear, being rather protective of me, which is sweet, but feels a bit odd. Soon we’re about ten rows from the front, as far as we can possibly go, as by now there’s no more room to move. We’re all squashed against each other’s backs, guarding our spaces territorially. Right then, Joel lifts me up by the waist and turns me around to see the view behind us ...
There must be about 100,000 faces spanning as far as the eye can possibly see.
Unbelievable.
I feel a little woozy ...
And then the stage lights plunge to darkness and the audience erupts, whooping excitedly as the familiar opening bars of Color Me Wonderful’s “Swamp Song” explode through the speakers, saturating the air with a cacophony of noise, making all the hairs on the back of my neck prickle up. I seem unable to stop smiling. All around us, people are dancing, jumping and crashing into each other in a nonnegotiable frenzy.
“Er, thank you kindly,” remarks Lester Ossiah, the meek, one-man music machine during a quieter interlude in the track, the crowd quieting to hear him speak. “I wasn’t sure if anyone would turn up,” he adds dryly. Everybody laughs and cheers.
A few meters away, the irrepressible Fleur, who’s been dancing and cheering wildly with the demeanor of a chick possessed for the last ten minutes, has now persuaded some poor, gullible bloke nearby to allow her to climb up on his shoulders, where she jiggles and joggles and waves frantically at Lester Ossiah, blowing him kisses. Eventually the timid star notices the flurry of hands and blonde hair in front of him and blows her a kiss back! Amazingly, Fleur’s elated face fills the huge video screens on either side of the stage. She looks like she’s going to cry with total happiness.
Incredibly, Lester then makes “Swamp Song” blend effortlessly into his worldwide number one hit “Looking Glass,” an infectious tune that’s been used on tons of film soundtracks, sports car ads and video games. Gahhhh! I love that tune! The crowd seems to be surging forward more strongly now, there’s hardly any room to breathe and the security guards are yelling at us to move backward. This is beginning to get quite scary ... especially as Fleur has now propelled herself off the guy she was perched on, making her fledgling crowd-surfing attempt.
“Oh my God! Claude! Look at Fleur!” I scream, pointing upward.
“Weeeeeeeee-hah!” squeals Fleur. “I’m flyyyyyyyying!”
“Fleur, get down! You’ll hurt yourself!” shouts Claude pointlessly as Fleur travels about on a sea of hands above our heads, supported by numerous partied-out individuals who I don’t place a hell of a lot of trust in.
My heart is in my mouth. I’m jealous, but I wish she’d get down.
Thankfully, after a few minutes, Fleur descends gracefully back to Earth, kindly positioned on both feet by a hulking guy with a kindly face and a nose ring who looks like an amiable bull.
“Wooooo-hooo! Rock ’n’ roll, baby!” yells Fleur, throwing both hands in the air in devil horn signs. “That was sooooo fantastic! Did you see me?! Agggh! I want to go again!”
Claude and I roll our eyes, relieved our daft mate’s back in one piece. However, right that instant another faster, louder track known worldwide as “Dead Zone” bursts to life and we’re dismayed to see Fleur tapping bull guy on his sweaty shoulder, flirtatiously requesting a leg up.
“Noooooo!” says Claude, but by this point, we’re just staring at Fleur’s underwear as she climbs aboard.
Claude and I both watch dubiously, fighting to keep ourselves upright as Fleur crowd-surfs past, in her absolute element, squealing and giggling. Occasionally she disappears downward into the crowd, then appears again upon another stranger’s shoulders, punching the air riotously. Claude and I try to keep an eye on her, but it’s getting more difficult now; she keeps disappearing completely as the crowd surges forward and falls backward.
I’m not certain we’re in the same place Fleur left us now.
And the next time I spot Fleur, she’s about eighty meters away, perched on some guy’s shoulders, chatting to a girl on shoulders next to her, laughing her head off.
But then the guy carrying Fleur seems to stumble and I see Fleur’s face change. She looks scared, then plummets clumsily into the crowd.
I wait for her to surface and for everything to be okay again, but this time it doesn’t happen.
Claude, Josh and I fight our way sideways to try to rescue her, but when we reach the spot, sweating and panting, Fleur’s just not there.
Or on anybody’s shoulders.
Or crowd-surfing.
Or in any of the places that we were standing.
Or back at the tent.
Or even at the missing persons marquee.
Not anywhere.
Fleur has completely disappeared.
