...following on from the incident I described yesterday, I have to explain it might have been slightly karmic/inevitable as I'd just badmouthed camping's tendency to bring out the miltaristic to Matthew De Abaitua after his talk on the subject on the Fivedials stage.
Tent moved* - and impulse to sabotage the bunting while the guilty families were asleep restrained - on Sunday I carried on drawing life-sized festival portraits.
The portraits hung in the FiveDials tent over the weekend, next to...
the FiveDials patchwork quilt, a backdrop to events by Hari Kunzru, Joe Dunthorne, Katie Kitamura, Dovegreyreader, Craig Taylor and many others...
...
I also did the lobster thing with rural variations for the Idler Academy.
After spending Sunday evening drinking cider in a mosquito-infested swamp (camping expert, Matthew, passed round a bottle of something labelled 'Skin-so-soft' which is apparently used by the British Army to repel mosquitos and, presumably, casual sexual encounters**) with luminaries from the Idler Academy and the Catalyst Club I left by moolight, only pausing to slam-dunk the frame of the Tudor stone arch that leads through to the walled garden. Touch for luck, touch for coming back. Port Eliot is magic. See you again next year...
...
*Camping left me so sleep-deprived that on Monday, as I got off my train to change at Didcot Parkway, I realised I'd left my tent on my previous connection, the train from St Germans to Swindon. I burst helplessly into a spontaneous bout of out-loud cursing. I think the people on the station thought I was trying to fend off a wasp.
** The miltary are right: it worked but not on my legs - those tough Port Eliot mosquitos can get through jeans. Plus the smell and the fine plasticized layer it left on my face were so replusive that it might well have been less disgusting to cover myself all over with regular mosquito repellant.


