annanotbob's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Crimson autograph - it's what we leave behind I want to write about Woodstock, about swimming in the sea, about people reading Harry Potter, about Greek Maria (as opposed to Dorset Maria, or Ren's GF Maria), about twisting my ankle, the pub where we had dinner, sitting outside the camper van and loads of other stuff that's vanished already, but again it's nearly midnight before I've even started and my days are becoming nights as I stay up later and later and although I like the whole hint of artistic bohemianism that is implied by keeping a nocturnal timetable, it's not practical really, so we'll start with Woodstock and see how we get on. They showed the director's cut of the film of Woodstock last night, on BBC4, without any ad breaks. Man, it went on forever and only came in part way through. I missed The Who, for sure. I was fifteen the year of Woodstock, but I'd already heard about love and peace, which immediately made absolute sense to me, so I was thrilled like a thrilled-up thrilly thing to hear of such a gathering and made damn sure I got myself to the Isle of Wight the following summer. It was much the same (albeit without that extra frisson of being the biggest group of people gathered together in one place EVER, by a margin of a gazillion or so). Watching it now, forty years later, when I'm fifty bloody five, was a real event. Sara was up here on the computer so I was on my own. I turned up the telly and smoked joint after joint continuously until I was moved to unpin my hair and dance a full-on 1969-stylee freak-out, swirling my hair round, swaying and flouncing my arms, to this: I'm finding it hard to type and bounce around, but I can't sit still to Alvin Lee. Reflections: How did we dance like that all night back then? My hair hasn't been this long since I had Sammie who used to hang on by it as a baby, leaning out and putting all her weight on it. Short hair ever since till now. I thought I was a grown up at sixteen, but fuck me, I wasn't. I have NO IDEA what I ate or where I went to the toilet for the whole week of the Isle of Wight. I can't bring back anything more than having fish and chips once and it feeling like a real treat. Did we drink water? We must have done. I feel proud and pleased and still optimistic about being a part of the Woodstock generation. Festivals then were so nice. We were all on the same side, we were people like us, potential friends by the hundred thousand, smiling and sharing and all saying sorry, man are you OK if we knocked into or stepped on someone. We left all our stuff in the tent and just stayed in the arena after about three days and it never occurred to us to worry about anything getting nicked and it didn't, it was all there when we got back, on our knees, broken by seven days of never-ending underground music. I felt a bit sad to be dancing alone in my living room on a Saturday night, until I realised how long I've wanted to go dancing and here I was doing it. Sadder to be sitting on the sofa wanting to shake your booty, than having a dance, getting stuck right into it, giving it some stoned welly. Ideal would be in a club with proper loud amplified music and a person you knew you were going to be shagging later, but I'm not exactly expecting to experience that again. Not ruling it out, but not holding my breath. I remembered how much I used to love taking acid and the music taking beautiful shape before my eyes - each note bursting forth over what was going on before. Tripping, man. We never called ourselves hippies, we were heads and the rest, the non-dope-smoking, I-want-money-to-buy-things-with brigade, they were straights. Important distinction, it seemed to me, for a long time. It still is important but less easily definable - Jane found that on the dating website. Anyway, that's enough. I did go swimming in the sea this afternoon, with Bob and the boys. Exhilaratingly big waves and the firm flat sand underfoot, so not at all scary. Mary felt it was too windy, but I quite liked being in a rough sea with people I thought would fucking save me if I got into trouble - this has not been the case in the past. And yoga xx |11:42 p.m. - 16/08/2009 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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