Glastafari
Chapter Thirteen

Throughout the site, the potential for some kind of Zombie Apocalypse was growing by the hour. The bins were now being well and truly sifted through, the remnants of earlier wasteful and careless moments snatched up and devoured. Ketchup-stained paper bags caked in stale left-over chips and long-abandoned remains of daal and rice, were being extracted from massive piles of bin bags and tossed down disheveled throats.

By contrast, the Green Zone behind the main stage felt like the fall of the Roman empire, with no end of partying and drug taking. Rock stars, film stars, super models and soap stars all getting down to some proper five-star hedonism; everyone shagging around like anxious lab rats, and rarely leaving the twilight zone of luxury trailers and cavernous tents to engage with the outside world. They had it all right there - drugs, booze, snacks, with no real sense of time, direction or purpose. Just this one huge celeb and rock star-filled end of days celebration of excess. Much of the extreme edge of which was being driven by Iron Maiden, famous for throwing TV crews out of tent flaps, and turning Green Zones into war zones.

The heavy metal band had been booked to close the festival on the Sunday evening. A real coup for Beavis, as they’d been refusing him for years, and had even once accused Glastonbury of being ‘the most bourgeois thing on the planet’. But as Knebworth had been cancelled that year, the band had finally agreed for a laugh. Actually, a very cheeky plot to blow up the Main Stage speakers kind of a laugh. Back in 2004, Metalica, the first mettlers to play Pilton, had begun their set with the sound of gun shots and explosions. Iron Maiden planned to actually blow the main rig’s brains out in front of tens of thousands of people.

But since the festival had begun to resemble one of their album covers, everything had been thrown on the back burner. Which meant that they’d been putting up with all these pricks and prima donnas for nothing. There would be no seething mosh pit, no giant beach balls and national flag waving, no sexy girlfriends perched on shoulders, and no sudden stunned silence at the Main Stage, with everyone wondering what the fuck had happened to the sound.

Or would there?

Thanks to the Heinz range Shaman, the landowner, Mathew Beavis, had come back from the Sacred Field with the idea of a Glastonbury Live Aid event. Luckily for Beavis, he had his small army of litter pickers to draw upon to put the word out, and plenty of fine and eager volunteers and stewards to help track down, drag, and plug in every available smidgeon of renewable energy it could replace into the Main Stage system. It wouldn’t be full capacity, and they couldn’t afford all the lights, but it would definitely pull in folk from across the site.

He could see that Glastonbury needed focus, to claim back a sense of peace and unity. It needed whatever line-up he could muster, to drum and strum, and twist and shout as strong a message of hope and unity as it could. It needed bands like Iron Maiden to wake everyone the fuck up.

It was great to finally have something positive to get behind. Something to say to people when they asked him for an update.

“Come to the main stage, tomorrow,” he could now tell them. “Spread the word. Iron Maiden is headlining.”

But Beavis hadn’t got police permission to go ahead with this huge concert. That’s because it just didn’t occur to him that he needed it. But if there was one thing that a State of Emergency couldn’t entertain, it was a large and impromptu gathering being entertained right on its doorstep. To the likes of Inspector Bumstead, Glastonbury Live Aid was about as welcome as a full-on rave in the middle of the Wimbledon. Operation Brave Defender thrived on disunity and ignorance. It definitely didn’t want to run the risk of having thousands of people gathered in one spot to listen to whatever the hell subversive ‘Kumbaya’, Beavis, or whoever, could so easily shout into the microphone.

“That’s right,” said Beer Gut Barry, watching as Bumstead gave Gita, the Krishna’s stolen sacred mascot, another handful of straw. “Everyone’s talking about it. They’ve managed to pull together quite a line up.”

“Bollocks!” whispered Bumstead, keeping an eye out for any potential on-lookers. “Why am I only hearing about this now?”

“It’s only just been made public,” shrugged the Beer Gut. “Do you want us to go in heavy?”

“No. Then everyone will know that something is up,” said Bumstead. “Ignorance is bliss. Do you get me? Our bliss.”

Bumstead was thinking fast. Something that comes easy when you do as much seized merchandise as he does. They needed to secure a spot on the Main Stage. The police would be expected to put in an appearance at such an event, to fill everyone in on all the latest news. He could take the opportunity to make it known that Jesus was no longer helping them with their enquiries, that even though they didn’t know where the Krishna’s cow had got to, they felt pretty sure that she would turn up eventually; obviously choosing to leave out the bit about the plate and the lashings of gravy. He could reassure everyone that there hadn’t been live ammunition in that semi-automatic. Also, that certain burger bars in Babylon had had to be closed down in order to keep the peace. That it was just plain wrong for some people to be profiting so blatantly from everyone else’s misfortune.

As for the main reasons behind that misfortune? Why no ambulances or fire engines had bothered to show up? He’d just have to busk that bit. He could round it all off by promising “a further big announcement very soon”, then promptly announce the next act.

“We need to make sure that we’re right up there on that stage,” said the Inspector, as he re-filled Gita’s water bucket. “The second anyone says or does anything daft, we pull the plug. Do I make myself clear?”

* * * * *

For the former son of God and full time alien conspiracist, Dan Sykes, things had been a little too clear. As someone who knew all about walking into a controversy, he really hadn’t seen that plate of glass coming. When he did eventually smack into the thing, you could hear the laughter all the way from Drakonis.

The Drakos didn’t like Sykes. He’d been heading up a kind of Wackyleaks for some years, fronting alien whistleblowers, and dishing the dirt on all manner of Reptilian shenanigans. Luckily for them, he came across as being a little bit of a loony tunes. It was all about presentation, and Sykes was more like your Green Party back in the early 80’s - before his time, and seriously undermined by a saggy jumper that his Nan had knitted him for Christmas.

Since busting out from the cop shop, he hadn’t managed to raise the alarm, rally the Light Workers, wind the watch forward on Illuminati pay-back time, or even get that far from the site, the punishing terrain making it not so much ‘as the crow flies’, but how the tortoise limps.

Like Spike and Wesley, he too had gone for the ‘My Little Teapot’ method of staying in touch with that colossal shower door. He had already spent many tortuous hours with his left hand pressed up against the thing, trying to replace a way past the windowsill from hell. How clever, he thought, to trap Glastonbury Festival under glass, to vacuum pack all manner of poets, and artists, and the activist community into the one space, and cut off any potential resistance to whatever the hell-bent robotic enslavement that ‘They’ had in mind for the entire human race. Perhaps they intended to use the people as smelly bargaining chips, hostages to their twisted wheel of misfortune. Even with a decade of insight, and more leaks than a radical prostatectomy, he hadn’t seen this coming.

Eventually, his one-armed orbit had taken him to the Tor; a desolate moon hovering above Glastonbury festival’s cramped and crippled planet Earth. St Michael’s forlorn tower just standing there like an abandoned flowerpot; Glastonbury’s esteemed flower power having long since withered away and died.

Half-way up the climb he spotted something remarkable lying on the ground, a large wooden crucifix, lying there as if some diabolical force had torn it from the church above. He went in for a closer inspection, and was amazed to replace, not only the cross, but a large hole in the ground beneath it, with a rope disappearing down into the depths of the Earth.

As a former son of God, he had to wonder what this meant. Nothing said, ‘You are still THE Chosen One’, quite like replaceing this divine gift of an escape route, this knotted rope to freedom. All that was missing was a sign saying ‘EXIT’.

He shouted down, half expecting God to shout back at him. At the same time wondering if God would be miffed that he had turned his back on him for so many years, actually made it extra difficult for anyone else laying claim to that whole second coming gig.

“Okay, I’m coming down,” he whispered, squeezing past the INRI. “God give me strength.”

* * * * *