Acoustic Lakeside Festival (Part Two)

I managed to get about an hours sleep under the stars. At about 7am people started waking up to take showers and prepare for the day. As they walked past me slumped unconscious a few of them decided to shake me awake and shout 'TOP OF THE POPS" at me. I know it was entirely my own fault that I'd had an unpleasant nights sleep, but Im not very good in the mornings. Luckily for them I really like people shouting "TOP OF THE POPS" at me. If they had shouted anything else I would have more than likely tried to fight them. I tried to go back to sleep, but after a few more people woke me up to shout 'TOP OF THE POPS" at me I decided to relocate.

I relocated down to the lake. It was quieter down there and I hid under a blanket so no one would know to shout "TOP OF THE POPS" at me. I drifted in and out of sleep for a couple of hours before finally giving up and reading the 'Just William' book I had with me. I'd like to be able to say that after sleeping by a lake, under the stars and amongst so much scenic beauty, that I felt truly free for the first time in my life. Sadly that is not the case though. I felt truly awful. I must have looked it too as people were beginning to point. Eight Legs arrived and I could see them looking horrified at me from the corner of my eye. I was in no state to play beach football.

The rest of Art Brut (minus the other person who slept in a field) all turned up at 11.35 ready for the football. They'd asked me to commentate on the games that we weren't playing but I delegated that role to Ian, who I knew would be much better at it than me. He was brilliant. Interviewing himself as Alan Hansen and making puns on all the other teams names. Eventually the other person that had slept in a field turned up and we began to play. Unsurprisingly we lost spectacularly. Now sober, I remembered that I wasn't fearless. I was the opposite of fearless. I was terrified of the ball. I was even flinching if the ball came near me when I was sat on the subs bench. Previously I'd thought we'd just have to lose the one match and then I could go to the hotel and rest. Turns out that is not how it works. We had to lose four games over the course of three hours. I was a mess by the fourth game. I did manage to score two goals though. Eventually we lost to everybody and we could go back to the hotel for rest.

As we were leaving I thought I saw some people I didn't know 'Buffalo-ing' each other but I put it down to a trick of the light mixed with exhaustion from the football. Whilst I'd been playing football too I thought I'd heard people shouting Buffalo but had put it down to my over active imagination.

When we arrived back at the farm house we were staying in. I really wished I'd stayed there the previous night. The lady that ran it was lovely and all the food in her house appeared to be from her back garden. Eggs, Strawberry Jam, Honey, Vegetables of all sorts. I think even the Sprite she was serving us came from a well in her backyard. This made me feel even more embarrassed than I had previously for acting like a 'Lad' as we seemed to be staying in a Famous Five novel.

Eventually though I had a bed and could sleep for a few hours, wake up and pretend everything that had happened was just a bad dream.