It’s five o’clock on Sunday morning and I’m lying in a tent, feeling the cold seep up through layers of cloth and plastic into my ass and shoulders. One of ten thousand tents in a field. The music has finished for the night but there is a huge, shapeless noise on all sides I can’t quite identify. The wind pushing through the trees or working against the nylon walls of the tents. Or else the noise of thirty thousand people speaking in hushed voices.
In the neighbouring camp three guys are giggling their way through a bottle of whiskey. On the other side a friendly drunk lists the usual sensible reasons why she shouldn’t fuck the man sharing her sleeping bag for the night. His only apparent response throughout the debate is repeatedly launching into Can’t Help Falling in Love in a deep baritone. His strategy wins out; I make a mental note for future reference.
The wall of background noise is broken by the regular whump of helicopters passing overhead and random whoops and screams from distant campers. The air hums with the proximity of these masses of people, half asleep. Waiting. This is what the end of the world will sound like. I hope.