Oddworld Forums - I'm Home!

Well, the first part of the trip was Glastonbury, which was f*cking amazing. Spent a good bit of time off my head, and saw loads of really good music. I saw too many different acts to list, but a couple stuck in my head.

Faithless were memorable because I wasn't really a fan of them before Glasto, but their set was quite possibly the best one there; I was totally blown away. Dance music isn't normally my thing, but there were some really good dance acts there, like Faithless and Tall Paul's DJ set in the Experience Tent, as well as Mad Professor, a very trippy light dub group…

Rolf Harris was actually seriously good, surprisingly. He really got the crowd going, and played a good mix of comic songs, covers, and traditional aboriginal music. He played his cover of "Stairway to Heaven", and finished with a hilarious version of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down" to the tune of "Land of Hope and Glory"... (He'd already played the proper version earlier.)

Jools Holland was also very good, especially as Jazz isn't something I usually come into contact with. He played very multi-layered tunes that just drifted through you, and was very relaxing to listen to. Of course, that effects different people in different ways - my friend Simon fell asleep during the set...

There was a fantastic freakshow-type thing that was saw called the Happy Sideshow (an Australian/Norwegian circus act), who had a Rubber Man and a Sword Swallower (as well as the Compére and the token woman, neither of whom seemed at all freakish, but were nonetheless entertaining). The Rubber Man had two particularly good tricks, one where he clasped his hands together, then moved them down under his legs and up across his back, finally pulling them over his head and back to where he started, without ever letting go. He also dislocated his shoulder and put it back. The Sword Swallower swallowed a sword that reached down to his bellybutton, and later (to prove that he was actually swallowing the things) swallowed a bright red neon light with a microphone on the end, so that we could actually see the glow in his throat and hear his gag reflex doing its stuff as it went down...

I also saw Mr Scruff. His music is indescribable, and I advise you do go and download lots of songs by him as soon as possible. Starting with “Fish”…

Apart from all that sort of stuff, I also saw some bands that are more like what I usually listen to. Idlewild were really good. Queens of the Stone Age were quite disappointing, as I'd seen them do a better set at Leeds last year. Coldplay were surprisingly good, as were Starsailor. The White Stripes were amazing, playing a viciously loud and touching set (I had expected them to have session musicians, but it was just the two of them). Stereophonics sounded good, although Kelly Jones is still as much of an arsehole as he ever was. The Electric Soft Parade started badly, but improved, finishing with a fantastic rendition of “Silent to the Dark”, which is 8 minutes long on the album, and they stretched it to about 15… I had never really heard anything by Bush or Lostprophets before, but both were quite good.

As I have already mentioned, I had to leave Glastonbury right after the last act on the Sunday, driving back to York between the hours of 2am and 7am on Monday morning, just in time to pack and get on the coach to go to my Biology Field Trip to East Barnby. I expected it to be quite boring, but actually it was quite fun, although I wish the most exciting thing that happened hadn’t happened, because the most exciting thing that happened was that was all came within 3 metres of dying.

It happened because one of the brakes on the coach we were on locked onto the wheel, so we had to pull over into a car park to get it fixed. The car park was slightly sloping, and edged onto a steep slope (one of those slopes that is not quite steep enough to be a cliff, but steep enough that it wouldn’t be any different to one if you fell off it or, as the case may be, plunged off it in a coach whose brakes had failed). In order to fix the brakes, the driver took the handbrake off and put the coach into reverse gear so it didn’t roll away, and went back to manually force the brakes off the wheel. The teachers who were with us asked him if he wanted to get us off the coach, just in case, but he said that there wasn’t really any danger, since it was in reverse gear, so we’d be safe. The teachers called a couple of minibuses to take us to East Barnby, as the brakes looked like taking a while to fix.

The incident happened because of a coincidence – just as the driver finally managed to get the brakes off, the minibuses arrived, and we all stood up to get off the coach. Us standing up must have jolted the coach out of gear, and because the brakes were all off, it began to roll forward. We didn’t realise anything was wrong at first; we just thought the bus was working and we were driving away. When the coach ploughed into one of the minibuses, sending is skidding across the car park, we noticed that there was no driver, and we saw Miss Robinson running alongside the coach, white-faced, yelling “Get off the coach!” People reacted in different ways.

Andy Roberts tried to get the emergency hammer off, to smash a window, but it was attached by wire to prevent it from being stolen. This meant that it also couldn’t be used. Another couple of people tried to get the emergency door open, but it was designed not to open while the bus was in motion. A few people in the middle of the bus began to panic, and move around aimlessly. I was one of the people nearer to the front, and I kept my head, but acted selfishly, simply trying to get off the bus. The first person to get to the doorway (Nicola Broughton) leapt off and landed badly, jarring her neck and banging her head against the floor. I was just behind her, and was in the doorway when Jonny Goddard jumped on the brakes. I hadn’t thought to try the brakes, because the whole reason we’d stopped was because they weren’t working, but Jonny either hadn’t thought of that or just thought it was worth a try.

It was lucky that both Jonny and Pete Barnsley were on the bus, because if either one of them hadn’t been there, quite a few people would have died when the coach went off the cliff – Jonny was close enough to push the brake, but didn’t know which pedal to push, whereas Pete knew which pedal to push, but was trapped at the back behind a bunch of panicking people, so he just shouted “Middle pedal! Middle pedal!” until Jonny jumped on it with both feet. The coach ground to a halt literally 2 or 3 metres from the edge. I was standing in the doorway, and only grazed my elbow slightly, so I was able to get off the bus and help other people get off. Katie Sherwin was right behind me, and flew through the air, smashing her head on the windscreen. Surprisingly, she was fine, even though she cracked the windscreen straight down the middle. She was taken off the hospital anyway, for a checkup, as was Nicola, who was in shock from her fall. The driver had to be rushed to casualty, we learned later, as he had been underneath the coach when it had started moving, and had panicked, clinging on to the bottom, trying to stop it from moving, and yelling “No!” Apart from those three (two if you don’t count Katie), nobody was badly hurt.

I was quite ashamed of myself for selfishly just trying to save myself instead of thinking about others, like Jonny did (he could easily have gotten himself off the coach, but instead saved everyone’s lives), but I know I can’t blame myself, as I was acting on instinct.

That incident kind of overshadowed the whole week, but in a good way, since nobody was hurt, and the experience kind of brought us together, and I feel a lot closer to the others than I did before. In fact, the rest of the week was quite fun – even though we did spend a bit of time working (measuring limpets and counting stonefly nymphs. What fun.), we had a good laugh in the evenings. The best thing about the week was the fact that we all got to know our teachers much better, and it was exactly as if they were just friends for most of the time. It was a mark of exactly how comfortable we feel with them now that Hannah Griffiths actually asked Louise (Miss Robinson) if she minded if we sparked up a joint… :D Louise said “Not while I’m here”, but she was very good-humoured about it, and was just worried that she might lose her job if we were caught. We also learned that Paul (Mr Hogg) used to be a hippie, which we had a good laugh about. All three of the teachers joined in evening games, like the Rizla Paper Game, and Indian Poker, and it was generally a lot of fun.

There was also the traditional practical-joke-warfare between the boys' dorm and the girls' dorm at nights, but there was a kind of truce for the last night, when we all piled into the boys' dorm and drank the booze that we'd smuggled in, and Pete rolled some of the biggest biftas I'd ever seen, and we all sang some songs around the guitar. They all said I had a really good singing voice (even when I was battered, which was surprising)... :D

All in all, it was a very good couple of weeks…

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I told the Lighthouse Keeper Joke. The others then threatened to kill me in my sleep, so I had to redeem myself with a better joke... :D