Camp Bestivalling

...that scene in Alex Garland's The Beach, when they're all half-dead from squid poisoning, the beach sliding into new sewage and it all gets a little Hearts of Darkness? That's my last memory of Lulworth Castle... Fecal fluttering, bad tidings, hallucinatory stumblings... the castle looming like it's made of bones, the ground swallowing when I couldn't, some kind of Medieval Banquet taking itself a little too literally; finding historical accuracy in Campylobacter jejuni, in Shigella, in hordes of prettily dyed exotoxins...

But that was then.

I'm going back to Lulworth Castle, this time for the clean air and puffed chests of Camp Bestival, packed full of children, and stuffed full of sun-starch... it's gonna be a big one, literally nothing can go wrong. Like Glastonbury, the music is hardly the point but still: Marc Almond, Lee Scratch Perry, George Clinton, Madness, The Fall, The Human League... with Joker and Joy Orbison and Jonny Trunk on the decks...

Asking around long-term Camp Bestivallers, it seems like Jonny Trunk might be the natural soundtrack to this place; cutting-egde circusssssssssss music, Freaks, library reels, spitting/spoken word rolls, tie-dyed electronics, sheep worrying frequency mods... "violently pretty" someone described it (I think they meant the Festival as a whole, rather than the girl he brought back who was, frankly, tarnished by her experience) and I'm still hoping to concur, or at least understand... maybe we might all join in with Bill Drummonds ultra-socialist/pirate show choir The 17; sing our bits out, playback everything...

It seems that Camp Bestival might be a feedback loop worth pursuing; it's certainly the only time I've ever felt brave enough to venture to a 3 dayer with the whole family...

And littlest Loki might get to see The Ballet and The Gruffalo and wear as much fancy dress as the heat allows...