… and more partying

… as I was saying, around 4 in the morning, having listened to chatting, djembes, occasional whoops and increasingly droney improvised music, and having not slept at all, I had an epiphany: this cold, mad night is a rite of passage. I will never sleep in a sleeping bag again and I will never sleep in a tent without a mattress again. Goodbye middle age. And good riddance.
 
With that satisfactory resolution, I fell asleep and when I woke it was 8.30, my nose was no longer frozen and the tent was illuminated. I unzipped the door to the dewy grass sparkling in the sun. (Shame blip isn’t video but it seems to sparkle more large.) A glorious silent morning.
 
I dressed, packed, kissed my fellow pirates farewell and pushed my extremely damp bike across two fields so as not to wake 47 other people by trying to start it.
 
The reason for leaving the party so early, despite a chef-cooked brunch promised for later and the prospect of a sunny day in good company in a field by the river, was that I had another party to go to. So back at home I washed the smoke out of my hair, found some normal clothes, packed up my offering for another bring-and-share lunch and headed out to join the friends I was at court with a few weeks ago for their post-sentencing party.
 
When I got home I found that B had been lifting the bricks outside our back door, digging out tenacious roots and relaying the bricks. He’d saved a homunculus bearing flowers for me (extra).
 
I don’t know when I was last this sociable – perhaps never – and it is not what I’m good at, but the sun rewarded me. What a brilliant Indian summer of a weekend it’s been.