Bar

The bar glowed on into the small hours and long after I took myself off to sleep.

A chef from Shambala arrived to cook us all breakfast then gradually we dismantled the set - the flags and streamers and bunting and lights and cloths - and the players exited in small groups.

To Bristol, to Didcot to home.

Where, in the warm afternoon, I proved what a totally useless gardener I am. Three weeks ago I planted 24 beans. This afternoon I watered the two that have come up and removed some weed or other growing in the way of one of the beans that hadn't come up. Then wondered. Was it in fact a bean? I tasted a leaf. It was in fact a bean.

I put the root uselessly back in the soil and realised the only sensible thing to do with the tender leaves I'd ripped from their source of life was to continue eating them.

How extremely stupid and frustrating.