Five nights of zeitgeist

Selected high points

Radiohead's headliner on Saturday night

The piss just after Radiohead's headliner on Saturday night

Billy Bragg old school solo set in the Left Field tent on Sunday (especially the whole crowd singing This Guitar Says Sorry)

Campaigning with fantastic people to a warm and friendly crowd

Comfrey pakoras by the fire in the permaculture corner on Friday night's wandering

Sunset in the stone circle with hot cider

Hot showers at 6am in the staff field. In fact, most things about the staff field

Getting there before the crowds, getting away at 7am today

Our fabulous new tent

Selected low points

Bastard man and his miserable family who were breathtakingly rude when I asked them to sign up

Men still pissing in hedges despite having far more than their fair share of toilet facilities

Grumpy PMT moments then period in a field, never good

Achy achy legs from endless walking

Missing Interpol because of clash with shift

On balance then, top weekend. Amazing weather, good vibes, great music. Glad I went back (having sworn not to after not much fun experience in 1995), glad we had a safe place to camp, glad am grown up and sensible enough to get enough sleep and take things like hats, and very, very proud of myself for NOT SMOKING AT ALL. Who would have thought it possible.

I feel like I've been away for a month though. God knows how I'm going to cope with work tomorrow...

joella

Getting ready for Glastonbury

... or rather, not getting ready for Glastonbury, simply getting in a right old state about needing to get ready for Glastonbury.

Tent, clean pants, a jumper and a load of cash. What more could you need?

Head torch, definitely. Wellies, the weather forecast is patchy. So a rainproof coat as well. But not my new one, what if it gets nicked. Sun hat. Sunscreen. Towel. Sleeping mat. New plastic mat to carry around and sit on that we got for the beach in Brighton.

New Harry Potter book. Another book in case it's all too exciting. Evening Primrose Oil. Toilet paper. Water bottles x several. Face wipe things. Shampoo etc in case of shower opportunities. Scarf for hair in case of no shower opportunities.

Umbrella? Or is that silly. Pen, I always forget a pen. Mobile phone. Calor Gaz lamp thing that's dangerous in the extreme but really handy. Stove and kettle or is that wishful thinking.

Alcohol? Does this count as a holiday from Living Healthily? Flaxseed oil to keep bowels moving to new higher standards.

Liz's Womad gazebo that she might lend us. Any point in that? Will we be hanging out by the tent much?

Flip flops? Old ones or new sparkly ones? Or sensible Scholl sandals that can walk miles in but are v uncool. Any attempt at cool, or straight for sensible?

Special festival neck purse.

Moisturiser.

Alarm clock for early shifts (am campaigning for Make Trade Fair, camping in staff field, v good option)? No, phone can do that. Actually, there's 24 hour food and drink in that field, so definitely no kettle.

So much to worry about, so little time.

I'll be checking this list tomorrow night as I'm packing.

And by Wednesday night I might even have calmed down a bit.
I'd have made a shit hippie.

joella

pissed person

party tonight

richard & mopsa

they are 50

they are cool

they do fabulous on the party scale

they are an example to us all

and they are still together

big respect

joella

Gadding about

This week I have spent two nights on sleeper trains and two nights in Manchester -- one with N&D, which was lovely, and one at the very strange Luther King House in Rusholme. I was not having theological education, despite the venue's raison d'etre. No, I was having gender training.

And a very odd experience it was. When I was at university, I would have given my eye teeth to get a job involving gender training. My feminist sensibilities were at their sharpest, and if my personal and sexual identity was a little confused (and I daresay confusing), my politics were very clear.

But I didn't get such a job, in fact the first job I did get was in the kind of place where they asked me to wear a skirt when going to meetings. To this I responded by changing into the skirt just before the meeting and changing out of it immediately afterwards. Not exactly challenging the foundations of patriarchal capitalism, but I was only 23 and I needed the money.

And life gets muddier, doesn't it. Now I own two skirts and three dresses, and wear them when the occasion demands. If it's a posh one, I shave my armpits too.

But I digress. My gender training was based in the realities of life for people living on low incomes in the UK. We learned about gender budgeting from a very cool feminist economist, looked at gender-disaggregated statistics and practised lobbying policymakers about the gender dimension of debt and financial exclusion.

It was interesting and challenging. The most challenging thing for me was that we were focusing on what men and women actually do with their lives, and how important it is to take that into account in policymaking and practice, and never mind the unfairness of the system in the first place. That's a different battle, and one that needs to be fought in a different place.

It's acres more complicated and sophisticated as an approach than anything I had previously come into detailed contact with, even if it does feel weird to be talking in what feel like gender stereotypes. It might help me throw some light on the pink pants issue.

joella

Ricardo's train ticket

R and I went to Brighton this weekend, and travelled down together from Oxford on the train. Being an organised sort of chap R decided to buy his ticket in advance from thetrainline.com.

Following instructions on the screen, he chose the Friday 17.45 there and the Sunday 13.40 back. But when his ticket arrived, it was for the 17.38 via Reading and Redhill, which didn't show up on any of the timetables I was looking at.

Anxious to coordinate, I rang up National Rail Enquiries (NB in a splendid bit of marketing, they don't put their phone number on their website, truly there are some stupid people with important jobs in public transport).

No, there wasn't a 17.38 to Brighton via Reading and Redhill. Hang on a minute, I said, I've got the ticket right here in my hand, it's just arrived in the post, and that it what it says. Please can you look again?

His exact words were: 'no love, I haven't got one of them'.

Get this. It turns out the Trainline had sold him a ticket he didn't ask for, for a train that does not exist and which could not be used on the train he did want to catch, or the train after it, or the train after that -- in fact any train via London, which is the only way to get your ass to Brighton before 10pm on a Friday.

So he rang up and asked for a refund, which will take up to 20 days and cost him £5 in administration fees.

Kafka, anyone?

He got a lift back with Miles, I don't blame him. Me, I got the sleeper train to Pitlochry, but that's another story.

joella

Tony and Carmela bite the dust

I don't watch much television, but I know what I like. And I like The Sopranos very much indeed.

Marriage can be a tough game to play at the best of times, and these were not the best of times. Tony and Carmela's final confrontation over his decades of infidelities and her unconsummated love for Furio was a triumph of screenwriting. I had to watch it through my fingers.

In fact -- of course -- if you can raise the stakes that high in a screaming match without one of you caving in you must be a pretty well matched couple to start with, which just adds to the tragedy.

And then Meadow's "why did you eat shit from him all these years" speech combined with her flashbacks to happy family times, fucking fantastic.

Never forget how far there is to fall...

joella

Sub fusc wet dream

It's finals time of year, and here in Oxford the University insists that its students wear sub fusc to sit their exams.

So far so arcane, and I would argue so unfair, as the last thing you want to be doing the night before one of the biggest exams of your life is to be making sure you've got a clean white shirt and stupid ribbon thing to go with it. At Cambridge we were luckier, and I seem to remember taking most of my finals in T-shirt and pyjama bottoms.

And to be fair, most of them do look fairly ramshackle as they flick through their notes outside the exam hall smoking four cigarettes at once and drinking Red Bull.

But there's the odd woman who looks like she's about to be turned down by Page 3 and sent over to the Sport as more their style. Miniskirt, lip gloss, high heels and a mortar board makes quite an impact, and you can see men adjusting their trousers as they walk past and drifting off into little reveries about being their examiners.

Frankly, I am baffled. Why dress carefully like something off the top shelf in WHSmith in order to sit your degree? Who are you doing it for?

There's plenty of time to play the nubile-and-a-bit-slutty card, if that's your thing, when (to paraphrase Anne Robinson for the first time in my life) you discover the treachery of the workplace.

Your finals are blind marked. It's probably the last time in your life that anyone really will only want you for your mind. I'd be making the most of that.

joella

Pink pants

For as many years as I have been buying my own pants, they have been either black or white. They would all be black, given how manky white pants can get if your washing machine is as inadequate as ours, but a few items of clothing do necessitate the wearing of a white bra rather than a black one and I like to match.

I have a couple of 'special' matching bra and pants sets which are neither black nor white, but 'special' broadly translates as 'uncomfortable', so they don't get much wear. And with 'special' sets it always seems to be a choice between huge pants or strings, and as I don't wear strings (why deliberately have a wedgie all day?) I end up with something resembling school athletics shorts made out of lace. I'm not convinced of the allure.

So generally I just buy a multipack of black minis from M&S whenever I notice that the last batch have more holes in than they should. No decisions to make. No problem.

But I bought a new skirt from RipCurlGirl -- far trendier than anything I would normally buy, but I was in a bad mood and it was hot. It is mostly white and it hangs very low. You can see black pants through it, never a good look, and my white ones come up a good two inches higher than the skirt itself -- and even I can tell that this is a screaming faux pas, especially given their slight bagginess (I think I bought them before they had Lycra).

So on Saturday I decided to buy some 'low rise pants' -- these are new fangled garments which don't really cover very much at all and are designed not to poke out the top of 'low rise' clothes. But a little bit of poke-out (is there a fashion term for this?) is inevitable so you also need to make sure that said pants are presentable, in the same way bra straps have to be if you are wearing a certain type of vest.

It took me ages. Once you deviate from the multipack you're on your own. The number of twenty-first century pant options is staggering. I eventually settled on a 'low rise garter' in white, which were three for £10, and then recklessly chucked one back and substituted a pink pair. They are tiny and made of mesh stuff.

Pink pants! Little pink pants! I was very excited. It's hard to explain the forces which have stopped me even thinking about buying little pink pants for the last 15 years, and harder still to explain why I feel little pink pants are now ok, but maybe when the PC is fixed at home and I don't have to blog in my lunch hour, I should try.

I then decided a matching bra would be just the thing, but sadly they do not make little pink bras in my size.

Sometimes it's hard to be a woman.

joella

Our Dick's at Wigan

There are several sayings and phrases that I grew up using which appear to be unique to our family. In fact I think my mother must have made them up.

I didn't realise this until I started using them as an adult. A very good example is 'you left me standing there like cheese at fourpence'. I screamed this at someone once and all the impact was lost because he fell about laughing at me and I ended up laughing too. I don't even know whether cheese at fourpence is really expensive, and therefore gets left because nobody will pay that much, or is really cheap and gets left because it's going mouldy.

Another is used when you are reeling off a long list and want to say 'and lots more like that obviously', or if you just run out of steam half way through something. So you might say 'and then she told me about her fabulous new baby and her fabulous new car and her fabulous new hairdresser and blurbedy blurbedy fishcakes'.

Or I did, until people started snorting coffee out of their noses.

But there is one which really does deserve wider use. Let's say I was having this conversation with my family. How are you? they would ask.

Not great really. I have to write these performance objectives for work and they're doing my head in, I just can't get them right, and I had a really stressful phone conference yesterday with the project officers and I wonder if we're making any progress at all, and I've got this horrible blister rash on my arm which I got in the garden on Sunday it really hurts, and the bum lady's cancelled my next appointment after I'd arranged to work at home and the computer's blown up anyway so I don't know what to do, and I just can't get it together to cycle to work, and we've got this mortgage thing to sort out and...

And they would chorus: 'And our Dick's at Wigan, and t'threshing machine's in t'yard and it's raining.'

It means 'you're boring us now, but we do recognise that life is shit sometimes'.

joella