field studies

Blog posts are going to be a bit thin on the ground here for a coupla weeks, if something as insubstantial as a website can be said to have ground.

It's the height of sit around in a field with your mates season, and August presents those of us of a greeny persuasion with a plethora of options. There's the Northern Green Gathering, the Earth First! Summer Gathering, and the previously mentioned Camp For Climate Action.

Those latter two are more action orientated, whereas the Northern Green Gathering has a larger festival bent. Larger still is festivalaciousness of the Big Green Gathering, where I pint-pulled, DJed and otherwise munted away a weekend.

I've written before about how satire is outdone by reality. At the Big Green Gathering I was repeatedly amused by things with names that sounded like Schnews had made them up to be a bit pointed about the festival.

There was a stall called the Dreamcatcher Chai Tipi. There was one called the Yurt of Empowerment. But the winner was surely the 9am workshops of Techno Yoga.

It did exactly what it said on the tin. Early 90s techno, with a guy leading a group in yoga. And an uninvited though surely predictable backdrop of assorted up-all-night munters bouncing from side to side, beer can in hand, shouting for it all to be
turned up a bit.

As the man said, this is the strangest life i have ever known.