To be honest I was dreading green man festival, I’d just adapted to
sleeping on real beds and I was not willing to live in a cold wet field in the
Brecon beacons. it was meant to be "the quiet festival", the slow wind down to
normal life from such an extreme situation. Obviously this is not how the night
ended up. Something about sleep deprivation means that everything that occurred
there was either the best or the worst. credit to the Green Man team though they treat their
volunteer staff really well with a very reasonable expectation of hours, lively
characters to keep morale up, and cheap food available to keep the cranky
hungriness away.
However it was the people that made that festival particularly
memorable. Starting with my main companion for the weekend, a girl with
fiery hair that can only be explained through a secret love child between River
Song from doctor who and Merida from brave. She was distinctly well travelled and definitely not sheltered, yet had a quite cockney London speech pattern, complete with the unironic use
of words like “geezer.” Most importantly she was on my wavelength in a way that
I was worried I wasn’t going to find at green man.
The other people involved included a young Jewish guy named
Dan (wearing a star of david and quipping about his religion every few seconds) who had an odd combo of nerdiness and confidence that quietly floated him
through the festival, and a chef with massive poodle-rock hair (still can’t
decide if it was styled like that or if his hair just afros like that) and a
nerdy shrine of arm tattoos that he apparently drew himself. His accent was a
cloudy, gentle, welsh lilt, and that paired with his cartoonish facial expressions and
actions lead me to believe he was destined to be a stall merchant in a video
game, or perhaps a pokemon gym leader. Either way I wanted to keep him around.
On the other hand there was also a gentleman who introduced himself as "love", he was covered in eyeliner geometric cult symbols and spoke with a cadence to his voice that never seemed to arrive anywhere. he was full androgynous hippie, the kind of person who would have been charming if he gave you straight answers instead of trailing off on vaguely hippie-ish enigmatic wankery. he didn't seem to have much direction, and although his aesthetic was fascinating in a post apocalypse grunge homemade way, there was too much of an absence to him. like he was barely in the room even when he was sat in front of you. it also didn't help that one of the first things he explained to me was asking if I wanted to learn how to make a soy bottle into an ash tray and that he was collecting recycling bits for a craft project "as an artist."
On the first volunteer shift I was left with Dan, with whom
I traded bad puns regarding basically everything in the area. I talked to one
of the live events, a dynamic duo of sisters dressed in shorts and a caricature postman’s
uniform. There was a service where people could leave messages for strangers or
friends based on descriptions varying from “pink hair girl, elephant leggings”
to a match.com style shopping list of traits. One of the posties even took a
fondness towards me, adopting me as an honorary younger brother for the weekend
due to a slight similarity to her own brother. This was incredibly useful due
to the amount of hugs I’d need to keep morale at an acceptable level. 
She tried
to set me up on a blind date, but I passed because I’d already found someone
for that. I began viewing the posties as like the volunteer fire department in
lemony snicket, a cult of inherently trustworthy strangers.
I went to compliment a stranger’s hair – a pink undercut –
but lost them before I managed to tell them how cool they were. Luckily for me I found them again as Jodie, the
redhead, went to visit something else. A tall figure, dressed in a leather vest
with a cowboy hat and glasses, who I shortly got to know as “Mattie.” More
commonly thought of by me as “the polyamorous, the 6 foot 6, pink haired cowboy”
or simply just “the cowboy.” Despite this incredibly distinctive description he
was incredibly hard to find.
He warmed up to me quickly and I guess we became amorous for
the evening, everything above the belt but still incredibly good company. He
clicked his fingers like he was at a poetry night when he was impressed and had a way of
making you feel special for a moment before continuing without you. I found
myself wandering around with part of my brain fixated on his whereabouts, not
infatuation but fascination. The second time I met him had at least twice the
amount of leather. I hope I left a good impression.
Event highlights included Emer Maguire singing science songs
about animal sex, the temple of the tattie selling us into an Irish potatoe
cult, the burning of the green man, and the mysterious caravan inhabited by
vintage dressed people in animal masks, who would gesture to you and draw you
if you visited, like an alice in wonderland booth. A raven woman typewritered
me and Jodie a poem, and there was a simple sketch in sharpie marker to
remember the weekend by.
I also missed a shift of mine and flurried back to the
steward tent realising what I’d done. I pleaded for a replacement shift to get
an older gentleman with a tan and Australian dark hair and maturely
designed tattoos look me in the eyes knowingly. Despite knowing his name I
refer to this gentleman purely as “the australian DILF” for ease. He smiled and
said “I can see your stressing, go to bed and make sure you don’t miss the next
one.” I followed his advice to see him the next morning grinning. “how was the
night shift? Good wasn’t it!” he asked hinting. I followed suite and promised
him I’d do a shift or buy him a drink or something. I never got to buy him that
apology/thank-you-for-being-my-alibi drink in the end. I did however suffer through my night shift, six hours in wet wellies at the pitch blackness that left a bad taste in my mouth. i was bitter and cold. be warned. volunteering leads you into deep bitter coldness.
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