The Ned Wood Archive

We’ve got to get ourselves
back to the garden

Brandi Carlile, Pyramid Stage, June 2025

Joe

Joe gets down to the showers but he knows it’s too late.  He probably wouldn’t have waited that long had he been the one waiting, so he’s no right to think she would have.  It’s his open bloody fault.  If he hadn’t lost his wallet, he’d have been there.  If he hadn’t screwed up charging his phone the day before, he could have told her where he was.  What he doesn’t admit to himself, though, is that what he should have done is just forget about his wallet and just go down and meet up as they’d planned.  Which makes him doubly stupid.

Maybe she went for some breakfast, he thinks.  So he rushes off down the main track to the Tony Benn Tower and then along to the bakery opposite the kids field entrance.  There’s no sign of her anywhere.  He sits down round the corner and decides he may as well have a shower here, so he queues up for the ones by the Kidz Field.  They are already pretty busy cos of the heat, but he’s suddenly got loads of time, hasn’t he?  And when he’s done, he sits at the top of Theatre field, combing his hair in the sun.  Yeah, he probably looks like a mermaid or something, but, whatever.  He’s not thinking about how he looks, he’s thinking about how bloody stoopid he is and asking himself what he can do about it.