The Ned Wood Archive

Mona Lisa and the excitement gang

Bruce Springsteen, Pyramid Stage, June 2009

Ellie

They went out again after it finally stopped raining. They’d gone back to the tent when the downpour lessened slightly so they could dry off and change. They’d been wearing their waterproofs and wellies, but their shorts had got soaked. So they all needed dry ones. Before it rained, they were planning on doing the markets and walking round Carhenge and stuff, so that’s where they were headed out next.

The markets at Glastonbury, the downtown area, is a rough rectangle with corners at the Pyramid Field, the Other Stage, West Holts, and Carhenge. Stalls are lined up on each side of a few runs, selling all manner of stuff: clothing, both old and new, any accessory you can think of, jewellery, posters, pictures, other souvenirs, you name it. There was one place near Carhenge that used to sell suits. Suits with outrageous patterns on like clouds or tiger stripes. A little further out there are stalls selling wood carvings or mirrors. Even carpets.

Everyone is out in the markets now, so they are busier than Carnaby Street on the Saturday before Chrstmas. Thursday is markets day. You arrive on Wednesday and get settled in. The main stages start on Friday, so Thursday is your main day for going round the site. And now that the weather has improved this afternoon, everyone is making the most of it. The girls aren’t buying, though. They’re just nosing around, trying stuff on for fun. They take it in turns to photograph each other wearing hats and coats and skirts and whatever. And Ellie is also looking for ideas. Seeing whether there is anything she can take back and use. She picks out a neat wine red shirt at the Oxfam stall down from West Holts. She puts it at the front of the rack, steps back a few yards and photographs it. She spots another to photograph a bit further along. Splashes of bright blues, oranges, violets, and yellows.

It isn’t theft. It’s part of her job, going round stores in London to see what they’re selling and maybe coming up with something better. Look. Nothing is new. Everything has been done before. Like her Dad tells her. Punk Rock was only Eddie Cochran but a bit louder.

Most of her ideas, though, are when you mix two different things together. Not just like what happens if you mix that Argyll pattern with a bit of Paisley, for example, but what happens when you make a sweater that looks like a thunderstorm or a dress that looks like happiness. That sort of brainstormed outfit. So, she’s thinking, how would you make clothes that looked like Glastonbury? How could you express the joy, the excitement, the expressiveness, the friendliness, and the wonder? What pattern would “Glastonbury Moment” be?

She has to admit that the bright, multicoloured stuff they sell round near the bandstand comes pretty close. But her mind keeps going back to that orange African shirt from Wednesday. She’ll never get away from that. So she starts searching to see whether she can find another one. She even thinks maybe she’ll get one as a sort of souvenir. Then she wonders whether there’s any way she could get hold of the original.

They follow the crowd along the tracks, past Left Field. A bit further on there is a stall selling football shirts, so they all pile in and look at the various kits to see whether there are any vintage Spurs shirts there. Ellie wants one from the year she was born. They’ve got the Hewlett Packard one, but that’s too old. Lauren and Abi spend ages in there, going through all of the shirts, are making fun of all of the teams. They can think of something negative to say about any team you like. They find an Inter shirt and tell Ellie she should get one, even though they know that most of her cousins are Rossoneri.

And so it continues. When they’ve exhausted the football, they retrace their steps and check out the stalls selling newer clothing around towards the Pyramid Field. These stalls have a great range of items: hats, beads, shirts, dresses, skirts, anything and everything. Ellie continues to hunt out the better items to photograph while they all try on a range of clobber that none of them intend to buy. They stroll past the folk singer on the bandstand without paying her much attention. None of them really get turned on by folk anyway. Ellie finds another great purple Kashmiri paisley shirt to photograph, so she’s happy.

They finally end up near the tea bus. There’s a small stage there – just slightly raised, maybe six inches above the ground. You get a sequence of circus acts there: jugglers, escapologists, lunatics. They all have a grand patter. They all get the audience involved. The girls stop to watch – you feel that if you don’t you might be missing out. They tell each other what fabulous gear they almost bought just now, although none of them were really that close to buying anything.

Of course, the rest of them had been grilling her about what had happened over at Croissant Neuf. She always told Phoebe about stuff like that. Almost always. She trusted her. She told Lauren and Abi too, mostly. She valued their opinions as well, because they’d give you a different way of looking at things. But Phoebs was nearer to her way of thinking, so she kind of thought her advice was usually the best.

Ellie realises that they’re getting all of this second hand. They hadn’t seen the bloke up at the Park. And they hadn’t seen him after lunch just now. Ellie tried to explain what she thought. She didn’t really know herself. She’d been thinking over what had just happened and was questioning whether she’d formed the right impression. The day before when she got stared at, she could maybe dismiss it as being because of her short hair or her funny nose. But today when that bloke looked at her, she knew it was more. More, what would you say, gentle? More of a warm, gentle look. It made her feel special. So she was going to tell herself over and over again that’s what she was. Special.

“So is this a long term relationship or a one night stand?”

“It was only a dance, Phoebs. Chances are I’ll never see him again now.”

But she asks herself, does she really believe that?