Lottie’s Mum’s Party

It starts as it always does, with a call. Leon rings me about Saturday lunchtime. “It’s Lottie's Mum’s party at Blackgang today. U coming over”. He’s a good lad, Leon. Keeps me posted; ‘cos I’d forgotten all about Lottie’s Mum’s party. That’s what assistant directors do (Leon!) Anyways, that’s it then. Time for action. Soon, I have me Southampton posse together: Rachel, my girlfriend and James, who’s a musician mate of mine from round these parts.

We faff for a bit, there are minor crisis, people come and go from my house, the earth stands still on its axis for what seems three days and finally we leave. We catch the seven boat and soon watch the mainland drift into ……

……as the island becomes larger and larger, until we sail past Cowes, full of boats it makes u wonder how the ferry don’t kill someone with all the chaos over the water (actually, come to think of it, someone did get sliced in half by the Red Osprey a couple of years a go; nasty business that; sliced in half. Of all the ways. It’s the last thing u think of.). Then East Cowes. Not, it must be said, the first town u’d want to necessarily introduce people to the island with, but Queen Vic did mourn for 10 years here. Which follows.

Into Newport, to pick up supplies, which is a good way to treat Newport, really. To pick up things and then leave. Free them from the place. I guess I maybe being a bit harsh about Newport, but there’s something about the place which is just…..shit. I dunno, I’m a writer, I like words, but I can’t get it any pithier than that. I lived there for a while and when you’re skint as well, everywhere is expensive to travel too, so like anywhere else on the island, u stay where u are. Except unlike say, Ventnor, u ain’t surrounded by sea and cliffs and beaches and cool things like that. Your surrounded by shitty buildings, just like any town any number of places in this country. So you forget you live on an island, after a while. You just remember you live in a shit town. Newhog day.

Anyways, outta' Newport, through Blackwater, turn off in Rookley to Chale, then to Blackgang, and park up at the Birdseye View just above Blackgang Chine. And then we’re greeted to one of my favourite views on the island.  All along the west coast of the island – all along the military road really – Chale, Atherfield, Brighstone, Compton Bay, Tennyson Downs and the Needles. All from this viewpoint up at Blackgang. Rachel and James are blown away by it. That view is literally the setting of the party. As it gets darker it becomes an illuminated backdrop to the music and then it keep us up till the morning admiring its revealed beauty. The view. The view. Always the View.

So, we’re at the party. Cool. It’s about 9. Its been going since about two this afternoon. There’s been some bands and stuff already. The place looks smart. It’s in a kindof’'  bowlcrater in a field. On the side of a hill. And they’ve set up a stage area and DJ booth in such a way that it looks like a natural amphitheatre. Very cool. I make a mental note of it in the course of the night, ‘cos I reckon it would be a smart place to put a play on.

First person I see when we finally get there is Nath. Looking at peace. Taking in the view. Then Julie (the aforementioned ‘Lottie’s Mum’), then Trotsky and James sitting on the bank, and is that Johnny Madden sitting next to them as I live and breath? It is. Old and new friends. That kinda’ night, I guess. I notice Raff and Bob in the DJ booth. Of course. And up on the lip of the bowl, a 100 feet up in the air, I spy the Shorewell crew. Sure enough, a quick nip to the top of the hill and there’s Shorewell Louis, Barnzy and Paul, along with Bim Bim Tom and various beautiful people. The Nuss in effect. So, all is good. 

Oh what manner of beast is this that rears its head with such nonchalance?

The times are only in the order that history appoints them. What conceit history must have to presume to have got it in the right one. Is the flow of ideas linear? Man always seeks an order, a box to fit things into – The Renaissance, The Reformation, The Enlightenment. Such bold words. But is history in tandem with us? Are these boxes in order, simply because history gives them that appearance? And yet, perhaps this is being too suspicious of my lambasted friend. No one likes history anymore. The present treats it with the highest contempt – it consumes it. It eats the past and defecates out melanges of simultudes. “Reality” Turds.

I remember bits more than events…… Lottie in tears….the music gear going awol……finally more gear arrives…..Phil playing some of his homegrown tech-house, making Rachel and I move like muvvers…the video camera going awol  …..Mags and Beth explaining why they were such dirty stop-ins for missing my play……Jared and B high on Life……Justin really biggin up Writers’ Block, which was nice…..Francis…..bloody Ratters……dancing my nuts off to some wicked techno-ey track by Groove Armada(!)….chatting to Nina about writing and The Hoops, her and Hev’s wicked new band…..watching the gear disappear again…into the distance….carrying Gary’s decks to the DJ booth…..and his bloody headphones …….Acid Techno!…..Ventnor Girls in full effect……Jackson off his nuts…the camera still awol….Raff and Rach engrossed in conversation …..trying to find Mew for what seemed like a year…..the view outside the tent at about three: a full moon plum in the middle of the sky, shimmering on the sea, over the clifftop….Leon discovering that the camera was under the chair he’d been sitting on for two hours….dancing with the beat freaks in Blackgang…..lots and lots of beat freaks…discovering not one but two seats of  special worth and comfort…….feeling pretty loved-up …..the view coming into view again, revealing itself through the mist….in my head…..final farewells from the lip of the bowl to the Shorewell crew and the crazy things they do…..B and Netty still dancing like nutters to some Meters magic at about six in the morning…..a moment between created and creator…..falling into you……nausea…..sleep…..dreams of cliffs, beeches, sea and……the view again, waking upto the view, breathtaking in brilliant blue….feeling the pull of the party calling to me as it always does; through the beat that’s still pulsing and booming out from the bowlcrater…..but knowing that it was time to go back to the mainland with Rachel…..

A superb night. What times are these?