‘Fair enough. But try and keep the noise down after midnight.’

‘No problem. I’ll see you on Monday morning then.’

‘You certainly will, stupid!’

With that said, the Chief Constable stationed a policeman at the gate and then drove away. Chuckling to himself.

The Doveston had saved the day and a mighty cheer went up. He was carried shoulder-high to the stage, where he blew the crowd many kisses and enjoyed another Brentstock moment.

I enjoyed one too. I’d acquired a few free packets from Norman and although I can’t say that they were a great smoke, they did have something special about them.

The Doveston left the stage to a standing ovation and I found him back at the mixing desk, where a goodly number of females had gathered, all eager to adjust his yo-yo. As I have never been too proud to bathe in a bit of reflected glory, I introduced myself all round and enquired suavely as to the chances of getting a shag.

And did I get one?

Did I bugger!

Saturday afternoon was a gas. More bands played and the beautiful people continued to dance. The bands had no difficulty getting into the festival, because the constable on guard had only been ordered to stop people getting out.

I dwelt a bit upon all that business with the Chief Constable. I mean, the whole thing was ludicrous really. Totally far-fetched, absurd and beyond belief. I mean, only one constable on duty at the gate. You’d have needed at least two, surely?

It was just around the five o’clock mark when I became fully aware that things weren’t altogether right with me. It seemed that throughout the afternoon I had been slowly acquiring a number of mystical powers. The power to see sounds in colour, for instance, and also the power to hear smells.

I found that I was becoming just a little bit confused by what was going on around me and this was not helped at all by the curious sense of detachment I was experiencing.

Every time I took a couple of steps forward, I had to stop to let myself catch up.

‘I feel distinctly odd,’ I said to Humphrey.

‘You’re tripping, man, that’s all.’ His words emerged as purple stars that floated off into the sky.

‘I can’t be tripping. I haven’t done any acid.’ ‘Go with the flow, man. Go with the flow.’ Purple stars and little yellow patches.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around very slowly, to keep my consciousness inside my head.

‘What are you doing?’ asked the Doveston.

‘I’m talking to Humphrey. He says that I’m tripping. But I can’t be, I haven’t done any acid.’

‘Don’t take any notice of Humphrey,’ said the Doveston. ‘He can’t be trusted.’

‘Oh yes I can,’ said Humphrey.

‘Oh no you can’t.’

‘Oh yes I can.

‘Why can’t he be trusted?’ I asked.

‘Because Humphrey is an oak tree,’ said the Doveston.

13

We shared a Brentstock moment.

There was a band playing up on the stage. The band was called the Seven Smells of Susan: five small dwarves with very tall heads and a rangy fellow in tweeds. The Seven Smells played ‘coffeetable music’, the 1960s precursor of Ambient. They only ever released one album and this, I believe, was produced by Brian Eno. It was called Music for Teapots. I don’t have a copy myself.

I was no great fan of the Smells, their music was far too commercial for me, but on this day they were magic. The sounds of the duelling ocarinas and the semi-tribal rhythms of the yoghurt-pot maracas[8] issued from the speakers in Argus-eyed polychromatic fulgurations, which were both pellucid and dioptric, daedal and achromatic, simultaneously. It was as if I were actually viewing the trans-perambulation of pseudo-cosmic anti-matter, without having recourse to an inter-rositor.

Nice.

But good as the band were, nobody seemed to be listening. The centre of attention was no longer the stage. The crowd had withdrawn to the riverside end of the allotments, to re-form in a number of Olympic Ring-like interlocking circles, each of which centred on one of the ancient oaks. Most of the folk were sitting cross-legged, but I noticed some were kneeling with their hands together in prayer.

‘The trees,’ I said to the Doveston. ‘They’re all talking to the trees.’

My words were tiny green transparent spheres which burst all over his forehead, but he didn’t seem to notice, or perhaps he was being polite. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ I heard and saw him say.

‘Everybody’s tripping. Everyone. Someone must have dropped acid into the water supply, or something.’

‘Or something.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ My question was orange, with small yellow stars.

‘I’ll get Chico on to it.’ Red diamonds and fairy-lights.

‘He might be stoned as well.’ Pink umbrellas.

‘He’d better not be.’ Golden handbags and grated cheese guitars.

‘I can’t handle this,’ I said, in a mellowy-yellowy-celery way. ‘I’m going home to bed.’

I stumbled across the tobacco-stubbled waste, pausing now and then to let myself catch up, climbed carefully over the back garden fence and in through the kitchen window. The Smells’ music was really beginning to do my head in and I was quite pleased when, at the exact moment that I plugged in the electric kettle to brew a cup of tea, they apparently finished their set.

Obviously there were some who were not so pleased as I, because I heard the sounds of shouting and of blows being exchanged. But it was hardly any of my business, so I just sat there waiting for the kettle to boil.

It took an age. It took a lifetime. It took an aeon.

Did you ever see that documentary about the scientist Christopher Mayhew? It was made by the BBC in the 1950s. Old Chris takes mescalin and attempts to describe the on-going experience to this terribly proper BBC commentator-chappie. There is one classic moment when he stares briefly into space and then announces that he has just returned from ‘years and years of Heavenly bliss’. The bit that sticks with me is the part at the end. After the effects of the drug have worn off, he is asked what he has learned from his experience. Mr Mayhew concludes, ‘There is no absolute time, no absolute space.

As I sat and waited for that kettle to boil, I knew just what he meant. At that moment I stepped outside of time. It was as if the part of me that kept me forever only in the present had been removed or switched off. All times were instantly accessible. The past, the present and the future. I had no wish to revisit the past. I’d been there and done it and not been there and done it very well. But the future, oh the future. I saw it all and it terrified me. I saw what I was going to do and I knew why I would have to do it.

I saw myself a prisoner. A prisoner of time, perhaps? Shut away for years and years and then released to wander on a lonely moor. And then I saw bright lights and London town, and then myself, a man of property. I wore fine clothes and drove a snazzy car. And then, upon a bleak horizon, loomed a mighty house, a Gothic pile, and there, within, debauchery and drugs and long-legged women. I enjoyed this part considerably and lingered in my time-travelling to dwell upon the details and the depths of my depravity. And very nice it was.

But then came tragedy. A death that seemed to shake the world and shortly after, a great and wonderful party, which, for some reason that I could not understand, I did not enjoy at all. And then the world went mad. It was the end of the world as we knew it. Nuclear war. Then wastelands and scattered communities.