mrph | InFest2002 - Is it hell, or is it Burger King? (Reply)

Starting at the finish and working backwards, Memento style... :-)

Waking up on a Monday morning, brain and hearing mangled post-festival, is never pleasant. Waking up to discover that the halls are out of toilet paper (because some drunken goth has used it all to decorate the corridors) is even less pleasant.

But, anyway, you don't want to hear about that, do you? I got up and packed. dmh turned up after a bit, saying that he'd txted _gh0st_ and everything was under control. So we put everything in the car boot, then wandered over to the Uni to meet Gh0st.

Disappointingly, the Escape Bar wasn't open, so our plans for a final breakfast got shelved. Even worse, there were no goths there. Not even a Gh0st. Lots of confused students, though. So we wandered back off-campus and decided to head straight to Trinity, where Gh0st was staying. Then, after a confusing 'multiple simultaneous phone conversations' moment, and a short-lived scheme to go visit teknoirangel in halls, we decided to go back to the car and get out of town.

I may have heard Dave say "Would you like crazy monkey sex with Nutella" to someone during one of those conversations. But he's a sweet and innocent lad, so I'm sure I misheard him.

I definitely heard Gh0st assure us that his bodily fluids were no longer fluorescent, though. Strange boy.

The escape plan didn't quite go according to plan. Dave decided to head for central Leeds, then head South. This took longer than expected. I could be wrong, but I suspect that's because we blinked and missed the microscopic gap between Leeds and Bradford, then drove straight through Leeds and turned 180° when we saw the signs on the other side. Possibly we even did this twice.

Eventually, though, we did get out onto a proper motorway, and headed South for a bit before deciding to stop for brunch. Brunch was whatever we could find at motorway services, although the first thing we found was a milling crowd of mud-covered festival goers (and a Taoist, who was just finishing his own brunch).

I don't think I've ever queued so long for 'fast' food. The queue for real food was even worse - as was the queue for the cashpoint, so Dave ended up ordering for all three of us and paying with handfuls of loose change. It was unpleasant.

To top it off, once we finally did get our food, the only seats we could find were next to the childrens play area. This was the moment when we realised that Gh0st was wearing a "yungfuktoi" shirt and Dave was wearing a "where the fuck were you?!" FLA tour shirt. Er, oops. We didn't mean to corrupt the youth of today, honest…

And after that we went home. Gh0st got dropped off in 'Paradise', one of Coventry's more obscure hellholes. We then spent twenty minutes trying to find our way out again. Lovely place.

Then Dave dropped me off, stopping by for a drink and a glance at his entry in the new Mick Mercer book (mistresskittyk - did you realise that your LJ's in there, btw?).

Then I staggered to bed and slept soundly for about 18 hours. Things seemed much more normal after that.