Unintelligent Design

Dover is one of those places that's guaranteed to restore my lack of faith in humanity. I mention this solely because I spent six hours trapped there last week, after we missed our ferry. Not really the best start to a holiday - especially when I'd had to force myself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 4AM so that we'd be there in time to catch that ferry...

One very awkward consequence of this delay was that when we finally reached the Losheim campsite it was 10:30 in the evening - and we had to pitch our (four) tents in the dark, aided by one small and feeble torch. Which went out after ten minutes. Oh, and we'd all assumed that someone else would bring a mallet. Ooops. As I say, really not the best start, although with hindsight it's almost funny.

From that point onwards, though, it was all pretty wonderful. Good music (my band review is on Usenet's uk.people.gothic, in the "Zillo" thread, if anyone's interested), friendly people, great atmosphere. One of the best weekends I've had in ages - even the bursts of torrential rain on Sunday afternoon couldn't ruin it. Perhaps they even added to the atmosphere, as the main result seemed to be an odd camaraderie - several thousand damp goths standing in ankle deep mud, cheerfully sharing umbrellas and alcohol with whoever happened to be standing next to them.

The downside of this was that returning to the UK, and then immediately going back to work, really wasn't much fun. Between exhaustion and the post-holiday blues (I find that everyday life always seems bleak, slow and generally worthless for a week or so after a really good holiday), I've been utterly antisocial - both online and irl. Especially this time, as I wasn't even in a very good mood when I left.

So, as ever, I apologise if I owe anyone e-mail! I'm now recovered, more-or-less awake and coherent again, so I'll try to catch up on everything over the next few days.