The queue with the women and the book

The queue is moving slow and the Shakespeare book comes in handy. Henry the Fourth part one. Published 1926, it’s a family heirloom. The price is still inside the title page in pencil: 4/6. The Works Of Shakespeare. Behind me in the queue is a polite blonde women who resembles my standard four teacher, and wears her same nylon, green floral dress.
Another woman joins the line, behind the blonde, floral lady. She’s a pushy German woman and asks where the numbers are. Apparently where she’s from you need to queue with numbers. I tell here no, there are no numbers, around these parts we just wait.
She realises I speak German and attaches herself to me, cutting in front of the lady in the dress. I get back into my Shakespeare, hoping that’ll throw her off.
It’s the one with the poncey Sir John Falstaff and there on page 478 I find an ancient bookmark that must have belonged to my grandmother. It’s an A6 sheet of artist’s sketch paper. On the one side is a black ink sketch of the roof of a cathedral and lots of huts. Dozens of huts. Maybe Grahamstown? She lived in the Transkei.
“What’s wrong with the woman’s foot,” the pushy German lady wants to know. I look, and she has a club foot. It resembles the foot of an elephant, or a hippo, but pink, with an angry septic cast to her ankle.
“She says the foot,” I tell my old teacher. Mrs Rider. “She wants to know what happened to your foot.”
Of course she’s not my teacher. Now I look closer, I see she’s more like the woman from the SPCA that slept with JM Coetzee in Disgrace.
“It was a stomach leech,” the SPCA woman tells me. “It went from my stomach down to my foot and ate it away.”
Who knows the German for stomach leech? Not me. “It came from her stomach,” I tell the pushy German woman and get back to the Shakespeare.
The queue moves up one. They’re looking for models. The woman I’m with is a lithe Zimbabwean girl that I cast yesterday afternoon, with mysterious bruises on her arms and an oriental look to her.
“Where are your models,” I ask the ladies. “We are the models,” they tell me, and move up one.
Inside Henry the Fourth, I turn the bookmark over. Written in blue pen are the names of three of my aunts and uncles. “Rick R25, Margie R12, Johnny R13” It looks like a sum about pocket money from 1961. Scattered about are more numbers, 6, 4, 12=4, 4, 18, 95, 5, 5.
The page is torn and folded, brown and beige with age, and you can see blots of ink coming through, from the art on the other side.
The maths on the one side, the art on the other, the German, the queue, the models, it’s almost like a dream. The kind of thing I would dream.

In the eye of the metal storm

A man with a bra on his head lies sunburnt on the floor of the Black
Dahlia tent. At a glance you'd say he had forty seconds of consciousness left. A girl approaches his prostrate form, straddles him and lowers herself onto his crotch. It's a stunt, all for the benefit of her mates, there by the bar, lagging and having Labels to celebrate Haggis & Bong's killer set.
They haven't got all their Celtic war paint off yet, but they've put
away their bagpipes. You must, though. You must put away your
bagpipes. Those things can get destroyed at a Thornfest like this. And
they look expensive.
The mechanical horse claims another willing victim, as does the
brandy, and the skateboard ramp and the moshpit at Deity's Muse. Two for the halfpipe and a tattoo voucher for your troubles in the pit. And some Jägies merchandise if you make some noise at the Heroes Wear Red show.
The promo girls might kiss each other if the moment takes them, and everyone's sunburnt now. And upright, at least.
"Drink it or drive it," says the poster by the bar, "choose one". That choice has been made by the gallon. The Is That Blood show is empty. Twenty-odd die-hards face it on their own at the main stage, clinging to the front railing, where some shade has appeared. The first Wiccan whiffs of rain as they finish, coming to bless us and wash away the more obvious of our sins.
The camp sees action. The metal massive repair to there for a snooze or a whatever, till the big names come on. Probably from about five, when Chromium play. After that it's gonna be war. People are going to need their rest.
It's definitely rain, so muddy war. Trench warfare, to the screams and power chords of the apocalypse. Heavy metal till dawn, my friend.
You'll be lucky for some ska punk to catch your breath. And your neck
will never be the same.
Devil horns everywhere. Applause is almost non-existent. Who can clap when you’ve got a beer in your hand all weekend! Some whistles and a forest of raised metal-horn salutes is all the acknowledgement an ambitious young metal band craves, anyway.
Off the pool area, near where the bucking bronco is pitching punters into the cushions is an oasis.
Just in case the metal’s getting a bit much. Maybe twelve hours of non-stop death metal is just a little over your limit. Maybe no one told you you’re supposed to wear earplugs. If this is you, you wanna be on the funky disco floor.
In the corner, DJ J-P sits by his PC in baggies and slops. The dancefloor is exclusively women, screaming and squealing, alco-pops aloft and bumping hips with each other, play-play lesbian style.
J-P. has a sip of Amstel and looks at his screen as Get Down On It starts finishing. He puts his finger to his lips. We need a killer follow-up.
Here we go. Dan-Dan. Dan-Da-Deet! Boogie Wonderland by Earth Wind & Fire. That’s the metal antidote right there.