Solstice Solace...

30,000 hippies, druids, old school acid heads, 20-something students and other curious wierdos from all walks of life and nationalities descended upon the 5,000 year old stone circle during the night. Their reasons for seeing out the solstice in the middle of the Salisbury Plains one cold, wet midsummers morning in June varied as much as their haircuts, political stances and drug consumptions.

You can hark on all you like about millennia long tradition and the inherent spirituality of the place. I won't argue with you for an instant. However, any eastern philosopher will tell you one does not find the buddha at the top of the mountain, you bring it with you. In this case along with three litres of scrumpy, a big bag of grass, a hip flask of cheap whiskey, and 5 grams of the best mexican red cap mushrooms it's possible to find in the suburbs of Bournemouth.

Ok, you may not find anything approaching enlightenment, but I guarantee it'll be one hell of a party...

And it was.

Doubts surrounding the weather conditions proved well founded as the light drizzle continued to bathe the monument in a refreshing shower for the duration. It doesn't detract from the event so much as sort the men from the boys. In the rain you can rest assured that those thousands of of people dancing, chanting and drumming to the tribal beat are the most deserving, chosen few. Those for whom no absence of music can stop the party. We were the music, and we played all night long.

From the moment we entered the car park we knew that we'd finally found a place that our kind of behaviour was almost acceptable. Apart from Michael Eavis' Glastonbury festival, summer solstice at Stonehenge is a rare opportunity for the masses to gain some kind of insight into an 'alternative' lifestyle shared by only a few thousand. However, fewer still are capable of actually turning their 'strongly held beliefs' into positive action. It's a speculative fact that only an insignificant proportion of those in attendance actually stick by their principals come voting day, and an event with a turnout of nearly 30,000 like minded people is unable to bring those people together in such a way as to make a major positive change in society today.

And here we have the problem with our country. We've gotten far too comfortable with our 9-5 lifestyle, maybe not entirely happy to grant our MP s a 20%-30% pay rise every year, but beset with the opinion that we as individuals are utterly powerless to stop it. And it is those in power who are perfectly happy for this defeatist attitude to continue.

But away from the politics of it all, those of us who enjoy living our lives one day at a time, with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested, to paraphrase the master, there is no better time and place to simply forget about the modern age's problems and live for the moment, if only for 5 or 6 hours a year.

Parts 5/6

Spain is nice this time of year. At least, I imagine it is when on holiday here. I'm finding it hard to take in the beauty of the Mediterranean while constantly looking over my shoulder. The cliché of it all; dark glasses, hats, beards, feels like we're in some kind of spy movie. Pierce Brosnan always got to go home after shooting though...

So that was that, I was now Robert Philips, a nice, unassuming 20-something from Winchester, a man who'd never gotten himself into any trouble at all. Steve was a 34 year old Mr Arthur King from Wolverhampton, and Mark transformed himself into Mr Andrew Statham.

Part 4

We were just a bunch of stoners who'd decided to venture out to the pub for a drink, it was Christmas after all. Ok, so Steve can tend to get a bit lively after a couple of pairs of double vodka red bulls, but it's not like he looks for trouble. None of us did. I mean, we could've let that arsehole go off in the middle of the pub and had nothing more to do with it, but no, we decided to bring the trouble home with us.