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.

A quick one... While He's away...

If only...

"There are, in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful."

President Theodore Roosevelt, 1906


If every journalist took the words of 'Teddy' Roosevelt to heart, in the the spirit in which they were said, we may eventually find ourselves, as a society, possessing the knowledge and willingness to create a better world for all of us. If our national press starts to give us the real issues, and we take the responsibility as an aflluent society to do something about them, we have nothing to lose, and a better future to gain...

Oh yes, a responsible press. I lose count of the amount of people who tell me they are sick of the Madeline McCann story. Yet these are the same people buying The Sun or The Mirror every morning, believing that they are getting an unbiased, objective view of the world in which we live in. These people are not to blame for society's ills, it is our gutter press. These red topped newspapers constantly flood our extremely impressionable minds with anything they can sensationalise enough for us to be interested. This isn't news, this is business. And we are not intelligent readers with opinions, we are greedy, insatiable consumers.

While I'm probably wasting my time typing this up and posting it, I can only hope that soon we can begin to wake up and refuse to be treated as mindless money making drones, lining the pockets of unscrupulous and irresponisble fat cats.

C

Part 3

I have to admit, I knew Steve was connected, but I never realised the extent. Anyone who can get us out of the country on police bail must know a few people. He'd been planning this all along, just in case. While Mark and I were drinking ourselves sober in the bar for a week and a half, Steve was sat at home on the phone, trying to get us out of this mess. I can never thank him enough. But then, we didn't have to involve ourselves in this at all...

Part 2

“Worst Christmas Ever”, as Mark most eloquently put it. 15 hours in a prison cell on Christmas Eve is never exactly a good time. Then again, all things considered, it could've been a hell of a lot worse. He could've died there and then on the pavement outside the house, but no, crazy fucker just wouldn't stay down. Steroids'll do that to a guy. I guess we have to give him that much credit, people have died from a lot less.