Win!

I came to Firstborn's home in Bristol via Temple Meads station last night so that this morning I could help load stuff into the vehicle that may or may not also have room to take bodies to Glasto this evening. This morning the loading was postponed to this evening at Temple Meads where we meet one of our number arriving on the train. Hey ho. 

I took advantage of being in Bristol by visiting a hammock company for some advice. Except it turned out to be a storage place not a shop. Hey ho.

At the appointed time, Firstborn and I headed off for our rendezvous at Bristol Temple Meads, discovered that our train to get there was cancelled, leapt on two buses and still got there before our kind driver had got through the Bristol traffic. Bonus: after we'd loaded all the stuff there was still room for us in the car as well as the musician we were meeting off the train from London.

Getting Into Glastonbury is a fiendish, live action role-play, wide game played in an area that extends about three miles around the Festival site. The basic aim is to carry lots of heavy and unwieldy stuff to where you are camping (if you already know) then build a temporary home. 

The game involves Stewards and Managers, who are different levels of Game Master, plus playing characters called Workers (or Punters, who don't join the game until tomorrow) - who may or may not be equipped with vehicles. It starts in the real world, with maps and signposts, but the next level has only intermittent signposting to different coloured Gates. We'd been told to head for Blue then somehow get ourselves and our Stuff to Kidzfield.

Playing characters are told rules one by one as they play, though only Managers are certain what these are. Playing characters have to try to work out whether the rule they've been told is real or one that an under-briefed Steward has come up with. At any time, a Steward or Punter can ask for a Manager to clarify, though this involves losing time points. 

At various checkpoints, playing characters have to show Tickets. Workers also have to show QR codes showing we've passed the Health and Safety test, and all vehicles have to display the right sort of Pass (allowed onto a designated camping field, allowed near a camping field, or allowed only in a certain car park, all car parks being a long walk from camping places).

Having got through the first Ticket and QR code checkpoint, we convinced a Steward that our vehicle pass allowed us onto the camping field and were let through to the next level. But at the following checkpoint we were told that our vehicle pass was valid only last Sunday and that we must take a circuitous one-way route back to the previous checkpoint. Anxiety levels were rising because after 10pm all vehicles are corralled in a Sin Bin and released for parking only 10 hours later. But one of our number astutely spotted that, by chance, we were near Pedestrian Gate B, which the map showed was not too far from our camping place. We stopped the car, unloaded all the Stuff onto the track and phoned the support team already at our camping place to come and help carry while our driver went alone to get into the right car park.

At the Kidzfield checkpoint we showed our tickets again, got in, took our Stuff to the little area of the field that three of us staked out nine days ago, and were just in time to get to the office and claim our prize of a wristband proving Worker status with access to some (by no means all) parts of the Festival site, and a lanyard allowing us back onto the Kizfield at night after we've been carousing.

Win! 

I was very glad my tent was still up, even if it had been moved, and that all I had to do was unpack my clothes, inflate my mattress and go for a short celebratory walk.