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Right.

Now that I actually have time to post a *real* entry about SL, here goes.

To begin with, I wasn’t going to go to Southern Lights as I was quite simply too poor to afford a ticket. Thankfully, the gorgeous Safire stepped in and offered me one of hers in exchange for hugs on demand. A fair trade. The festival kicked off on Friday the 11th, but I was booked that day to celebrate a friend finishing exams.

The Southern Lights camp

Friday evening went swimmingly, with a bunch of people back at hers having an awesome time. We did sort of lose track of time and before I knew it, it was light again and I had to leave to get home, pick up my stuff and run. This I did. Eventually I made it on the train, having run for it with a fairly weighty backpack containing mainly circus toys, paraffin and food.

When I eventually made it to Southern Lights, the party was in full swing and I wearily stumbled up the hillside to a vacant spot on the ground to pitch my tent. No tent-pitching was done for about 20 minutes as I simply collapsed on the grass and lay there, unable to move for exhaustion.

Oscar & I doing poi at sunset

Once things were settled, I set about exploring. I bumped into Skins who turned out to be my next-tent neighbour, said hi to Greeny and Oscar who were spinning away and found Thomas who was teaching a workshop on poi. A bunch of people from Spinning @ were around as well, which was good.

The events of the following few days are too numerous to list in prose so I will make it easy

• I had my arms painted in different patterns with SPF 30 theatre paints, meaning I now sport a patterned tan!
• Took some amazing sunset poi photos with the help of Skins’ camera and flash gear
• We had countless workshops taught by Thomas, G, Loooop and entire hours spent experimenting with things and just letting information sink in
• Spent a good chunk of time hanging out on Jan’s porch, exchanging massages with a load of people which was both fun and educational.
• Had a wine & cheese party while the pub quiz was happening with real Brie, Gruyère and all manner of other cheeses that had miraculously not grown legs and escaped in the heat.
• Drew shapes in the dark with some LED finger rings
• Ingested unhealthy amounts of sausage rolls, jaffa cakes and houmous.
• Cleaned up my stalls immensely
• Re-engineered my poi for extra length after playing with Thomas’ set

Ostensibly NOT packing

Eventually, things wound down and I found myself awake on Monday morning at God knows what time, convinced that everyone had nearly finished packing. So I feverishly stuffed all my belongings into my backpack and poked my head outside to find that nobody was up except the sun, the birds and the ever-present sheep. Cursing my misfortune, I unrolled my sleeping bag and passed out.

3 hours later, people were up and between packing, poi-ing and drinking with relish, gratitude and tears of joy in my eyes the steaming hot cocoa that Jan had cooked up, I managed to get everything squared away and was faced with a dilemma: whether to take the minibus to the train station and get the train to London or whether to get a lift to the station from Jan.

In the end, we all decided it would be much more fun for me to lie across her back seat with 3 people supporting me all the way to London.

All in all, an EXCELLENT festival and I am going again next year!

How I spent Monday afternoon. With 100% more door.