Well… I am now sitting back in my seat at work, with the weekend of craziness all over.

3 days of dance/electro music in Banbury, camping with no showers, trooping through the mud in wellingtons (gumboots) and dancing up a storm in the different music tents!

The first day’s weather was great but the second was a downpour. Lots of people reluctantly packed up their flooded flattened tents and left for home. This was our first proper UK festival and we were going to experience the festival in the wet and rainy weather, a stark contrast to festivals at home in blaring sunshine.

One thing I don’t understand about these types of festivals is why everyone needs to get so wasted out of their heads on drugs to enjoy themselves at a music event. Is the music that shit, that you can only listen to it whilst so whacked you can’t even remember your name? We’re indulgent beings I know. But one guy (who we later found out had two children) died in the same music tent as us this weekend. Anyone can take a dodgy pill and drop dead.

So now the drugs are in the media. The BBC are having a field day. So tragic for the family.

The French boy got invited into the tent next to us and went in to chat with them. There was every drug imaginable in their tent. One of the guys got them shipped in from Morocco and did the full on “lock stock and two smoking barrels” business. I heard a chick at 6am in the morning (in the same tent) speaking desperately and slowly… ”oh come on, just one more pill. no coke. nothing else i promise. just one more pill…”

me and alley grooving to music

these girls knew what they were doing

us grooving at the party bus

I won’t forget seeing Alley laughing/crying because she spilt wine in her eye. Funny moment.

If you haven’t seen the movie Trainspotting, you will most likely have no idea what I am rambling about…

But lately, I have seen so many clones of the character Begbie in Edinburgh that are true to form to the character on Trainspotting.

Someone brimming with bravado, ready to explode at any moment, at anyone, for any reason.. Much like a pitbull.

As I walk home from a bar, across the Bridges, I see more than one person, walking the streets with blazing red eyes, a smell of whisky and barely being able to walk straight. They can snap at any moment.

Then there is the girl on the bridge kicking and screaming against the concrete boundary walls, with bloody hands and arms. This is the harsh truth of drugs. Junkies.

You have to wonder why. They are so young… and yet here, they can be so frightening.

Back in New Zealand, people would probably feel a need to stop and help a young girl like this in trouble. Here, it is a different story and it is better not to stop (for your own goddamn safety) as it would probably make the situation worse. So people walk by and do not acknowledge the behaviour.

Drugs are destroying some of the young people here. It’s so sad.

In the words of Begbie, “No way I would poison my body wi’ that shite” he says, Scotch and cigarette in hand.

This week in Scotland there has been…………….. SUNSHINE!

Real sunshine, well kinda. Its not the blaring hot summer sun we get in kiwi land but we are pretending it is.

People are smiling more, and we have been heading to one of two places after work: the park (with the dogs I’ve started walking), or the beer gardens to lap up the last bit of after-work sun. Mmmm. To be consistent with Scottish weather, I wouldnt be surprised if it snows on the weekend. The weather man here has a really difficult job I tell ya. Four seasons in a day.

I’ve started dog walking and I love it. Gives me motivation to exercise as well as getting doggy luff time. Here’s a photo I took of Nina, she’s a chinese crested with no hair on her body. Everyone say’s she is ugly but I think she’s ugly-cute.

Me and my girlie have 3 weeks left until our Europe trip and getting reallllly excited. I get so amped about seeing new places and new things, that’s what Im here for after all. And we get to see 5 new countries. We will be couchsurfing quite a bit with locals so looking forward to new experiences.

I am trying my hand at photography and am learning a few things from the French boy.

Sometimes I feel borderline paparazzi, clicky clicky. But apparently it is the best way to get good pictures as you delete 80% of your photos and will only have a few shots you like. Photography is an amazing thing because once you start looking through a lens, you see beautiful opportunities in everything and things most people would not find beautiful. It gives you a new eye for things, it’s exciting.

So one Wednesday night, a whole group of us from a mixture of countries went up to Calton Hill for the Beltane Fire Festival and sat on the hill watching the pagan festival go by. Naked red people, flowers, energy, fire, dancing, drums.

Oh and how’s this for a funny story. The fire festival was great until near the very end when it started raining. Not just raining but bucketing down and we got completed soaked. We thought it was our cue to leave and ran home in the rain. On the way home, we stopped in a shop for some hot food to warm us up where we asked the guy in the shop what the Beltane was all about. Here was me and the French boy absolutely saturated from head to toe, and the response from the guy was…

“well… it’s to mark the beginning of summer”.

We all looked outside to the pouring Scotland rain.

Typical.