Overheard HesFes

Grit is in the mushy stage at the home educator's festival, weaving flowers in her hair, grinning foolishly, and watching your society's future doctors, film-makers, engineers, academics, musicians and lawyers run about, mostly without their pants on, or dressed as leopards.

It'll wear off. As the week goes on, we all sink smellier into the mud; the hair freaks out; the showers fill up with dog-washing toddlers, and Stowmarket supermarkets swell with rampaging middle-class hippies desperate for fresh-baked focaccia because the campsite supply of Warburtons ran out on Wednesday.

But we have our ears to the ground. (Sometimes literally. My new tent is quite small.) And the goss we're hearing:

'Why are we here?' (Small child standing outside campsite; he has my sympathies.)

'Send in the guinea pig. If the guinea pig dies, pee in the bush.' (Teenager, outside main toilets, two hours after arrival.)

'When I bake the computer, that's normally when I have to stop using it.' (Coffee bar adult.)

'I cut my finger on the toilet. It's the same toilet I cut it on last time.' (I am still trying to work it out.)

'Put Wuthering Heights in the tent. Steppenwolf can go in there as well.' (Showing Doreen that home ed is not all feral running about.)

'You spilled blue ink over yourself. Wow. Was it exciting, using a pen?' (But sometimes the feral is still there.)

'What can possibly go wrong? That should be the HesFes motto.' (Outside the office.)

'If the police come to chuck you off, it's nothing to do with us.' (Inside the office.)

'This crowd is different. Yeah, laid back, gentle.' (Car boot trader, commenting on the sudden surge of the blue-haired, hunting down pillows, blankies, books, cooking implements, and kiddy board games. Ahhh.)

xx