On the night of the referendum vote, I fall asleep with the radio on. I unconsciously absorb the news that Leave has won, but it seems unreal, a stray detail from a nightmare. I wake with a sense of relief, as if I’ve just realised I don’t have pincers instead of hands. The radio is still going.
My wife suddenly sits bolt upright.
“We’re out?” she shouts. “Are you joking?”
Over the course of the next hour, I repeatedly experience the hollow satisfaction of being the bearer of bad news. I find my wife in the kitchen
“There is no government,” I say. “The pound is in freefall.”
“What the fuck is happening?” my wife says.
“Money itself is dying,” I say. I would like to say more stuff like this, but a van has arrived to take me to Glastonbury, where the band I’m in is playing for the first time.
As I load up my equipment, my wife sits on our front garden wall, addressing her incredulity to passersby.
“It’s unbelievable!” she says. People stop to commiserate. By the time I climb into the van, there’s a little knot of worried-looking locals waving me off from the pavement.
It’s raining when we arrive at Glastonbury that afternoon. We park the van and set off on foot in search of accreditation. Our wristbands, it transpires, are waiting in an area normally accessible only to the previously accredited. At every checkpoint this paradox is greeted with polite confusion. Supervisors are sought and consulted.
“This can’t be the system,” I say to the fiddle player. “This can’t be how ZZ Top gets in.”
Later that night we watch The Feeling play on the stage where we’re scheduled to play the next day. The lead singer makes a despairing reference to the referendum and is greeted with a defiant cheer. Some hours later I wake up in a wet tent, with an aching back and a strong inkling that I am too old for this shit.
As we wait to go on stage that afternoon, I try to think of something bleakly amusing to say about the referendum. “This recession may be even worse than the last one,” I whisper, practising under my breath. “But at least we voted for this one.” In the end, I lose my nerve. You’re an immigrant, I think: keep your head down.
At sunset I find myself standing alongside our bass player in a field, watching The 1975. The lead singer expresses dismay over the referendum result, which he characterises as an older generation – specifically my generation – voting on his generation’s future. “A future we don’t fucking want!” he shouts. An angry roar rises up from the young people all around me. I turn to the bass player.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say.
The next morning, with the van fully loaded, I feel we are heading into a grim and unpredictable future. Then we get stuck in the mud. Before we can think about pushing ourselves out, we must address the problem of the lorry blocking our path. I slog up to the driver’s window, mud sucking at my boots.
“Are you stuck?” I say. He nods.
“I’m waiting to be towed,” he says.
“For how long?” I say.
“Since yesterday,” he says.
“What’s in there?” I say, pointing to the back of his truck.
“The Feeling’s back line,” he says.
Working together with defiant optimism, we manage to push first his truck, then our van, out of the car park. We shake hands and climb into our respective vehicles to join a snaking queue of stalled traffic. At the time of writing, I am still there.
Thank you, Glastonbury. And you’re welcome, The Feeling.
