I started doing this diary in June, it's quite new. If you haven't been following have a look at the Cast of Characters which gives a quick low down on the essential day to day characters who are mentioned here...it will make more sense if you do.

Theoretically I had a fairly free morning. But the WIT camp rang up to say an important item had been ommitted from the programme. Obviously there wasn't enough time to re-print so I then had to make up stickers bearing the loterry logo. That was a frustrating process.... not a complicated job it just took a very long time to print out and since the placing had to be very accurate I had to print it several times. Then when I came to print onto the stickers the sheets of stickers jammed endlessly in the printer and I had to resort to handfeeding. In the meantime several phone calls had come from the site, I could hear Heather's voice for about a second, then static, then another second of voice. I knew she was trying to communicate something to me, but quite what was another matter. One thing I had heard was "216" so I knew she wanted me to try and ring her but I was just getting diverted through to a message machine. Eventually she got through and told me that it was much better because she was calling me from the cigarette lighter. As I was trying to explain, your average cigarette lighter works better than a mobile phone from the valleys. Anyway, it turned out that they had also forgotten to have the date put on the programme so I then started making up stickers saying "1998". By then I was hungry... in particular for a plate of egg and chips at the New Bridge.

I was supposed to do a pick-up from the bus stop in town to take campers up to the site at 2.45pm. Somehow I just knew that no-one was going to arrive on the bus, but there was no way of telling for sure so I put up a sign on the bus stop and on my car and left it there while I went for my egg and chips. I didn't half miss brown sauce when I was out in the US. Chips are just not the same without. I was presented with a number of interesting substitutes, but the real thing is what I was hankering after. When I went back to the bus stop, sure enough no-one was there, after ten minutes, still no-one was there so I went up to the site with the labels. When I got there I was greeting with the following conversation,
" Oh, Hi Rachel, are you here to pull the piano up the hill"
" err...no"
" Oh, I think you are, you know"
" No, I'm delivering stickers"
" No, really, you're here to pull the piano up the hill, it's stuck"
" Oh, ok, I s'pose I've got a tow rope"
I did have visions of a piano on a hillside with its wheel's in the mud and wondered why they had waited for a one-handed person to pull it? This was all not making sense. All it turned out to be was a van pulling a trailer (containing a piano) up the hill which had become stuck because it was slippery. So then it got jacked off the van, hitched up to the landrover and into the field and I'm not sure where it went to after that. I left there after delivering the stickers and came back home to fetch camping equipment. Not very much, mind you, just the tent, matrress and sleeping bag. Being that the option to just come and sleep in my own bed existed I wasn't going to put a whole lot of effort into the camping option. So it didn't take long to pack.

Back up there I set up the tent and a bed and saw someone in the kitchen about saving us a dinner for after rehearsal and also managed to borrow several instruments. Time to say goodbye saucepan, hello cowbell etc. We were also shown a whole box of percussion and several nice drums on loan from Community Music Wales. So all of these were loaded into the landrover and then down to Helen's shed for a really rushed run through and sort out and then back into the car with that lot plus all the instruments we had brought the night before and back up the lane to unloaded it into the big top. We got our dinner in time for the opening ceremony, which was followed by some rather strange performance, presumably an improvisation, which got very stuck on the fish theme. When they were off we had to get in there quick and set up the stage, which wasn't easy with seven of us and some rather large drums. My main problem was having enough space to turn the rainstick in, but there's always a way, even in the most cramped of conditions. Irene's intention was to have us play a warm-up, then she would do a bit of bodyparts warm-up with recorded music so that the musicians could do that too and then go back into live music for the wave. This is largely what happened but just as we thought we were finished with the warm-up Irene appeared looking around frantically and mouthing questions at Lorna. Turned out she had left the sound system somewhere and couldn't find it. She did find it in the end and got it plugged in but for a while there I thought we were going to loose the music. The wave seemed to go by very fast, especially the last two rhythms, I felt like it had all been over in half an hour but actually it was nearer two hours. That was the last event for the evening and after we had sorted it all out and packed up and loaded up we realised that the cafe was closed and there was no tea. Fortunately Helen invited us down to her shed for a cuppa and even lit the fire. I was very very cold by then. I never do wear enough clothes and for two hours I had moved very little except for one arm. I knew by then that I wasn't sleeping in any cold tent that night. Actually I have a good sleeping bag and I wouldn't have been all thaat cold but it was the idea of taking clothes off in the very small space inside the tent in the cold that put me off the most. I would have done it if I had to but I didn't have to so I came home and ate chocolate and then went to bed.

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