Continued from Tuesday

The crowd appears to have grown larger. I suspect that people are reproducing at the back. That is what they do at festivals, after all. Big A is there with his family, and Eddie & Eddie – big fans of Eric’s from the previous year, and Medium-sized John, Len the Fish and the LTLP, along with loads of faces that I recognise from the Village Pub, Fish Shop etc. We weave to a sparser area, where I am introduced to a Man with a Moustache, who plays the keyboards, and a set list.

“Eric can’t make it,” informs Glen. “So we’re going to have to make do.”

“Fg?!?” I reply, with characteristic understatement.

“Probably best to just follow me on the bass.”

Ten seconds later I have him in a head lock and am smashing his face against some paving slabs screaming “other guitarists!!! There must be other guitarists here!!!”

There are no other guitarists. Nor, it transpires, is there a bloke from the Archers, player of banjos or no.

From the stage, onto which I have sleepwalked, I look out upon faces. There are faces everywhere. Faces. Faces. Some people seem to have at least eight or nine of them, all looking at me personally. There is an awful hush.

“What shall we start with, then?” says a voice.

The thing that people do not realise about guitar playing is that there is guitar playing and guitar playing, and the sort of guitar playing that I do is not the sort of guitar playing that is called for by the set list, which is full of guitar players’ songs. I would be quite happy to do some Leonard Cohen or Jake Thackray, or ‘I Will Walk 500 Miles’ or the complete works of Fairport Convention or whatever, but screaming rock soloing is just Not My Thing.

I suggest that I play some Leonard Cohen. There is dissent within the band.

“This one,” suggests the Chipper Barman, pointing out a screaming rock soloing thing. “It’s in G.”

I point out that if he’d handed me a clarinet and asked me to perform the Mozart Clarinet Concerto in A major then the helpful key-hint that Mozart dropped into the title of his piece would still not give me much of a head start in its performance.

Sometimes people talk about a dream in which they find themselves naked on a theatre stage in front of an audience of 2000 people. The current moment is very much like this, aside from the fact that there are 6000 people in this dream’s auditorium, and I am not entirely naked as I am sporting a bra and women’s shoes.

Behind me, giant video screens have been erected to project secretly-obtained footage of me frowning in concentration as I very carefully and methodically masturbate a hen.

My mother sits stony-faced in the front row.

I stagger sweatily into the bedroom, and hiss furiously at the LTLP. She raises her head from under the duvet, groggily.

“What time is it?!?” she whispers.

“There is a UFO!!!” I tell her. “Over Roger’s house!!!”

I rush to the window and open the curtains a tiny crack, beckoning her over. She gives me a look, as if I have just returned from a fishing expedition, pulled out a wet canvas bag, and started flinging perch.

“Look!!!”

She makes the three-foot journey from bed to window, using up all the adjectives that are synonymous with ‘grumpily’ and ‘sceptically’ in the process.

“Look!!!”

It might have been Nigel who first spotted the mothership, or perhaps Mrs Big A. Either way, we had watched from the Village Pub in wonder and amazement. Rotating over towards the Estate, it was circular, several metres across, and glowed against the clouds exactly like one of those projecting circular rotating spotlights that they use to illuminate the sky at events. The fact that it was so well disguised as one of these was vaguely terrifying, but we were happy to watch whilst it was in the distance.

A couple of pints later and I had left suddenly. Not having had any dinner, there was a certain amount of nausea building up, and I felt like a walk home. But the mothership had moved!!! It seemed to be the other side of the church now. I bravely took a detour onto the pitch-black playing field in order to try to see more, but retreated quickly for fear of alien anal probe.

“Yes,” she says. “I wonder where that’s coming from?”

“WasoverestatemovedtobehindchurchanalprobenowatRoger’s,” I gibber, getting worked up again. She pats my back to calm me. “Come to bed?”

“Wait,” I order, taking control of the situation once more. I scoot down the stairs and lock the front door, trying the handle several times to ensure that the five-lever lock will keep out anything but the most advanced technology. I check the sleeping Toddler – she is still there. I retreat to bed, and pull the duvet up around me.