Glastonbury: Avalon of the Heart pt 11

I wandered around out side of the tower, in fact I circled the tower, feeling that if i kept moving I would be ok. Where was Brian? I thought, I really needed to find him. I don't know how many times I walked around that tower but eventually I heard, 'Terry!' I looked around and could make out a huddled shape on the floor, I had no idea of time at all, it could have been 3am or 11 pm, I didn't even know what day it was. I tried to make out the shape, 'Terry is that you?' Brian! It's you I thought. I realised that he was curled up in his sleeping bag. 'Are you ok?', he asked me. I was way beyond speech and tried to answer but nothing would come out, so I nodded. In the darkness he couldn't see me nodding my head, so he asked again, 'are you ok?'. I was able to make the sound 'mmmmmm', this seemed to satisfy him and he said. 'It's fuckin weird up here innit?' This made me laugh and him too, we laughed and laughed.

It all started to take on a comical element, here we were up on a hill in the middle of Somerset and to all intents and purpose may as well have been on another planet. Brian was a funny guy at the worst of times and he started to whistle the theme tune from the TV programme of the time, Hitchcocks Half Hour. Dum de dum de de dum di dum, we laughed more and more and in that moment the term, 'there is no better medicine than laughter', was never truer.

Brian it turned out had not had the mis-fortune to have come across Gandalf and the LSD factory so he wanted to go sleep eventually and I was once more left to my own vivid and intense imagination to explore the upper reaches of space to my hearts content.

It was an intense night even to those not under the influence. There were bright orange flashes in the sky, this was verified to me the next day, and not the effects of acid. There was a strong wind that at times felt like it was going to lift me up and blow me away.

I spent most of the rest of that memorable night just wandering around on the top of this very strange hill in the middle of nowhere. I engaged in some rambling mad dialogues along the way with equally spaced out travellers. But the peak was over. The intense period inside of the tower was one I will never forget. It forged an ongoing relationship with the town of Glastonbury which continues to this day. And it's strange but true I have never once been to the Glastonbury music festival and never intent to. For me the real deal is up on the tor.

The tor has changed a bit now. It used to only have an opening at the front, facing west but now you can walk through it like a short tunnel and benches have been set up inside for picnics. Back then it had an old iron railing around the outside full of weeds, now it is trimmed and even has a concrete path running up the entire length from the bottom to the top on both sides.

I'm not a scholar but I know there are a huge amount of books written about Glastonbury, the myths and the truer historical facts kind of merge to form a mystery that can't be denied. Even now going up on the tor still has an immense effect on me, looking out across the plains of Somerset in to the far distance conjures up a timelessness of it's own.