exodus (movement of jah people) the day of the solstice

good morning! good morning! 

it is the morning of the solstice (no horsemouth was not up at 4am to watch the sun rise). 

he did watch a little of the sun setting at stonehenge online (courtesy of the much reviled at the time (and since) english heritage).

some photos have emerged of horsemouth off on his summer holidays to sunny stonehenge  way back in the 80ies. he went in 86 (was it?). the police turned them back and  turfed them off to glastonbury.  it's good that people took photographs (because horsemouth has no fucking recollection of these events whatsoever). later there were other festivals, torpedo town for example. 

the hippies parked up at a village called hanging langford(?). horsemouth remembers dick and some subhumans types doing a long version of exodus by bob marley with lyrics about trying to get to the stones and the police saying it wouldn't happen (er. while making pig noises). but that was the night before we all got turned back.

(look all of this could be false memory syndrome). 

it is interesting that all this stuff has returned as folk horror (rather than the moral panic that it was at the time). he went to a number of these festivals with friends (pre-acid house) and then acid house arrived at treworgy, then, when he'd got his band together, after one bush house  gig he went to castle morton, marched against the new criminal justice act (and its criminalisation of squatters and ravers and old-school travellers). 

the suppression of the festivals and the travellers by the thatcher government just had the effect of spreading it out all over europe and beyond (well done forces of repressive intolerance).  . 

in the noughties he went to a couple of french teks (marigny may 1st 2005 with the toxic caterpillars and the one the may after in the south with ice on the fucking tents). there was an abortive attempt to get to czechtek (combining foreign travel, foreign languages and festival gawping - busted up by the cops). his last attempt at such things was a new year in barcelona - they failed to get to the festival site and ended up sleeping on a building site (at this point horsemouth declared himself too old for such jollys and retired).

six or so years ago he went to the winter solstice with john clarkson.  

people (horsemouth observes) like to be sociable. the young people want to party and dance all night and society should enable them to do this (or they will do it anyway). the world of mass movements and people making their own scuzzy fun  seems much more interesting to horsemouth than the world of consumer consumption that replaced it. 

looks like a beautiful day outside. yesterday horsemouth faffed about and went for a wander. later he watched a cornell woolrich noir (the chase 1946).  horsemouth prefers quieter fun these days.