Green hills and blinkenlights

We're driving to a "party" and it's all very confusing because there are six or seven cars involved, and I'm driving at least two of them. Somewhere along the line, me and the people with me in the car decide that we're not so keen on getting wasted, so we take a turning off the motorway directly onto a dirt track which takes us through some woods.

Alex says, "I hope you know where you're going." I half-turn to where he's sitting with Michael and shake my head. "Don't be silly. Where would the fun be then?"

Shortly we pull off the dirt track into a clearing and pull out. We can hear some people calling and generally having a good time a little way off, so walk through a path beaten in the trees, stepping out onto a broad terrace on a low hillside. The idea of "foothills" works here, and we see a bunch of people who are having fun, sort of wandering around a little way away from each other. They're calling to each other and laughing and things - the sunlight is very bright, and we look up.

We're vocally pleased to see a large crowd of kites in the sky, and despite the sunlight, we can see plenty of details. As we walk nearer, the new people all turn to greet us and it turns out to be the people we left the house with. The kites are really crafty-looking, yellow, Pelham blue, green, and pink: Chris winches one in and I see to my pleasure that it's a dragon's head. In fact, they are all peculiar designs with roaring open mouths and open throats, like Chinese box kites.

Rai shouts from across the hill, where he's flying one with each hand, and we wander over the short rabbit-trimmed grass. Wandering 'round the hillside, we step up to a big old shack where John and Den are waiting, looking very relaxed. It's been at least seven years since I saw John and he looks very healthy today, which is rather pleasing. We step inside the wide, open-walled shack and I'm delighted to see trestle-tables stacked high with fun electronic toys like Hewlett-Packard signal generators, a homemade sixteen-track mixing desk with a control panel that have "HOMEMADE SIXTEEN-TRACK MIXING DESK" amateurishly screenprinted across the top, National Resonator guitars with steel bodies, and a big cranky 50s-style refrigerator full of fresh iced tea.

We have a regular old pleasant relaxation, although someone appears to have spiked the iced tea with a low-wattage dose of hallucinogens -- Den says offhandedly, "Oh, yes, just a snifter of DMT..." -- and the visual distortions are very mellow. I have the vaguest of recollections of sitting with my back to an old unplugged console television under the tin roof, tripping gently in the sunshine whilst John plays guitar. The iced tea is slightly opaque, sunlight tracing patterns in the tawny liquid, and worlds within diminishing worlds are revealed.

No such thing as a free lesson

I'm sitting in a remodelled guitar shop plunking diffidently away on this second-hand instrument with a clear satin finish, when a very I'm-in-a-band guy - torn jeans, nice shirt, long bleached hair, fake tan - wanders in with a case on his back. He regards me critically, tosses his locks, and sets himself down with an amplifier across the shopfloor. Opening up his case to retrieve some sort of classically weird bass guitar with stripes and things on it, this guy sits back on a stool and starts - spookily - playing exactly the same things that I play, in unison, which is vaguely unsettling given that it's just a stream of consonant notes I'm more-or-less pulling out of my arse.

This comes to a halt after we both start grinning at each other helplessly.

"OK," I say, "What's the trick?"

"Oh, well," he says, uncommonly airy about the whole thing, "Your playing just reminds me of myself before I started working at it."

"Ah," I say, not sure if that's a compliment or not. Time passes in the deadened air that's peculiar to musical instrument shops the world over. Very unflustered, he inspects his split ends and starts picking at his nails. I become aware that I'm having impressive difficulty opening my mouth and speaking with it, as if I've lost all coordination between my tongue and lips.

"You play pretty well," I venture, carelessly shifting position under the bass guitar, which rumbles through the amplifier like a offended dragon.

"Oh! Thanks! Well, I guess. Hey, let me give you a lesson," he says, and pulls up alongside me. He's just getting started -- "you see, you don't need to put that much pressure on the strings, cause all you need to be doing is making the notes sound" -- when he looks over and exclaims "Oh wow, dude!" [so my dialogue isn't superior] "Your guitar is melting!"

I look down at my left hand and see, quite suddenly, that all of the thick frets set into the neck are peeling and flaking, as if they've been badly electroplated and are now giving up the ghost. As we watch, parts of the fretboard blacken and tarnish, strings suddenly jar as the heavy nickel wrap gives way.

I put it down against the amplifier pretty fast, with a start - bass strings are thick and heavy, and I have no intention of getting hit by one when it snaps - and look back at him. Somehow now I'm standing up. He is confused and somewhat anxious, and so am I.

More time passes. The air-conditioning seems particularly loud.

Somewhat fearfully, I look back at the bass guitar. It looks fine now, although there are still bits of fragmented fretwire and string-wrap scattered under my trainers. I don't feel particularly like picking it up and starting to play again, though. I look around for something to clear it up, but there's nothing around except for little pianos and stands full of sheet music and quietly-humming amplifiers, all on standby with glowing red lights.

"Do you mind if I go now?", I ask him.

"It's okay, man," he says, looking down at his guitar and starting to screw around with something which sounds like it could be Cream, "It's just your head..."

be careful what you ask for.

me: wake up, hon, it's time for dinner. the chicken will get overdone.

him: just take it out and put it in My Documents.

take heed, kids. you know you're under stress from work when...