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.