SNOOOOORK…ka-boom bump drip dribble. Worm your way deep into the middle. Gob gab and glimmer. Shake quake and shimmer. Exploding bombs of glitter. This human creation of steel and timber. Let’s see if we can lose our way. Every turn a fork in the path leading back to a brand new return. Stop drop rewind push play. Crack open your third eye and jump in the fray. All those you can see are equally pleased to be amidst such revelry. So have no fear and take no qualms. Life itself is singing you psalms. All hands in, pats on the back, hugs round the shoulders, kisses on the cheek. Twinkles touches and tickles, beat bombs blowing stitches. Wrinkled mist green grass carpet trails. Electro gyrating techno swamp snails. Bright hot music mixing hues. Dance off your misfit left-foot shoes. Watch the dreamscape sparkle and splinter. Hold fast to the crumbling color whirl. Embrace the festive circus wheel, forget a moment about your keel. Let this alternate fabricated reality have a play.

What with the years required to manifest our boat dreams into reality, Clare and I have been rather removed from the festival music scene or even from large social recreational gatherings. But that all changed this past week…

The plan is been in the works for months. Thirty in all, each one of us with four-days-worth of camping/festival gear, are to meet at the rendezvous in the AM and load into a hired bus. Somehow we are sent a short bus, but optimism remains high and we give it a try…um, well we get all the gear in, but where do the people sit? Thankfully our posse has a badass team leader who miraculously manifests a bus-swap so within an hour everything is re-packed and we begin our six-hour drive across country to the site of BoomTown—perhaps one of Britain’s most excessive festivals.

So now imagine you’re me. You’ve just sailed across an ocean in large part to be here with these people—the “Mad-chester” crew—that you’ve been hearing about ever since your life collided with Clare’s three and half years ago. And now the fated moment is finally arrived and you’re on the bus, shaking hands, giving hugs, receiving kisses, and putting faces to thirty names simultaneously and for the first time. It feels like you’re some long-lost cousin who’s stumbled into a fun-loving family reunion.

You forget that Facebook exists and that Clare—unlike yourself—is actually good at maintaining long-distance friendships, so that all these lovely new people know exactly what you’ve been up to and have lots of interesting and relevant questions to ask, while you’re still struggling to connect the dots of a witty aside that so-and-so (haven’t quite gotten all the names down yet) made three sentences ago. Damn these British are a clever lot.

Meanwhile, all types of bottles, bags, and edibles are are being passed between aisles, costumes are being improvised and altered on the spot, and crafty back-handed banter is being artfully volleyed in all directions. You’re just grateful to be on a moving bus and thereby have a reasonable excuse to stay seated. Your ears perk as laughter erupts on the retelling of Clare’s 30th birthday party in Amsterdam, otherwise known as Amster-damage. Most of those on the bus were at the long-weekend event and you’re delighted at the chance to finally see the woman you’ve married amongst her own tribe.

The festival is four days of glorious debauchery, sumptuous caravan food, fantastical comedic antics, and electrocardiograph-capable drum ’n bass dancing. Throw in painstakingly elaborate set-productions, absurdly psychedelic lighting arrangements, harmonically bone-quaking sound-systems, and fifty-thousand exhilarated festival goers and you’ve got yourself a viable recipe to loosen the encrusted salt residue from the hidden crevices of even the most recalcitrant sailor. By the end of the weekend I am psychologically limber, chemically extravagant, and queerly costumed. I have never felt so accepted by so many people in so short an amount of time.

The week passes—you can’t exactly remember how—and now the real reason for your UK visit arrives. Two of the tribal members are getting married. Upon arrival to the wedding site you realize that you probably just should have worn a costume from the previous weekend because the whole thing looks and feels like a festival, a Unicorn Lesbian Love Fest! One corner is dominated by a bouncy-castle and surrounded by a clustering of well-themed bell-tents. The main pavilion is a grandiose tent furnished with tables, couches and hay-bails, and is dripping with tribal photos taken over the various years. There is a wedding cake piñata, a full-service glitter station, an inside dance-floor, an outside stage (you never know what the weather holds in the UK), a massive fire ring, and the tastiest Gin & Tonic bar you’ve been privy to.

The two women getting married are absolutely stunning and their respective families are as equally glamorous and good-natured. The celebrant weaves together a most beautiful ceremonial tapestry and love for this union is palpable throughout.  A day that had begun with dark rain-laden clouds is now cleared into an afternoon of brilliant lollipop sunshine and the day’s well-prepared activities smoothly swirl into the night and even into the following morning. Yes, these Mad-Chesterians know how to party.