I’m alone, but somehow not fully alone, nodding at others with sleeping bags and flip flops strapped to their hermit-shell packs. Biblical mud feels like a bad dream, looking out onto this temporary city shimmering beneath orange-blue twilight. We’ve constructed this pyramid, these musical altars, in honour of worship, their transience coalescing into beauty. Wide-eyed atop the hill, a child-like wonder overcomes him – he succumbs to the newness of it all. We look up and laugh, yet don’t we also wish to join him there on the other side? I wish I could see everything, feel everything, experience everything, like a God. I wonder if I ever fully arrive at each moment, or perpetually look over my shoulder in anticipation of the next. At least this time I know my way around better – it’s muscle memory. A flurry of impressions so experienced so rapidly and vividly that they can only be unpacked days or weeks later, re-lived through photos and iPlayer: seeking out the first murmur of music buried deep in the green glade; a sea of bodies packed tight, the panic and pushing, the sweet relief of open space; trying to break the record for the most people on top of shoulders; strangers around you suddenly illuminated bright-red by a nearby flare as you enjoy its strangely intoxicating scent; someone holding a sign with “THIS IS SHIT” on one side and “THIS IS ACE” on the other (the DJ’s take note), the sense of pride at spotting a flag with “The Bromley Massive” on it; feeling the welcome warmth of biofuels beneath the legs of Arcadia’s; thinking people care about my step-count, or the number of song’s I’ve managed to ID; hearing the dawn announced by the birds perched nearby, a stone-circle sunrise seen literally through rose-tinted glasses; salvation in the form of a massive falafel salad. Here, the “normal” world seems very, very, very far away: a land where introverts by day become extroverts by night – untethered, multitudinous, fluttering from person to person, everything suffused with a collective energy so tangible you can feel it zap from person to person. Not to be “that” person, but there’s definitely a reason people bang on about this festival all the time…