I'm back from Glastonbury. No, I didn't wuss out because of the rain: my mum got a phone call last night to say my dad had collapsed in town & been taken into hospital. Now, he has done this a couple of times before, & if it's like the other times, they will do loads of tests, find nothing wrong with him, but ban him from driving for a year anyway. :-/ And my mum did get to speak to him and reassure herself that he was kind of okay (mildly confused and extremely pissed off, which is what you'd expect from any sane person being forced to spend time in a hospital). But obviously my mum had to go home, and I didn't like leaving her to drive all the way back on her own when she hadn't had anything proper to eat and was obviously still worried and shaky (note to self: "I'll be fine" is probably about as unconvincing when I do it, hmm), and to be honest, when it came to making a decision this morning, I realised I didn't much like the idea of spending three days trying to 'find the fun' in a field full of rain while worrying about things back home.

And, okay, let's be honest, the decision was kind of made easier by the fact that if I'd stayed I a) wouldn't've been able to get home in a hurry easily, and b) wouldn't've been able to get home on Sunday night as planned, causing exponentially increasing amounts of faff; and the fact that it was pouring down with rain and the site was already turning into the now-miserably-familiar mudbath; and the fact that my slightly-twisted ankle (ricked it while running on Tuesday, just the usual fall-on-the-side-of-it thing) was getting worse already from slogging across uneven fields, despite bandages and wellies; and.... well, you know when you start to think "look, someone's trying to tell me something here"? I'd just about got to that stage when I managed to tip half a kettlefull of boiling water over my bare leg (while trying to have a calming cup of coffee in brrm's camper-van). Ow.

Anyway, brrm was very very sweet and promised he would look after me if I stayed, but I think I'd've been coping rather than actually having fun, and frankly I had enough of that at Glasto last year, staggering round with a bagful of aches and a little black fail-cloud over my head; and while not exactly wanting to do the Captain Oates thing, I decided it was probably more sensible to a) look after my mum for a bit if she'd let me, and b) look after myself a bit, and c) not make other people feel they had to try to look after me instead of having fun. And actually when we got back to Oxford and we'd had lunch and more coffee, my mum admitted that she had been grateful for the company on the drive home, and I felt like I had done the right thing really.

Though now I feel sort of nebulously and irrationally guilty, but can't entirely put my finger on why. (No suggestions please: there's far too much likelihood that you'll think of some entirely new reason why I should feel guilty, and I don't need any help in that department!)

Anyway, all this is really just to explain why I'm here & not there, so, y'know.... as you were. Hope you're not getting too rained on whatever you're up to at the moment.