One More Cup of Coffee Before I Go.....

The last 5 weeks have been crazy!  4 festivals on the run, and I feel my head is gonna explode with all the rich experiences I went through at them.  It's quite a story to tell and I am not sure where to start.  Perhaps the start? Ok........

After being in Amsterdam for a month I received an email from Dani whom I met last year at the Magneet festival.  She makes the greatest Sicilian coffee, carrot cake and muffins!  She tells me that Robodock is at the squatted ADM terrain this year and is sounding like a good one, would I like to come and help her make some coffee and cakes?  'Yes, I would'. I told her. 

I had spent the last two weeks at Barts house, Bart is one of those guys you just easily get on with.  Last year at Magneet, he was one of the first people I spoke to and helped out at the Magneet terrain.  The first thing he asked me was weather I want some food and a beer, he has one of those care free smiles and a razor sharp wit, I liked him immediately.  When I was coming to Amsterdam this time, I messaged him and he said I can stay at his place for a bit and look after it while he is away!  This made me speechlessly happy.  Last year when I came to Amsterdam, I would look around all the market stores at the junk treasures and wish I had a home in Amsterdam to be able to decorate it with all the bits and pieces they sold.  I only had a tent though, but that tent had some Dutch touches!  Now I was staying in an amazing apartment and had my own little room to decorate and make my own a bit!  I put some posters up and some chilled lights, got a box for my clothes and Colinified the room a little.  Life is beautiful I thought.  I am a very lucky person.  One evening when I popped back to the flat to pick up some clothes, Bart was waiting for his girlfriend to arrive, he was checking his phone, looking out the window, pacing around, and then when she was at the street and rung the buzzer, this smile and excitement engulfed him as he kissed her hello.  It is very heart warming to see two people so much in love.  Eva, his girlfriend, is a tall, curly haired, very energetic and beautiful Dutch girl, she has one of those perfectly happy smiles, when she talks to you, you feel you have known her forever.  I have many great memories with them at the Magneet, but that moment will always stay with me and make me smile.  Perhaps because it reminds me of when I was in love and how wonderful a feeling it is...

Bart had helped fix up a bike for me, she was an orange sticker refugee and she wobbles when she rides.  I gave her the name 'Jelly Roll' and we set off to the festival to meet Dani.  I finally found the terrain which is hidden in the industrial North of Amsterdam, a squatted village that has a big building in the centre and a massive hanger workshop where all the great engineers, builders, carpenters and artists of the ADM terrain work, building whatever they want or need.  Not for a company or a deadline, but for themselves and the parties that they throw there.  I could taste the festival atmosphere as soon as I got in.  I have felt that these festivals are like bubbles.  Inside them no other world exists, time is measured by sunrise, sunset and the weather. When you feel like a coffee it is coffee time, when you feel like a beer it is beer time, when you are hungry it is dinner time. You never look at a watch, you just get caught up in the festival flow. It felt good to be back in this atmosphere, but the one thing that was going through my head is that I am too overdressed.  I should have bought a pair of jeans with me instead of 4 suits that I bought from a charity shop! (They are just so comfy though!)  I found Dani and the coffee bar and it was great to see her again.  Last year at Magneet, we spent 7 weeks in the bubble and had incredible highs and lows, all of us who were there from the start went through something together, and a long bond was formed between us all.  The coffee bar is mobile and it is one of the most brilliant constructions I have ever seen.  It is a motorbike or a 'Backbroomer' so it has two wheels on the front and one at the back.  Just in front of the handle bars is a two layered table, with a gas cooker and all the coffee pots, in front of that is a big wood oven that cooks cakes and lasagnes and all sorts!  We exchanged our winter stories with eachother and enjoyed a cup of coffee and cake together.  Dani is a dark, beautiful Serbian born traveller, who is completely open and honest about everything.  She has a soothing way of getting things done, and is quite shamanistic in how she does it.  When she is next to a campfire, the light from it flickers in her eyes and you feel her beauty and strength shining with the flames.  We would spend the next month sleeping in her camper van and making coffee at some amazing festivals.......

Coffee, for me in England it was a spoon of Nescafe, 2.5 sugars and lots of milk, then down it straight away for a little kick. (Almost like Orwells Victory Gin, no?)  But this coffee is special coffee.   It is the sicilian way of making it, and the process is as follows.  A three layered silver pot that one the bottom you fill with water, in the middle you put coffee (Dani's coffee is grown by anarchists under a tree in the East, and is Lekker) then as the water heats on the gas cooker, the steam rises and fuses into the coffee, that then rises again up a tube and becomes liquid in the top container.  It is a very beautiful coffee, and as soon as I got back from the last festival I purchased one!  I am so proud, I am going to take it everywhere truly tasting the coffees of the world, no more nescafe instant!  Then in the cup, you put 1/3 milk, 1/3 coffee, and 1/3 milk foam.  This balance results in one the most amazing coffees you will ever drink (and 4 ssugars for me!)  Dani has a way of really making you think for yourself, she isn't telling you what to do all the time, but just throws responsibility at you and lets you get on with it.  Not telling you when you make a mistake, but just letting you learn.  I set about learning how to run the coffee bar on my own and was very proud to do so.  When I love doing somethin, I put my heart into it, and give it everything I got.  Plus, it is a great way to meet and speak to people at festivals by making coffee, I was able to experience the festival and it's people a whole different way.  Not just buying a ticket and going to see it, but seeing it built, talking to everyone involved and feeling so happy when a good cup of coffee puts a smile on their face!  I had seen bits and pieces of the festival in its build up from rehearsals and work they were still doing, but Saturday night I really got completely absorbed in the world they had so wonderfully created.  Let me try and take you through it from the start.  I hope to do it justice, but i fear the experience I felt at this, is hard to truly translate into words......


It was about 8pm on the Saturday, I shared a joint with this Slavic photographer I got on really well with, we talked about life and travels and stuff and I felt I was in a great place, a nicely stoned from the smoke.  I went up to the front gate to see where the coffee bar was when I got pulled into the show.  At the gate stood a black van, draped with black sheets, and skinheaded girls with no eyebrows cloaked in black in bare feet.  At the door the woman was smiling as she asked the new arrivals if they were 'ready to die?'  They would let 20 or so in, and then really slam the gate behind them.  There was a little skinhead (not sure weather it was male or female) running around the floor on all fours, trying to grab the bait, the skinheads on the van were waving (like a draped flag)  at it, and laughing.  Over in a patch of grass to the right of the gate, this band played acoustic.  They were dressed really spookily, but without being cheesy or trademark or anything, they just looked perfectly fitting.  they were playing random prog jazz type unsettling music, (double bass, sax, drums, guitar) and mingling with the people and really creeping them out.  Then they started to walk away as they played and we were drawn to follow.  we walked to the flaming lotus girls that was this giant submerged into the grass Griffin, with like bones that were filled with fire (controlled by gas) that would shoot up this massive fire through them.  The theatre performers were sitting down pretending to be part of the crowd when they started to have what looked like an epileptic fit of a dance.  Flinging themselves all around the bones of fire that would randomly shoot fire.  The skinheads joined in and it was a strange display.  Then over to the building.  The building was set out to represent 4 sides of life and death, and the first was a giant iron tree attached to the building with a kind of stage, that a ghostly opera singer would sing this very haunting melody backed by cello and violin.  a little further up this side was a robotic band, a robotic vodka bar and a giant robotic hand that would crush a piano!  The next side of the building was completely decorated to look like a sidewards garden.  Then on ropes dancers would seem to be caring for the garden that was like a flip sided view.  Very surreal!  behind that in a little patch of grass was 'Charron' which is a giant wheel with skeletons rowing.  When people pull the ropes it starts to spin, when they get the right speeds it lights up with strobes and really looks like skeletons are coming alive and rowing a never ending boat!  On the next side of building was the fire show.....Wow, music made completely from fire, and then a whole fire display of setting alight woodchip and throwing it all over the place, was so fascinating to watch.  the next side of the building was projecting a light show on the building that looked like it was coming to life!  The windows would crack, and then a a fruit machine wheel would spin, and always land on the Politie (Police) symbol.  There were stages on two of the sides that bands would play.  I was completely blown away by 'La Fantastique Boutique'  A 12 piece band with brass section, string section, drums, double bass, DJ, keys and no vocals!  They were amazing!  Truly!  I cant truly describe all the other smaller elements that also went in to this festival, but please take my word that this was one of the most brilliant combinations of Theatre, Art, Engineering and music that I have ever seen!  One of the theatre performers, Anna I really must tell you about.......

She is 6ft5 red hair, and has such a strong presence that I would go weak at the knees whenever she spoke to me.  Tall and slim figure, but strong.  Tattooed with naked girls and more all over her beautiful body.  She wears clothes that add to her grandness, like those tall Russian hats, and big leather boots.  Completely comfortable in her body, and happy when she is welding iron together, or performing.  She has the look of a Bond villain girl, like a Natasha. She has deep searching eyes that look right inside you, and I was always mesmerized by her whenever she was close to me.  After the festival had finished I stayed there for a bout a week, this terrain was so amazing.  It has a giant wooden tower they built, and a pizza oven, a bar and the dogs run free.  Around a hundred people live there so I am told.  They have built a perfect sauna in a caravan and on a beautiful morning I was in the sauna alone when Anna came in.  I didn't know it was her at first, but then seeing her tattoos and catching her eye my stomach fluttered.  She was sighing from the heat and touching her naked body, rubbing her legs up and down and breathing heavily.  I spoke few words, and  just enjoyed what was an amazing experience.  She was at all the other festivals as well, and always had the same effect on me.  A very beautiful, strong and creatively crazy girl with a raging fire inside her, I am sure and I hope we will meet again......