Free Summertime by Raffaella Barker

two waterproof jackets inorder to survey my flood, Bass, who has long ringlets like Charles II and a bulbous nose, is wearing just a waistcoat over his bare chest and a pair of tight and dirty jeans. Siren, clad more as the tooth fairy than an ancient Greek doom-seeker, alights from her side of the vehicle and pauses for a moment, blinking as if she has been asleep, brushing the creases from her short frill of a skirt with a tin whistle she holds in one hand like a wand. Music swells and rattles in the car and the windscreen wipers keep time. Siren shivers and reaches back into the cab for a bolt of gauzy paper which she wraps around her shoulders, pulling it without looking, so the other end falls off and tips on to the muddy gravel. Even though I am wearing a boiler suit, I feel as bourgeoise as a Tupperware picnic box.
    â€˜Man, this is a neat pad,’ says Bass, moving over to me and standing too close, wafting the smell of beer and patchouli oil towards me. Siren homes in from the other side, tiptoeing in her Stars and Stripes platform shoes, and smiling to reveal a front tooth studded with a green stone which from any distance looks like stuck spinach.
    â€˜Your ducks are doing my head in,’ she giggles. ‘I’m mad about the one with the backcombed hair.’ She points at Pom-pom, the smaller of our ducks, as he glides across the garden towards the pond.
    Desmond extracts himself from the wriggling welcome of all the dogs and comes over. ‘These guys have got the most fantastic tent,’ he says, clapping Bass on the back with a firm hand. ‘It’s big enough for four hundred people, so we’ll easily get everything in.’
    I look round doubtfully. ‘But my garden is very small. I don’t think you could fit four hundred people in it anyway, even without the tent, and there’s nowhere flat enough to put a structure that big.’
    Bass walks over to the garden wall, and looks out across the water meadows.
    â€˜Hey man, let’s just put the tent in this field. It’s much better, and you can get all the parking on there as well.’ Siren frisks over to look with him, flapping long, hennaed hair, and Desmond and I join them as a thin mist of rain begins to fall, clouding Siren’s hair and blurring the view. Desmond also likes the field idea, and I can hardly bear to interrupt their excited discussions about generators, to say, ‘But this field doesn’t belong to me, it’s farmland, wet farmland at that, and it belongs to the new man who lives at Crumbly.’
    â€˜Well it isn’t any wetter than your garden,’ Desmond points out. ‘Let’s find out if we can rent it.’
    Siren and Bass, oblivious to the rain, have drifted off to the swing, where he pushes her and she skims to and fro, trilling with laughter, in between murmuredsentences about amplifiers and sound systems. Start to envisage the wedding as a mini Glastonbury, and begin to feel very nervous indeed.
    April 17th
    Catch the train to London by running, bags flapping, down the platform shouting ‘No, no,’ in the manner of a spoof Anna Karenina. Really awful mistiming caused by the station having been entirely rebuilt since I last went to London, and this adds to my sensation of being an utter rustic, with hay almost sprouting from my ears. Am on my way to Minna’s hen night, and will have time beforehand to go shopping for the children’s wedding clothes and also to attend an exhibition. Realise just how long it is since I have been here when walking down the King’s Road. The thronging, weaving people on the pavement and the jerking traffic move fast and purposefully; my pace and my intent are hesitant, and I am bumped and jostled until I alter my stride and move swiftly, like them. Legs begin to ache and I veer over into the slow lane, right next to the shop windows, where I and other pedestrian out-of-towners meander, gasping to catch our