Live and Fabulous! (23 page)

Fleur throws her arms around our shoulders.

“Fleur! No doing rabbit ears behind my head!” I say, grinning and sounding a bit like a ventriloquist's dummy.

“As if!” smirks Fleur.

“Ooh! Hang on a second! I've got one wonky bra cup!” shouts Claude.

“Say cheeeeeese!” shouts Fleur, pushing the button.

“Nooooo! Stop! Ooooh ... Cheese!” groans Claude as the camera begins to whir and play a sinister hip-hop tune, eventually slowing to a halt, then emitting a loud trumpet fanfare.

WANT TO SEE HOW GORGEOUS YOU LOOK?
asks the pod.

Of course we do! Within seconds the pod is playing the LBD's small screen debut: Fleur Swan, hogging most of the lens, resembling a
Sports lllustrated
cover girl, except for a large lump of falafel jammed in her front teeth; me, grinning like a demonic hobbit, with flipping Fleur making rabbit ears behind my head with one hand ...
gnnnngnn;
and on the other side, Claudie with one mitt down her own T-shirt, groping her left boob, with her mouth lolloping open and one eye crossed! This is all happening to a 132-bpm, garage-music backing track, so we look like we're in a proper pop video! But we all look sooooo dumb! This has got to be simply the funniest thing we've seen for ages; in fact we're howling so much we have to hang on to the pod to steady ourselves! Fleur sends a copy of the movie to all of our Macs. I'm going to print out a snap from mine and stick it on my wall. Then she quickly types in Paddy's e-mail address with the message “Greetings from Astlebury!!” and presses “send.” She also sends a still image to Paddy's and Daphne's mobile phones.

Ping! Gone! Galloping through cyberspace! How cool is that?!

Within seconds Fleur's phone quacks.

“It's Daphne!” says Fleur. “She says ta for the pic and we should meet her and Rex by the Hexagon Stage. Ooh, shall I say we'll give her a buzz when we get down there?”

“Yeah, that would be cool!” says Claude. “So, shall we move on?”

“Actually, I might just do one more,” announces Fleur, arching one eyebrow, fishing in her pink sparkly wallet for coins, and setting the pod's timer to send out a picture at 10 A.M. tomorrow. Odd? Quickly the pod pings and the camera is whirring as the blonde minx flips around and pulls up her vest to expose the large henna sun in all its marvelous tattoo glory, as well as, naturally, a generous display of her pink dental floss thong. Fleur begins to gyrate like a demented pole dancer in time to the music, then furiously begins tapping buttons as the camera stops.

“Nooooooo, Fleur! Don't!” gasps Claude. “Don't send it to Paddy!”

“Oh, shut up,” says Fleur, typing in Paddy's address again. “I like to keep him on his toes.”

“But I really don't think ... ,” begins Claude, but by this point the video of Fleur's tattoo has already hit the little-too-much-information superhighway.

“Now,” beams Fleur proudly, “shall we go and see some bands? If we run, we might just catch the Flaming Doozies! And Final Warning play after that!”

“Okay, to the bands!” Claude and I agree as we follow Fleur's body art out of the marquee.

As we spill out of the Land That Time Forgot field, through the hectic crowds, hitting a winding track leading eventually to the Hexagon Main Stage, I immediately recognize in the distance Zander Parr, singer with the Dutch rock band the Flaming Doozies. That bloke can't half screech!? As the crow flies, the Hexagon Stage is about half a kilometer away, but the VIP enclosure separates us from it, and ordinary punters like ourselves have to make a detour around its boundaries.

“Ooh, I wonder what's going on in there?” Claude says, pressing her face up against the mesh fence. From here, all we can see is tour buses, some mysterious marquees and production people dressed in black, darting about with clipboards and radios.

“Oh, just all the most exciting stuff, obviously!” sighs Fleur. “That's where all the stars and their entourages hang out. And the TV crews. I mean, just imagine?! Right now, CeCe Dunston from Final Warning will be knocking back Jack Daniel's and chatting to Jocasta Jemini from the Losers ... And Lester Ossiah from Color Me Wonderful will be facedown in his macrobiotic vegan buffet getting an aromatherapy shoulder massage. And I bet Zaza Berry and Cynthia Lafayette the supermodels will be chilling out in the Jacuzzi and ...”

“Erm? You've really given this some thought, haven't you, Fleur?” smiles Claude, examining a huge stern sign above our heads, which decrees:

 

 

“Just a soupçon,” mutters Fleur.

At this instant, a ginormous triple-decker black tour bus with a sleek red flash along the side sweeps up slowly to the gates, followed by a gleaming long white stretch limo. The security guards immediately spring to action, yelling at each other agitatedly while beckoning the VIPs inside.

“Nooooooo! I can't believe it!” squeals Fleur, gesticulating furiously. “It's Carmella Dupris! In there! In the limo!”

Fleur's right!

Claude, who owns every one of Carmella's CDs, as well as all of Carmella's old-school stuff from when she was part of girl group G-String, begins to leap around squawking too. Wow! Can this really be true? I crane my neck to get a glimpse, but now people are surging all around me, knocking me out of the way.

“Carmella!” squeals Fleur, ringleading the riot, slapping the limo's side windows as it passes. “You rock, Carmella! I love you!”

It is her!

Inside the car, Carmella Dupris, who's about as big as a saltshaker in real life, waves one tiny caramel-colored hand from underneath her huge floppy hat right in our direction. She's teensy-weensy!

“Dolce and Gabbana hat!” screams Fleur to anyone listening. “And Gucci shades! Carmella always has the most amazing wardrobe! She's so cool!”

“And she waved at us! She waved at the LBD!” hoots Claude, touchingly unaware that there are about five squillion fellow looky-loos hanging around us, going equally as berserk with adulation.

“I know! I know!” agrees Fleur. “And did you see Big Benson!? Carmella's boyfriend? The boss of Big Benson Records? He was in the back with her! He gave me a peace sign!”

As Claude and Fleur hyperventilate, I stand with a silly grin plastered all over my fizzog, staring as the back of the limo disappears. The very second the vehicles are safely through the thick mesh gates, they crash shut firmly and a heavy bolt is thrown across, leaving the lowly LBD very much outside of the VIP enclosure.

“Operation complete! Ms. Dupris is inside the enclosure!” shouts a belligerent-looking security guy into his walkie-talkie. “No intruders have entered the enclosure! Repeat: No intruders! Well done, everyone!”

After some persuasion, we drag Fleur away from the VIPs, floating around the peripheries of the hallowed enclosure, intoxicated by adrenaline, drawing closer to the Hexagon Stage, where the crowd grows denser and more intimidating. The dry ground is reverberating with a pounding bass line. There must be about 50,000 people gathered here watching the music. Swarms of bodies are screaming and cheering, leaping up on each other's shoulders; dancing and laughing and falling about, while up on stage Zander Parr caterwauls, albeit tunefully, like a cat in a combine harvester.

“This is the band that sets off fireworks, isn't it?” I shout.

“Yeah!” yells back Fleur as a thunderous crash rips through the air, making everyone duck for cover, then rise up again cheering.

On stage Zander Parr is leaping up and down in wild glee. Zander looooves pyrotechnics! He gets banned from every venue he plays at for taking things too far.

“Wow! Look!” gasps Claude as pretty scarlet and ivory paper petals shower the audience; the crowd cheers wildly, picking them out of their hair. On stage, a vast pyrotechnic display is kicking off with all the requisite shooting flames, silver sparkles, bangs, whizzes and crashes. Eccentric Zander, looking practically robotic in his black T-shirt and skintight gold-mesh trousers, is jumping about like a man possessed, setting off Catherine wheels and waving around flaming torches with such abandon that he keeps totally missing his cue to sing lines.

“He's really lost the plot this time!” laughs Claude, pointing at the huge video screens on either side of the main stage.

“Thank you, Astlebury! I loooooooove yer!!” Zander screams while his lead guitarist looks on in mild dismay, shaking his head. At this point I notice Zander literally has no eyebrows left, just singed strips above each eye. Living proof that you really shouldn't play with fire.

“Let's get farther forward!” shouts Claude.

“Cool!” beams Fleur, never satisfied as a spectator to the mayhem.

“Er, okay,” I say gingerly.

Traveling anywhere in this field is no mean feat; it's like treading through a maze of bodies, bags, coats, beer cans and burger boxes. Worryingly, whenever you spot a sneaky shortcut and shoot through it, your friends have all vamoosed in the blink of an eye, as they've taken another route entirely. That's a total freak-out. Lordy, I'd hate to get lost here. Astlebury is so unbelievably massive, I don't think I'd ever find our tent by myself.

“C'mon, Ronnie!” says Fleur, linking my arm tightly. “I've got you!”

On stage, the Flaming Doozies are cranking up their biggest hit, “Dead and Dirty,” and the crowd is surging forward in response: bodies slamming toward each other, people tumbling over and struggling to gain a foot up again. Some kids are throwing plastic bottles at the stage, narrowly missing Zander Parr, who's retrieving them from behind the speaker stack and lobbing them back. This is so wild! Scary wild, but wild all the same.

“Wooooooow! Look at him!” squeals Fleur, pointing out a hairy lad clad in baggy tartan shorts and a ripped tank top with a blue Mohawk being propelled by the willing crowd, right at the front of the stage. Change is pouring from his pockets.

“Oh my God! A real-life crowd-surfing dude!” says Claude.

Eventually, after twenty minutes of bobbing and spinning through the fuss, we emerge far nearer the front, but at the side where it's a little calmer. By this point, Zander's rolling about on the stage, screaming and sobbing, seemingly in the midst of some sort of total nervous meltdown, which the crowd is really lapping up because, well, let's face it, he always flipping does it. (Whenever Zander is on
Top of the Pops,
my dad always huffs theatrically from behind his
Daily Mirror,
before yelling, “I don't pay my license fee to watch this sweaty pillock jumping around screaming! Gimme that remote!”)

Fleur is loving all the drama; she whips out her mobile phone and takes a picture of sobbing Zander to send to Josh in Amsterdam.

“My brother loves Zander Parr! He'll be so jealous!” she hoots, staring at her handiwork on the screen, then frowning a touch. “Ooh, hang on a minute. What's up here?”

Fleur turns the handset off, then on again, the phone booting up with a perky polyphonic flourish of Spike Saunders's “Merry-Go-Round” and a screen saver of Fleur and her gorgeous mum on holiday in the south of France. Blondie pushes different combinations of buttons impatiently, with growing annoyance.

“There's zilch bars on the antennae screen,” she shouts. “Stupid flipping phone! I knew I should have pestered Paddy for that upgrade! Claude, you got any signal?”

Claude pulls out her handset, an ancient, rather bedraggled implement manufactured at some point when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

“Oooh, no,” shouts back Claude. “We're both on Fusia network, aren't we?”

“Yeah,” frowns Fleur, smacking her phone off her thigh, like it will help.

“Errr ... sorry for butting in, ladies,” chirps up an elfin girl with denim dungarees and spiky blonde hair, rocking to the music beside us. “If you're trying to use Fusia, you've no chance. The whole network crashed. Been down for over an hour.”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” gasps Fleur. “Again? How?”

“Er, about one hundred thousand folk in a remote field trying to send pics and messages at once probably!” shouts the girl. “People say it might be gone for the whole weekend.”

“What!?” gasps Fleur.

“Calm down, Fleur,” whispers Claude. “It'll just be one of those Astlebury rumors.”

Fleur gets very antsy indeed when her phone doesn't work.

“Well, forget meeting Daphne,” says Fleur, sounding genuinely a bit narked. “She's on Fusia too. That'll be my fault, I bet.”