With no disrespect, I consider myself a South Coast refugee. Why? Because I stood helplessly by watching every one of my good friends die. Casualties of… peace and the filtered brutality of middle stream suburbia's small town mentality.

I used to cobble behind the stand where the bandwagons stopped, marvelling at folk either jumping on or falling off, and each time my hat filled with nothing but loss, I'd wrap my scarf up around my mouth and mumble abuse into its cloth.

But too stubborn to remain stubborn I eventually stowed away, on Dylan by night and Difranco by day. But leading the fickle is like feeding a stray, I'd have ridden anyone heading that way, that way …back;

…before Glastonbury sold out, back before Glastonbury sold out. Before the Empire struck back with its life sized cardboard cut out. Before the Red Necks and the White Coats and the Boys in Blue got permission, to slip into their khaki under the camouflage of religion, or tradition or whatever else knows no limits. But if you ask me a scapegoat's a scapegoat no matter how many stripes you give it.

…'Cause I've ridden one of them n'all. More than once if truth be told, but I'll have given all that up once I'm eighty-odd years old. When I think it's called 'Robotics' and I've started taking batteries, tripping up the 'office' folk and bingeing on their Blackberries. And I know I will have laughed at life and that this did me more good than Bifidus act-regulariss, Casei imunitass… ever could.

>>> to be continued