In 1971, I travelled from Surrey to Glastonbury with a mountaineer friend and we climbed the Tor, took a load of LSD, then spent the night up there with an American who looked like Buffalo Bill with a Japanese girlfriend. We chatted about this, that and other stuff besides before settling down on the hard ground in the ruined tower to sleep.
Around 4.00am, strange figures swarmed over the steep hillside as if they were carrying out a surprise attack. As they approached, we realised that they were men using ferrets to catch rabbits in the pre-dawn darkness.
When the sun came up, we stood with our backs to it and massive rainbows encompassed the top halves of our bodies through the mist, like religious Tibetan paintings. My mountaineer friend said that this was a rare event, normally only experienced at high altitude - as on the Himalayas.
Would I be the same person had I not experienced this? Hard to say. Impossible to say.
Sounds truly amazing. You won't be the same person as without it. Mind you there is something about rainbows.
ReplyDeleteAvus got it right I think.
DeleteOMG. I had to read this twice to visualize your experience.
ReplyDeleteThe silhouette with the rainbow round it was spectacular. I haven't seen that since.
DeleteAfter a short walking tour of Carnac, Simon Fletcher and I visited Glastonbury briefly. In those days it was a strange place, with new age 'pilgrims' all over the place. The town wasn't happy, and most pubs had signs outside saying 'NO HIPPIES'. I'd love to go back some time.
ReplyDeleteAnother time, a group of friends and I went into a cafe with a NO HIPPIES sign on the door, and the women inside refused to serve everyone but me! The place is now packed with ageing hippies who stayed on. There are more shops selling healing crystals, incense, bells and other arcane rubbish than you will find anywhere else in the UK.
DeleteDid you have ropes and oxygen to climb the Tor?
ReplyDeleteI would need them these days.
DeleteThis is a very rare experience indeed.
ReplyDeleteI haven't repeated it!
DeleteI guess the LSD helped!
ReplyDeleteA little...
DeleteMen with ferrets is the best bit. Sod the rainbows.
ReplyDeleteIn our paranoia, we thought they were police.
DeleteDrug induced magical wonder. Your experience equipped you to write a 1970’s pop classic and live off the royalties for life.
ReplyDeleteIf only I had written 'Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds'.
DeleteWait. I'm more stuck on the ferrets than the rainbow. Did you go back in time on that tor? Rabbit hunting with ferrets sounds positively medieval.
ReplyDeleteThere was one time, in my teens, when I took LSD and watched my step-mother's daffodils sing in the garden. I have avoided daffodils ever since.
I guess seeing that rainbow made you the groovy, sweet tempered, cheerily optimistic, humanity-loving person you are today.
Ferreting with rabbits still goes on, but rabbits are on the decline for some reason. Our local game butcher imports French ones. Not good for the future.
DeleteI avoid daffodils in any case. They are too strident.
I am hoping your last comment was made ironically. Sycophants give me the creeps.
How to use a ferret with rabbits: You set nets around the holes above ground then send the ferret down an entrance. The rabbits dart out of the other holes and into the net. The human whacks the rabbit to kill it. There is a danger that a ferret will kill and eat a rabbit underground, and then you have to wait hours for the bloated creature to sleep it off before coming out again.
DeleteRabbits and rainbows, that was an interesting trip you had.
ReplyDeleteThese are a few of my favourite things...
DeleteWhat a story,I like the rainbows in the mist. walking on Great lakes ice floes, overnighting on acid on the Tor,how are you still here!
ReplyDeleteSomeone must be looking out for me.
DeleteI tend to go with the drug-induced idea Tom, knowing your reputation (or what you would have us believe).
ReplyDeleteThe drugs only enhanced it. It would have been just as amazing without the LSD come-down... I think.
DeleteI feel like the LSD could have played it’s part ..... I would have liked to have seen the men put the ferrets down their trousers 🦡👖 !!! XXXX
ReplyDeleteI am sure you would, Jack@.
DeleteYour experience reads a bit like a snippet from a Brautigan novel (although he wasn't a hippie).
ReplyDeleteNeither was I.
DeleteThat's why I got served in the Glastonbury cafes of 1970.
DeleteYeah, I figured you must have been the one with the 'square' hair cut.
DeleteMy haircut was no different to anyone else's. Nobody understood it.
Delete