tweet off

I have just signed up to Twitter. Two years after my techgeek friend (everyone really should have one) claimed it was the future, I have finally come around to its simpering ways. Work made me do it, actually.

I’m heading to Glastonbury in a matter of hours – and the queues are looking shambolic. The weather, too, is looking more than a little restless, with various forecasters flippantly interspersing words like sunstroke, heat and scorcher with rainstorms, downpours and clouds. I’m practically indecently assaulting my faux veneered desk, such is the level of my enthusiasm for touching wood for sunshine.

I’m going to try to Twitter from the Festival as much as my phone battery, wherewithall and sobriety allow. I’ll be keeping an eye on celebs in the VIP area, eavesdropping on band gossip and sampling the local delicacies – ie, cider.

I also want to check out the eco goings-on and speak to some of the sustainability guys down there. It’s a miracle that 150,000 bodies decamp to a corner of Somerset and leave very little trace. Leave no trace is the ideal, but tent pegs are horrible to locate with a hangover.

So, back to Twitter. It’s occurred to me that if the rainforests are the lungs of the earth, then celebrities are her twittering vocal chords. I’m not sure where this leaves us mere mortals, but follow my progress, keep updated and stay in touch via twitter.com/daisydumas.

Hmmm. I just wrote the above for work – but I’ve abandoned the mission. The reality of actually logging on and twittering (yuck) from the world’s biggest music festival for the benefit of my boss is very, very, veeeery remote. In fact, let’s face it, it’s as good as extinct.

I can imagine it, though. Fast forward 20 hours… Pink ice blocks and goblin fairies floating in red sea of wellies, mud is frothing from the speakers and my cider is full of imps… Mad, I tell you.

going nowhere

Drifting through the moribund backwaters that are newsdesk contributions accounts, I have time to wonder.

The chip-toothed imperfection of my fantasy dinner party languidly stretches across all possible visceral frames – especially when most unwelcome – and I tap out payments, shuffling between Dylan lyrics and publication dates. It’s all pretty average.

Isn’t it strange that concentration (especially cutting things out) comes with an exposed tip of the tongue and that things that are good for you (horrible MTBs, odd little G-Wiz cars) are so often deeply uncool?

Man bags are a grey area: saunter out of ubiquitous soho advertising hq wearing requisite structured japanese denim, locally designed t-shirt and converse with a man bag lazily crossing your chest and you might be able to fit in. Same scenario in Dalston, with tight substituted for structured. Try walking down Brixton Hill or Green Lanes wearing the same and things might not feel so hunkydorey, no matter how useful that bag is.

The thing is, my mates don’t carry cotton shopping bags with them because they don’t have anywhere to put them. They don’t wear man bags. My old 5 Deutsch Mark shoppers languish snuggled in the grubby fluff-ball grittiness of my bag corners and are always at the grimey ready. Boys clearly don’t not shop – food being key – so they use plastic bags. Could it be that women’s emancipation has been knocked back 80 odd years by the emergence of a green pay-for-your plastic-bag culture? Or was convenience the key to equality?

It’s tempting to slip into Carrie Bradshaw-esque ditherings, but I must collect myself: numbers to plug, phones to answer and huge but irrelevant questions to ponder. All in a day’s work…