You'll be glad to know dear play chums that I managed to escape the mud of the Glastonbury Festival. The year 2007 will go down as the muddiest year yet. At the moment, the UK is experiencing the wettest June on record and of course I chose this June to go to my first Glastonbury.
What is Glastonbury you may ask? Well, it's only the most notoriously muddy music festival in the world ever, that's all!
I spent nine days on site, four of which I was in wellies (albeit with a hot pants and fishnets or flouncy petticoat combo), wading through ankle high mud, the consistency of a chocolate milkshake. This is a festival of around 170,000 people. Basically we turned lush green countryside into a mud lake the size of a small city.
Meanwhile, back at the bat cave, the gaming world was throwing its hands up in horror at the news that Manhunt 2 had been banned in the UK and given the, kiss of death, AO rating in the US. Friends joined me at Glastonbury and asked if I'd heard the news. How I was supposed to hear the news sitting in a field with a solar shower my only vague connection to civilization, I'll never know.
Being cut off from all creature comforts puts some perspective on things. While Rockstar courted controversy in either the best PR stunt ever or worst case of flying too close to the sun, I struggled to reduce my liquid consumption in a vain effort to not use the onsite toilets.
While news headlines shouted about murderous videogames and filth pedalled to children, I was battling to find the recycled toilet paper that had been promised to us by the event organisers. In an effort to maintain my green credentials I'd left all non-recycled toilet paper at home, not realising that only the public were getting the eco-friendly donations – gah! The stuff was like gold dust until the gates opened on Wednesday morning and thankfully I snaffled myself a four-pack.
The gaming world was weighing up the moral vacuum argument versus the freedom of expression and art stance, while I was deciding whether the 40 minute wade through liquid mud to see The Killers was worth it or not. I was in a maelstrom of muddy indecision.
While you lot shouted and shook your fists at the censors, I was cursing the people who seem incapable of lifting their feet, instead of shuffling along and flicking mud up the back of my legs.
You thought you had problems when you were trying to find a region that hadn't banned Manhunt 2. Try being in a situation where the only toilet without a queue is a "she pee" – yes they do exist and that is a female urinal! People, I was in a world where a long drop latrine, for want of a better word, was the convenience of choice!
For nine days, the daily rainfall was the most important thing on my mind. That and toilets of course; going to them, not going to them, selecting the right one and having the alcohol gel hand wash at the ready, every second of the day. Now that I'm dry and mud free once more, I can shrug at Rockstar's latest fall from grace and think, surely it doesn't have much further to fall.
Most played: Come on, in a muddy field?
Most wanted: someone to do all my laundry!