Famous last words . . .

Did I say at the end of my last entry that I'd next see my dear girls on Monday? How wrong was I?

Last night (Thursday) we had a call from daughter 2 at around 8pm saying she wasn't well and wanted to come home. Mrs DW suggested she give it a bit of thought and call us back later. At 10pm she suggested that DW hop into the car and drive down to Reading to pick her up.

Having established from her older sister that she wasn't in danger of imminent demise, I declined the offer, suggesting instead that I come down in the morning. She reluctantly accepted that I wouldn't be spending Thursday night/Friday morning on the road.

At 4am she decided to give us an early morning wake up call which, I'm ashamed to say I let Mrs DW deal with. At 7am she rang again to ask where I was on the road - wrong, I was about to get up to take first the hound out for a walk and then Olive, daughter 2's puppy. (I tried walking them both at the same time the other evening but, because both of them have to stay on the lead, it was a bit of a nightmare).

I eventually left at around 9am and, having established they would be at the Orange gate, warned them to be ready there at 11.45am.

The trip down was okay and I followed the (well-signposted) route to the Orange gate, which it turned out was miles from where I originally left them - down small country lanes and farm tracks. I was quite proud that I pulled into the car park spot on at 11.45am. But it seemed to be just that, a car park - well a recently harvested cornfield to be precise.

A phone call to the daughters quickly established that I was in completely the wrong place - in fact, on the wrong side of the river. Orange gate, according to the eldest DW daughter, was at one of the other coloured gates, the original Orange gate being too muddy to open. The trouble was, she wasn't sure which one.

So it was back into Reading, across the field which almost took off the bottom of my car, along the farm tracks, country lanes etc and through all the festival traffic and throngs of youths (the only redeeming feature being the 'uniform' of most of the young women - very short shorts and wellies!).

After numerous phone calls and wrong turns I eventually found the girls at Yellow gate (near orange in the spectrum, I suppose) and daughter 2 left Reading just as the first band went on stage!

Daughter 1, will be home on Monday by coach - I hope!