As a family Christmas present the 'rents bought us all tickets to Bluesfest in Byron. My sister and I had a bit of a joke at the time that we got a family holiday as a Christmas present, so whose present was it really, but regardless we were all looking forward to it a lot as it's the sort of thing we all really like to do.
The trip there was a comedy of errors. Instead of Jules and I organising a simple plan of how to get to the airport on Good Friday morning, for some reason we had allowed mum to arrange a complex and convoluted plan on our behalf that involved going to our grandparents' house at 5:30am so they could drop us at the train station. The fact that I live easy walking distance to my own train station was apparently neglected as this plan was being formulated. But sometimes it's best not to argue and just go with the flow for the purposes of harmony and simplicity.
Except neither harmony nor simplicity ensued. It turns out that mum had told our grandparents that we would call them to confirm that the plan was to go ahead. Fair enough, except she did not pass that instruction onto us. Instead, what she told us was that it was all arranged and there was no point arguing. So we didn't argue, we just turned up at our grandparents house at 5:30am like good little grandchildren. But they were in bed. So by the time we got to the station, we'd missed our train. The next train got us to the airport with barely a minute to spare, but that was ok. We got to the gate in time. Meanwhile, Jules had broken the pully handle on her suitcase so to tow it around she had tied a scarf to it and led it around like a dog. It was fairly amusing, and even more so if you know my sister...
One bag debacle down, but there was another one ahead. As a side note, never fly with Rex. Not only was it the noisiest vehicle I have ever been in, and not only did the aircraft feel as though it was made of cardboard, but they also realised they were carrying too much weight and had to leave 15 bags behind. Of course, 1 of the bags they randomly selected was Jules' bag. But she wasn't going to stand for it, oh no! She had a big sulk to the man who seemed in charge on the tarmac and yelled at him and called him the meanest man ever. After a few moments he sent someone else over to inform her that her bag had gone back on the plane. Unbelievable.
Eventually we got to Byron.
The festival was fantastic. John Butler, Michael Franti and Eric Bibb did not fail to deliver the expected stand-out performances. Ben Harper was mildly disappointing, while Luka Bloom, Saltwater and Blue King Brown were stand outs that exceeded expectations. A large portion of the weekend was fairly wet and there was more mud than you could poke a trendy gumboot at, but it didn't really phase anyone. I actually had fun in my gumboots and the mud. It just meant that you couldn't sit down. Anywhere. For 3 days. But hey, at least we weren't camping. We were staying in a caravan park just out of town.
I expected that my family wouldn't necessarily make it easy for me to reflect, pray, acknowledge and celebrate the way that would be natural for me over the Easter weekend. I did get some time and space on Sunday, and again on Tuesday, both of which I greatly appreciated. Though I certainly missed doing all these things within my church community of friends. I thought about them and prayed for them a lot over the weekend. I have to admit it was nice not being on any kind of Easter church roster.
We had festival tickets Friday - Sunday, and Monday was a recovery day before we all drove home on Tuesday. I was thrilled and surprised to hear from Mil on Monday, who was on her way to Byron, and her and Martin ended up joining my family and I for dinner. It was special and made me very happy! So that was a great little pocket of special time we could spend together. I guess its going to be a little while now before we can do that again.
The drive home was....well...about as good as a 10 hour drive with your immediate family gets. I was horrified that the other 3 were set on leaving at 3:30am. I was thinking more like 7am. But I got shouted down, and 3:30am it was. And wasn't that a treat. I was pretty much comatose until we stopped for breakfast (i.e. coffee) at about 6:30am and I think from that point on I was far more polite to my travel companions. They, like many others before them, voted against pre-coffee Jess.
My driving skills are not esteemed in my family and so I was not allowed to drive any significant stretch of the trip. Which was actually fine because I don't really enjoy driving, I just felt like I should contribute. But in the end we made it home, tired and safe and actually not hating each other. Bonus.
No comments:
Post a Comment