HW: my long gone regular 70 real Hawkwind CD's including "Distant Horizons"

[M Holmes]

eddie jobson writes:

> That memory sounds about right to me too Mike, it was my first and last
> Stonehenge appearance and I remember it as you stated.

Yeah. In fact while I was at Stonehenge festivals I usually went around
visiting and sometimes staying at the local Peace Camps (yeh, yeah, my
politics were a little different when I was an impressionable young
lad). I also packed some straight gear in which I'd go to the local pubs
in disguise to get some proper beer and get a shit and a shave in
relatively sanitary conditions. I also got a chance to chat to the
locals.

By and large, up until 1983, there were mainly the blue rinse folks
who'd have hated the festival under any conditions who were complaining.
Some of the pubs refused to allow festivalers in but that was about the
extent of the hostility. In 1984 every local pub had banned festivalers
and "No Travellers" signs were on all the pubs. The local shops were
also putting up signs. I was told this was because of a veritable
crimewave of theft. One fireman I'd talked to had heard that 63 cars had
been nicked in the local area. It was pretty obvious that something was
going to happen. Thatcher being in power during a summer where
"Traveller" trouble was seemingly everywhere just added to the fun.
That the following year at Glastonbury there was similar nonsense
(remember the burned out van in the lake of mud at what's now the Circus
Field?) didn't help at all.

I got back to Stonehenge in 1987 and even saw the sunrise from inside
(broke into the cop compound and persuaded some aussie druids into
smuggling me in on their bus and dodged the riot cops' sweep the next
morning because I had a hotel room booked in Amesbury).  Chatting to the
locals over breakfast, they were heartily pissed off at the cops for
flying helicopters all night for a month and causing general
inconvenience with roadblocks.  The sweep that I missed in fact walked
everyone 9 miles out of the county, irrespective of where vehicles, and
in one case even pets, were.  I did miss what sounded like a good party
in Cholderton woods though, which is where they all ended up.  I tried
to make Glastonbury by bicycle that day, but all the hassles at
roadblocks prevented us getting there.

They were fine times though. Things just haven't been nearly as weird at
festivals since Stonehenge.

IIRC (and I had had some cider again) Hawkwind had tried to set up on
the back road from Amesbury that year.  They were getting cleared out by
the cops when we passed.

FoFP