The Family

Today was our first day staying in the Birmingham Central Backpacker’s Hostel, and we spent some time acclimatising to the area, finding a little road behind SBC to do our energising exercises. Some people touring round the festival joined in and as we plucked our ukuleles to keep time, the strains of George Formby were heard from the college windows. This portent suggested our stay in the area would be full of coincidences.

We took our rainbow umbrella through the showers and ended up at the Custard Factory.  Another tour was already there, so we gave them some Kool-Aid while they sheltered from the rain, and then did some circular cloud stepping to send them on their way with good energy.  Ben found us, and played all our instruments better than us, as we sent droned acoustic energy bouncing around the space.

After acquiring a new instrument to improve our musical sound (a jaw harp) we headed back to find warmth, defrost and check in to our pod room. We felt better, refreshed our identities and made our way to Grand Union. After meeting with people there and looking at all the lovely publications, we all gathered at The Crown pub. We filled up on sugary energy and had some important realizations about how our roles fluctuated naturally between the group. Entering a hyper state of cold shivers we felt the need to retire back to the hostel.

While we waited for the free soup the group began to loose a grasp on ‘real’ time passing back and forth between past, present and future as well as discovering the ability to shift between selves – just as this began to get out of control, food arrived and brought us back. We were on top form to play a game of pictionary with some of the other travellers at the hostel, our telepathic link enabled the main family team to win. We were rewarded at the end of the game with a sign: the last pictionary word was ‘weather’.