Aaron Connor (24 page)

Of course, Lord Grumsby did
forget us or long. After a fair few people had their go, the Lord
brought his attention to us by looking towards us with a broad
smile. Many of his guests followed his gaze and laid their eyes on
us. For many of them their smiles faded, for other’s their smiles
grew larger from amusement. It was then that I realised how much me
and Lizzie stood out from the others. The contrast between them in
their shooting gear and the two of us in our tracksuits was pretty
considerable.

“
I think it’s
time for our unexpected guests to have a go” said Lord Grumsby,
“time to show us what you’re made of, How about you
dear?”

“
Me?” asked
Lizzie,

“
Yes, you”
said Lord Grumsby, “why don’t you have a go?”

“
Well . . .”
said Lizzie thinking,

“
Go on
darling!” said Harry, “give us a run for our money”

“
Ok” said
Lizzie smiling, “I will”

“
That’ a
girl!” said the man with the large beard.

Lizzie walked forward a few
steps, as the others had done, and took the same pose that she saw
the others do. Bringing the gun up to her shoulder, I began to feel
a bit nervous, hoping that nothing would go wrong. Once she was
ready, Lizzie cried: “Pull!” and had the clay pigeon released. She
stood strong and shot the pigeon perfectly. This shocked the group
of guests and led to a much louder round of applause. Some of the
older ones even wolf- whistled her. She came back to stand next to
me, grinning and looking very happy with herself.

“
Very good
young lady” said Lord Grumsby, “was that your first
time?”

“
Yes” answered
Lizzie,

“
Well, I say!”
exclaimed Lord Grumsby, “most extraordinary!”

“
What about
you Aaron?” asked Harry, “If Lizzie could do it first time round, I
don’t see why you couldn’t”

“
Quite right”
seconded the horse faced woman, “Let’s see you shoot young
man”

“
Right” I
said, “ah mate, I’m buzzing”

“
Buzzing?”
asked the horse faced woman,

“
It means
“excited”” explained Lord Grumsby, “honestly, you’re so behind the
times Lady Waters”

“
I guess so”
replied Lady Waters humorously.

I stepped forward as Lizzie did
before me and took the same pose. I brought the gun up to my
shoulder and took a few moments to get ready. The air was still and
all was silent as I prepared myself. Lizzie had set the bar quite
high with her last go, so I knew very well that this had to be
something special. I took a deep breath.

“
Pull!” I
shouted.

The man by the catapult
released the clay pigeon. It went shooting through the sky at top
speed. I aimed and pulled the trigger. The powerful force that came
from the rifle caused me to fall over backwards and onto the grass.
It was as if someone strong was pushing me over. It happened so
fast. One moment I was standing up and the next I was laying down
in the grass. I completely missed the pigeon which landed safely on
the soft grass some distance away.

The air went blue with laughter
from myself, Lizzie and all of Lord Grumsby’s guests. Some were
laughing so hard that they fell onto the ground and couldn’t get
up, like those people at the bottom of the Cheese Race. I laughed
with them. No point getting embarrassed over something as silly as
that, especially when it was as funny as that.

CHAPTER TWENTY

We stayed with Lord Grumsby for
another hour or so. After that the guests began to disperse and
make their way back home. I and Lizzie thought that it would be
best to be off ourselves. We made our way outside onto the large
marble staircase and began to descend it towards the Moped. When we
were getting the helmets out of the boot, we saw Harry rush after
us down the stairs.

“
Hold on
chaps!” he cried, “I’ve got something for you!”

We stopped what we were doing
and looked at him. He came up to us and was holding in his hands
two lanyards. On the lanyards were V.I.P passes to something called
The Occasion? I and Lizzie were confused for a few moments, but
Harry soon explained it to us:

“
My Father
hosts The Occasion, it’s a Music Festival. He lets the organisers
use his land to have the festival on. It’s huge! There lots of
famous people playing there. With these passes, you’ll get in for
free, get free drinks and get to stay in a luxury tepee. They were
for me and my fiancé but, I thought you guys might like them. We’ve
been dozens of times anyway. I think we’ll go to Centre Parcs
instead.”

“
Thank you so
much!” said Lizzie, “I always wanted to go to a Music
Festival.”

“
Haven’t you
ever been?” asked Harry,

“
Well, no”
answered Lizzie,

“
There you
go!” cried Harry, “more reason for you to go. I hope you have a
lovely time. Thanks again for the lift home and for your very
entertaining company. It was . . . buzzing! Ha-ha! I love it, I’m
going to use that term all the time now. Thanks again you two, good
luck on your journey.”

He was about to leave us, but
forgot to tell us where the Festival was. He realised this and
headed back towards us with a guilty smile on his face.

“
The Festival”
he began, “is down the left road. My Father owns all of the land
for a good few miles on the left hand side of that road. Just keep
going down there, you should see a very big sign which tells you
where the Festival is, right at the end. Is that
alright?”

“
Perfect” I
replied,

“
Jolly good”
he said, “cheerio then, pop by anytime!”

“
We will” said
Lizzie, “thank you”

“
No” said
Harry, “Thank you”

Harry then left us to our own
plans. We both put on the lanyards that Harry gave us, ready for
when we arrive at the Festival. It was my turn to drive so I took
the position at the front and roared the engine into life. It
wasn’t long before we were driving through the countryside once
more. We kept on down the road until we could see tents, lights,
stages and such like on a hill in the distance. The signs began to
appear on the road, all of them told us to keep on going to find
the Festival.

At the end of the road was a
large painted sign which said: The Occasion in large fancy letters.
All around the words were paintings of flowers, leaves, vines,
fairies and pixie dust. At the front gate were two young ladies in
reflective jackets and fairy wings letting people in. We joined the
back of the queue of cars and waited patiently.

We could hear the music coming
from inside the tall, iron walls which enclosed the event. Some of
the music sounded live and others I recognised to be recordings
from CDs. The song that was playing as we were going in was Dirty
Harry by Gorillaz. I looked up the line of cars and saw that
everyone was singing and dancing along to the song. As the line
queue was going so slowly, we saw no harm in having a little dance
as well. It’s a very catchy tune and always a great one to play
aloud.

Some girls were even getting
out of their slow moving cars to have a little dance. One bloke who
was dressed as Gorillaz bass player Murdoc climbed onto the top of
his car, in only his boxers and a cape, and began to dance with a
lot of thrusting. Girls in bikinis and denim hot pants join boxer
pant man for a dance. The car kept on moving underneath them but,
as the car was moving so slowly, they didn’t fall off at any
point.

Soon everyone in front of us
was through the gates and was heading for the car park somewhere
inside. It came to our turn the women at first looked confused.
They couldn’t work out among themselves how people as scruffy
looking as us, as we hadn’t had a wash for a while as we hadn’t the
time, could have gotten V.I.P passes. After a few moments thought,
they just shrugged their shoulders, decided that it wasn’t any of
their business and let us through into the Festival.

Inside was a long dirt road
leading into the festival. We went right, then left, then right
again and then left. The dust from the road was being brought up
into the air by the cars in front, casting me and Lizzie into a
mist of dirt and sand. My guess is that this is to disillusion
anyone trying to sneak inside, by deliberately making it
complicated to find the entrance. They even went as far as to make
dud roads, dirt tracks to go out from the main road and leave you
in the middle of nowhere. There’s going to be some confused gate
crashers tonight! I thought.

After what seemed like a
century of winding along dirt track roads, we finally came to a
massive collection of field which was being used as a car park. Ii
seemed like we had rode miles of grassland before we could find a
parking space. We got off, put the helmets into the boot and headed
for the V.I.P exclusive entrance.

There were two separate queues,
one for the V.I.Ps and one for the standard ticket holders. The
queue for the standard ticket holders was considerably longer
compared to the other one. Their line was going so slowly that
people were using their bags to save their places, while they run
towards a bush for a quick toilet break. The V.I.P queue was moving
a lot quicker as there were less people to put through security
checks. Us two went to the back of the queue and gradually made our
way to the entrance.

The man at the booth first
looked at us like we’d joined the wrong line. He was about to get
security to move us along, but then saw the lanyards and thought
otherwise. He still didn’t look all that convinced about us.
Suspicion was present across his face. I knew very well what he was
about to accuse us of.

“
Where did you
get those passes?” he asked, “who did you take them
from?”

“
We didn’t
take them from anybody” I said, “They were given to us”

“
Given to
you?” he asked, “bullshit! Who would give these to low lives like
you?”

“
Harry
Grumsby” Lizzie said, “We gave him a lift home, were at his clay
pigeon shooting party and, as a way of saying thanks, gave us the
passes. He was going to . . . “

“
That’s quite
enough” said the man, “I don’t want to hear anymore of this crap. I
have Lord Grumsby, Harry’s Father, on my phone. If you like I can
call him up and ask if your bullshit story is true”

“
Go ahead” I
said,

“
Alright, I
will!” replied the horrible man.

He took out his mobile phone,
scrolled through his contacts list, found Lord Grumsby and dialled
the number. He put the phone to his ear. We could hear it ringing
as the man smirked at us, he couldn’t wait to catch us two out.
Finally Lord Grumsby answered the phone, a cruel smile played
across the man’s face.

“
Hello sir how
are you . . . not to bad thank you” he said, “Now, I’ve got two
Chavs here who are trying to get into the V.I.P part of the
Festival. They say that they were given to them by Harry, its
ridiculous isn’t it . . . what? . . . he did . . . you know them? .
. . Sure, the lad’s in a white tracksuit and so is the girl, but
the girl is wearing a black Paul’s Boutique jacket . . . so does
that fit the description? . . . what? . . . There’s no need to
shout . . . I didn’t know sir . . . well, they’re Chavs ,so it
seemed rather odd that . . . I’m very sorry sir . . . I understand
sir . . . I do love my job sir . . . no sir, there won’t be anymore
problems from me, I swear . . . thank you sir, good day”

He hung up, put the phone away
and looked at us both with a look of fake apology. He realised that
he’d just made a huge mistake and wanted to make amends, not for
any moral reasons but because he didn’t want to loose his job. He
was shaking all over and started to get fidgety. Me and Lizzie were
finding it very hard not to laugh at this horrible man’s misery,
schadenfreude, what can you do?

“
I’m so sorry
Master Connor and Miss Penny” said the man, he now had a
repulsively greasy smile on his face, that didn’t make us feel any
more reassured, “go right inside. Your Tepee is number 10, right at
the end. If you need any free refills on your mini-bar or
toiletries, just come and see me and I’ll have it all
arranged.”

“
Thank you” I
said, I spoke in the best posh voice that I could pull off, I also
I turned by nose up in a mocking way, “I think we can put all of
that . . . unpleasantness, behind us”

“
Oh yes! Of
course” the man was saying, “It won’t happen again, I
promise”

“
I do most
sincerely hope not” said Lizzie who was also doing a silly posh
voice, “because if you do, we’ll tell Lord Grumsby . . .
“

“
No, no, no!”
interrupted the man who was starting to get panicky, “they’ll be no
need for that madam. Just go right inside and I promise you that
there will be no more problems”

“
Very good” I
said, “carry on!”

We walked into the V.I.P sector
doing a silly posh walk, with our backs straight and our noses
pointing upwards. Once we were out of sight from the man at the
front booth, we allowed ourselves to stop doing the walk and laugh
our heads off. I had done an awful lot of laughing on that trip, on
this occasion I genuinely thought that my head was going to explode
from it all. We calmed ourselves down and set about looking for our
Tepee.

There were two long lines of
these Tepees, all facing each other like houses do down a street.
The Tepees were tall, large and could fit at least twenty people in
the front room alone. The Tepees had ensuite bathrooms and very
comfy beds. We walking along looking for our own and peering inside
everyone else’s. Each Tepee looked exactly the same with the same
cosy looking suite of coaches with foliage print. We found ours at
the end and went straight inside.