More and more people are arriving as we get closer to the burn on Saturday night. Our camp is now full of VW owners and others looking for a place to set up a base camp. As ever, Bruce made everyone feel welcome and we all had dinner together last night after late afternoon cocktails sitting around our van. I should not have worried about what we would be eating here, as long as you don’t mind pitching in to help, or clean up afterwards, there are a myriad of great meals on the go that people want to share with you. Last night’s menu was BBQ lamb marinaded in rosemary with artichoke heart and water chestnut couscous and a bowls of different salads. This morning Ron came by with his chai tea cart and I had a cup of chilled tea before breakfast.

The number of people has almost doubled since we first arrived (last count 23,000). So too have the number of art installations and opportunities to interact with our fellow burners. Last night we managed to stay out even later than usual. We danced on huge hanging slabs of concrete suspended by a metal frame over a fire pit. They have a Thunderdome here so we watched people suspended by ropes going at each other with rubber batons, whilst a fenzied crowd climbed all over the metal domb containing the combatants to watch.

We are now sat, shielded from the heat of the day at Centre Camp Cafe and have found ourselves in the middle of an impromptu jam sessions that started as only two men with bongos and a digaredoo, it has become a crowd of twenty or so people playing drums, scitars (sp?), electric guitars all swaying in time with the music. No one here looks stressed or unhappy. You can see the faces of the people who have only just arrived – they bare the same expression of wonder as I am sure ours did when we first arrived. I am glad we came when we did so that we could ramp up to the big burn on Saturday night slowly.