Does anyone REALLY know what's going on?

90 per cent humidity. Ankle swollen. The one I hurt in Ucluelet playing slo-pitch. Tomorrow it all starts, with a grinding 13 hour day. Today I was up near the Castle esplanade and we watched the buses rolling up with all the performers. It really is a strange and wonderful sight, and the sense of the sheer logistics of the show are made so much clearer. Everyone, from the cushion hire team to the lighting crew to the tickets sellers - it's like we are all tiny creatures with our hands on one big wheel.

I am struggling. Perhaps I just need it to start. My mind is a mine field full of distractions, and I am pulled a dozen ways at once. It's like I yearn for one distraction to take me away from another one. And so it goes, bouncing from task to task like a pinball. And sweating through it all. The heat makes me so irritable, yet I haven't written another poem to combat the weather. The show is about to start and I have decided to forgo my own comfort for the good of the festival. How's that for selflessness?

I have included the photo of the pigeons because the one in the foreground looks like I feel. It's the wild tuft of feathers on top of its head that completes the utterly bewildered look. The other two are involved in some kind of negotiation. I love the confusion of the image - confusion mixed with a sort of looming slap-stick humour. Like a giant sack full of bird seed is falling from the sky, about to crush them all.

Three very long days lie ahead of me. Yet I am determined to take in some of the festival on Sunday, and hope to report back with some photos. The album of the summer is Upmixing, by The Warsaw Village Band. It's a remix of their popular Uprooting album, released a couple of years ago. Upmixing is wonderful - like gypsy music dipped in electric reggae.

Finally, the mug I broke this morning is still lying next to the table. The curved shards are so beautifully white that I forget that it is only a cheap mug, and can believe that the broken pieces are made of some precious material, lovingly carved into passionate shapes.