Electrical Gardening

When you go to a music festival and you need to be given permission to move around different areas of the site, you don’t get stamped: you get tagged instead. Wrist-banded, to be more accurate. The happy campers at Electric Gardens this weekend were given this paper bracelet in a fetching shade of pink. Other colours were available, allowing access to the back-stage zones, the VIP area and so on.
They look rather flimsy, but these wrist-bands proved to be quite durable. The kitchen scissors struggled to remove mine yesterday evening. The warning “Void if removed” appears in small letters on the area of adhesion. I reckon “Void when removed” would probably be more accurate; it would certainly explain the feeling of post-festival ennui I’ve been experiencing today.
In the solid three dimensions of the everyday world, the pink paper loop is sliced and divided and is sitting in my in-tray. Metaphysically, it’s still very much in place. Several times today I’ve actually felt it chafe the hairs on my wrist and looked down in surprise, momentarily forgetting its removal. I thought that a late afternoon swim had finally washed it off, but then I felt it again only a few minutes ago.
This ghost bangle is, I suppose, as “real” as anything else left behind by the festival. A set of visual and aural memories tingling in my synapses. A few binary ons and offs in my phone and computer. A couple of tenuous, fledgling friendships, forged in tent pegs and Stella Artois. Time to snap out of it, do my washing and move on? Not quite yet, I think. I’ll wear my intangible talisman for a few hours longer.