This part was all pretty crap. Like some cheap Mad Max imitation, so I skipped through it as quickly as I could. But I was drawn up short by a really nasty episode that made me feel sick in my stomach.

I was in a tiny underground room beneath ruins, with an old frail man who sat in a chair. And this old man was ranting at me, and I really hated him, and suddenly I was killing him. My hands were about his wrinkly throat and I was squeezing the life from his body.

And I could see myself here, today, in the year 2008, writing these words. Remembering then what I remember now, remembering.

So to speak.

I feel certain that I would have been able to see well beyond the extent of my own brief lifetime and off into eternity, had I not been quite so rudely interrupted. I don’t know who it was who came crashing in through my kitchen window and ripped the kettle plug out of the wall and started beating me over the head with the kettle. He looked a bit tweedy and rangy to me, but as I was soon very unconscious, I really couldn’t be sure.

Now, you know that panicky feeling you get when you wake up after a really heavy night of drink and drugs to find that you can’t move and then it slowly dawns on you that someone has glued your head to the floor and then it slowly dawns on you that no they haven’t, you’ve just chucked up in your sleep and the vomit has dried and stuck your face to the limo and— No. You don’t know that feeling, do you.

Well, it’s almost as bad as the police cell one. Almost, but not quite.

I tried to lever myself up, but I didn’t make too much progress. Luckily I happened upon a spatula I’d dropped a couple of weeks previously, which had somehow got kicked under the cooker, and was able to ease it between the floor and my face and gently prise myself free. It was a horrible experience, I can tell you, and I got all breathless and flustered and desperately in need of a nice cup of tea.

I really won’t bore you with what happened after I plugged the electric kettle in again.

But what happened might well have saved my life, or at least my sanity. If I hadn’t taken that second beating and if the ambulance hadn’t been called to whisk me off to the cottage hospital, I would certainly have gone back to the festival and what happened to all those innocent people would undoubtedly have happened to me. Whoever beat me back into oblivion spared me from all that.

But spared me for what?

And for why?

That I should go forward through my life knowing what was to come and yet be powerless to prevent it?

That I should be some kind of helpless puppet doomed to a terrible fate?

That the grinning purple kaftan of truth should shed its wings and eat the flaccid ashtray of tomorrow?

The latter was a puzzle and that was for sure!

But hey, these were the 1960s after all.

I have pieced together what happened that day from conversations I had at the hospital and later with Norman and others, through secret police documents that came into my possession, and suppressed film footage. The real story has never before been told.

I tell it here.

To begin, let us examine the statement given by the ambulance-driver Mick Loaf.

‘Oh yeah, right, is the tape rolling? OK. So, yeah, we got the call-out at about ten on the Sunday morning. I’d just come on shift. I’d been away for a couple of days, visiting my aunt. What? Pardon? Tell the truth? I am telling the truth. What, the machine says I’m not? OK. Yeah, well, it wasn’t my aunt, but does that matter? Yeah, right, I’ll just tell you what I saw. We had the call-out, house a couple of streets away from the hospital. The caller said that a chap called Edwin had been beaten up by some gypsy-looking types and was bleeding to death in his kitchen. So we drove over, OK?

‘Well, you have to pass right by the allotments and I didn’t know there was some kind of festival going on and as we’re driving by we see all these thousands of people sort of swaying to the music. All in time, very impressive it was. But it was warm, see, and I had my window open, and I couldn’t hear any music. So I says to my mate, Chalky, “Chalky,” I say, “look at all those mad hippy bastards dancing to no music.” And Chalky says, “Look at the stage.” And we stopped the ambulance and looked at the stage and there wasn’t a band up there, there was just a whole load of potted plants with microphones set up around them, as if these plants were the band. Weird shit, eh?

‘What? The chemicals? Oh, you want to know about the chemicals. Well, there’s not much to tell. I gave my statement to the police. When we got to the house the front door was open. We went inside, but we had to come out again and get the respirators because of the smell. There were all these drums of chemicals stacked up in the hall. American army stuff— someone told me that they use it in Vietnam, but I don’t know what for. Smelled bloody awful though, made me go wobbly at the knees.

‘Anyway, we found the Edwin bloke in the kitchen. He was in a right old state. We got him back to the hospital and they gave him a transfusion. Saved his life.

‘That’s all I know. I missed what happened later. Bloody glad I did.’

Councillor McMurdo, head of the town-planning committee, gave only one interview to the press. This he did by telephone from his villa in Benidorm.

‘The allotments’ water supply is separate from that of the rest of the borough. It is supplied from an Artesian well beneath the allotments themselves. If toxic chemicals were used on the allotments, there is every likelihood that they would contaminate this supply. There is only one tap on the allotments. This is situated next to the plot owned by a person known locally as Old Pete. It is my understanding that stall-holders who had the food franchises at this festival used this tap. The council can in no way be held responsible for the tragedy that occurred.’

All becoming clear? A big picture staffing to form?

But what exactly did happen? What was the tragedy?

Let us hear it all from Norman Hartnell, as he told it at the trial.

‘I went home early on the Saturday afternoon, before things began to turn strange. I’d completely sold out of Brentstock cigarettes, didn’t even get to try a packet myself. I thought I’d go home for tea and grab an early night. I wanted to be up bright and fresh on the Sunday and get a good place down at the front by the stage. I was really looking forward to seeing Bob Dylan and Sonny and Cher.

‘I brought a flask of tea with me on the Sunday, just as I had done the day before, but even though I got there really early, I couldn’t get near the stage. In fact, I couldn’t even see the stage, because all this silent dancing was going on. I don’t dance a lot myself, do the Twist a bit at weddings, that’s about all. But as a lot of the girls there had taken all their clothes off, I thought I’d join in, just to be sociable.

‘So, I was sort of jigging about with this very nice girl who had the most amazing pair of Charlies—’

At this point the magistrate interrupts Norman to enquire what ‘Charlies’ are.

‘Breasts, your honour. Fifth generation Brentford rhyming slang.

Chades Fort rhymes with haute. Haute cuisine rhymes with queen.

Queen of the May rhymes with hay, and hay and barley rhymes with Charlie.’

The magistrate thanks Norman for this explanation and asks him to continue.

‘So,’ continues Norman. ‘We’re dancing away and I’m saying to her that not only does she have a most amazing pair of Charlies, she has a really stunning Holman—’

Once more Norman is asked to explain.

‘Holman Hunt, 1827 to 1910,’ says Norman. ‘English painter and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. He painted a lot of women in the nude. But some of them didn’t like that, so he used to put his trousers back on. He always wore a headband.’