The Bonfire Doctors

While dancing at the Liquid stage or freezing your nuts off in the biosphere, chomping on snot balls and sipping scalding chai, you no doubt saw these amazing bonfires out of the corner of your eyes, tried to make your way to them, but failed to find a way across the steep ravine (there was a footbridge, which I eventually found but constantly kept losing). When I eventually got to the bonfire I was met with some interesting characters, and few more so than the bonfire doctors. These Californian guys - who appeared to be ordinary punters since they wore yellow wristbands like me, and not orange ones - would disappear in a 4x4 and every few hours would come back with loads of wood to rebuild the bonfire. Wearing a lamp upon his forehead, and dressed head to toe in a surgeon's cape, the chief doctor would then proceed to build up the fire, quite beautifully, and then drive off, supposedly to help out on another bonfire or to get more wood. This routine would go on all night. Who were these people?

There was also a couple (more Americans) who fed the crowd around the fire for free (so much more in the spirit of a festival, than the rip-off merchants in the market area. They put jacket potatoes wrapped in foil into the embers and fed us when they were cooked. One couple, from New York possibly, made chicken and noodle soup for the starving munters sat around the fire... although minus the chicken because of her concerns over bird flu, apparently.