Woke up in tent with a horrible hangover and extremely dehydrated. Slowly, my brain managed to formulate the thought that there was a bottle of water in my car at the top of the long staircase up the cliffside, but it was a long enough way to sitting upright, let alone navigating my way out of tents, through gates, or up stairs.

Eventually managed to sit up, the tent gyrating wildly around me.

And there, in front of my blurred vision, a small miracle. A bottle of water and a carton of orange juice which C. had given me the previous night, and about which I had forgotten.

Woke up very slowly, sitting there drinking water and orange juice, each of which tasted like nectar.

That's when it started.

As the hangover and dehydration began to recede, as I stood there on the scrap of land above Tina's  cafe, gazing at the sea, I was struck with an overwhelming sense of how tense and basically miserable I am and how wrong this seemed. After all, I am on holiday, the sun is shining, the beach and sea are beautiful, I am staying in one of my favourite places in the world, I have water and orange juice kindly given to me by a friend, and I have nothing to do for the next few days but relax, play music and enjoy  myself.

But no. I could feel the vice-like grip of my London life, holed up at my grandmother's drinking far too much bad wine, squeezing my head more, not less.

I tried doing a bit of yoga, with little effect.

I wandered into town and passed a cafe bar with some musicians I knew sitting inside.

"Hey motty," one called out to me. "Come and have a drink."

"I have to... do some bits," I said. "Maybe later."

And went into panic mode.

Suddenly I couldn't deal with the idea of having to deal with people. Which seemed utterly ridiculous and shameful.

Finding everything shut but the Tabac, "some bits" got reduced to "buying fags", and I forced myself to go back to the bar and try and be sociable. It was maybe three or four in the afternoon. The guys were all drinking beer, and seemed very relaxed. I was still on coffee, and increasingly tense. I soon fled.

Got back to the tent to find another old friend of Tina's pitching another tent. A., an English guy now living in Paris.

The jam that night at Tina's was... rather fun. I took the bass out and got to play with three amazing musicians - M., a local Meschers singer and guitarist who plays difficult blues, soul and jazz inspired tunes, S., a singer, drummer and guitarist from Harlem in New York who arrived in France on tour with a band eight years ago and never left, and A., who in addition to being a fine drummer, also turns out to know a range of obscure yet fun-to-play early eighties covers.

After Tina's closed, S., A. and I went back to M.'s, where we proceeded to get very drunk and stoned and continued jamming for some hours.

Got back to the tent wiped but smiling. I think.