I while ago I wrote of the excitement and fear smoothie that pulsed inside me as I mentally prepared to interview a national treasure.

Daryl Braithwaite was coming to town, and I had clawed my way to the interview of a lifetime. I was going to exchange actual words with the man responsible for the hymn of our generation: The Horses. But I never ended up writing about how that conversation went or what it was like to see that hallowed sack of skin and song with my own eyeballs. And since the most exciting thing I’ve done in weeks was unwittingly create a vegan dessert, I thought now was the time to recount one of the holiest days of my life. Gather children, because here’s part one of the time I saw the face of God. It’s going to take a few posts, because if the stinking Hunger Games finale deserved to be broken up in two parts, this important and thrilling tale calls for trilogy.

After interviewing Daryl Bloody Braithwaite in secret to hide from the jeers of my colleagues, I was finally going to see the man in person. The day had dawned, and the sun would set on a new chapter of enlightenment. I was buzzing. I had brewed up a batch of apple vodka happy juice. I had laced up my sneakers. I was slathered in a sensible amount of sunscreen. I was ready.

As the time came to head to the festival, I grabbed my trusty shoulder bag that is hardly appropriate for anything other than a day drinking. But I had forgotten it hadn’t been emptied since its last outing. I had worn it to a Halloween party, which I went to dressed up as a sexy corn cobb (obviously). So of course this required a face full of golden glitter, because it what kind of sexy corn cobb would I have been without thousands of tiny gold specs making my features glisten in the moonlight? * The leftover glitter that didn’t stick to my face went into my bag, and the packet split, resulting in my transformation into a chunky, vulgar Tinkerbell with a supply of cheap fairy dust. I considered swapping my satchel. But thankfully common sense kicked in. The glitter was a mostly welcome surprise that I had to live with, like my younger sister.

I stepped out of the car at the concert ground, and I could feel the magic vibrating around me in the airwaves. Daryl was coming, but Daryl’s presence was already there. Something inside me told me to reach into my shimmer sack, pinch a bit of glitter and release it into the breeze. I imagined the wind carrying my spirit to him, coating his lungs with a film of my glittery essence as he inhaled; I could be his cosmic asbestos. Could he feel my soul seeping into his pores? Did my heartbeat echo in his ears? Probably.

The wind had a gentle ferocity that day, so when I tossed the contents of my bag into the air it formed a shimmering mist before the gusts carried it spectacularly off into the distance. So of course I started using this magnificent special effect to a punctuate moments of pure splendour. I began tossing fistfuls of glitter into the air when things got too quiet, or after I said something important like “I’m going to get more wine”.  Suddenly everything I said and did had this air of fabulous authority. Nothing cements your position as the flamboyant overlord of your group quite like a spontaneous glitter bomb. No one will question you.

It wasn’t just shiny shit getting airborne, there was something cosmically whimsical about it.** I may as well have been throwing tiny fragments of Santigold’s charred body into the air, it was that fabulous. It was like the powered bones of David Bowie formed a cloud and took flight. The essence of a perfectly ripened avocado solidified and exploded like fireworks. The semen of pre-Kardashian Kanye West dried up like salt from seawater and was shot out of an imaginary tshirt cannon. Particles of Dian Keaton’s laugh and Bette Midler’s powerful gaze were set free like doves.

It was glorious. And it was only the beginning.

Daryl was coming and you could feel it in the air.

*Answer: a shit one.

**But apparently it wasn’t the best thing to get in your eyes, My Blonde Sidekick would complain. Sure, people sitting behind us were being caught unawares with their mouths open and ending up with shimmer spit, but is that a bad thing? Who doesn’t want to hock up some glimmering phlegm? As I found out the next day when blowing my nose, glitter snot is the height of glamour and I had done that crowd a favour.