Beware the love child of Bruno Mars and Nicole Scherzinger
who’s superpowers could bore you into a Play Doh figurine
sentencing you to a life of regimental choreogra-yawns
should the only cure escape your malleable mind;
a 21st century rarity that many doubt the very existence of,
a Rhianna costume that covers more than a toe’s worth of flesh.

Night in and night in and night in stabbing Twiglets at your face
whilst your arse sits amalgamated to a spongey sofa of crumbs
the one hundred and twenty million percent predictable
fudge of pram babies whaling through contrivance
upon lording scarecrows of bleached teeth and horse tail hair
would thumbprint dependency into your one tone being.

You’d not find that antidote easily beneath Chris Brown’s bed
as deep thirsts for syrupy intakes of meaningless sludge shake
through your dense, airless, squeezed to inconsequence body
that only moves to a corner shop and back as if a puppet
being unstuck and plodded elsewhere to line up silently
fingering through a glossy about the next impeding brain rape.

Beneath the faint, tinny whispers of a freer co-passenger,
across stores to further, non air conditioned, less lit places,
within pages that don’t hatch down the spine
for a hand to burst out of and pull your eyes from their sockets
to point you in the straightest, most generic and plain of paths,
is where the medicine of a dress beyond buttock length lives.

Wash and iron after every outing you dress within it,
sew any rogue threads back into its delicate seams,
store on a hanger so it may rest after a constructive day,
feeling bit by bit, your being not a state of static decay
but an evolving, reforming, mobile, inquisitive organism,
stronger and of more flesh each bold costume outing.

I

‘Can I borrow your phone for a minute mate? My battery’s dead.’ asked one eye this way and one eye that, dressed like an extra out of a 2 Tone band from the eighties; his grey, ironed trousers sitting on a bony waist, side parting hair dipping out from beneath a chequered flat cap and a warm, proper London accent you’d be both suspicious and loveable towards.

‘As long as there’s no rushing off, though you’ve been in this queue for a good ten minutes, so I doubt that’d happen, unless you’re really after a new phone or just don’t care about shitting your pants.’ replied Jack, leaning against a wall, in his own sweaty world until the question, feeling a lot more trustworthy than normal on account of the past hour and a half of dance music he’d just raved to.

‘Dad, it’s Charlie. I’m in a bit of a situation here. I got split up from Moog in the crowd and my battery’s dead. What I need you to do is look in the phone book for Moog. Give him a call and tell him I’m at the toilets where we were earlier. If he doesn’t show up, I’ll just go back to the flat. Cheers Dad.’ instructed Charlie with a tone that said everything about his relationship with his Dad come mate, old school practice of keeping paper records of electronic data and commitment to leaving with the person he arrived with.

By this point it was finally Jack’s turn to use a cubicle. He’d favoured the shelter of an inside toilet as opposed to the racks of halve pipes outside, where people had to stand face to face, an inch away from touching each other with their private parts. He did one day festivals for sounds, not splashings.

‘That’s a good effort. I hope you find your friend. Take care.’ said Jack, taking the phone from a smiley, appreciative Charlie.

‘If he rings back and I’m still here, can you give me a shout?’ asked the cockney, 25 at most and clearly nearing the end of his night that by the sight of him, included a lot of dancing in mud, twisting of his preppy clothes and consuming beer, amongst other things.

‘Sure.’ said Jack, taking to a cubicle.

After he’d taken his emergency toilet roll from his back pocket, wiped the toilet seat a good two times, undone his baggy jeans and sat, the lights went out. Sighs bounced between the walls of cubicles, the lights flickered back on before being cut again, everyone sighed some more and so repeated Jack’s call of nature.

It’d been a long wait and a demanding day on Jack’s legs. With that in mind, he took his phone out, sent a few messages and used the solitude of his surroundings to be what a stuck up spa would call relaxation quarters. When the phone buzzed in Jack’s hand and Luke’s face flashed on its screen, Jack pinged out of his daydream and rushed back to the main arena.

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My friend Jenny recently lent me a book called ‘This Is Your Brain On Music‘ by Daniel Levitan. Whilst I haven’t got round to finishing it, the bits I’ve read are great, putting some science behind what I love.

BBC Lab’s How Musical Are You? does something similar, asking you a series of questions, some with audio, for around half an hour. At the end you get a bunch of results as to how keen you are on music, how daring with it you get and if you’re likely to cry listening to an Anthony and The Johnsons song or not.

For some reason this great tool doesn’t have any share functionality which will disappoint the wealth of internet users out there that love nothing more than to show off about their musical tastes and how great their knowledge is. Luckily my ego knows how to make screenshots of webpages, so here are my results:

Enthusiasm for music – 90%
Music perception – 83%
Emotional connection – 76%
Social creativity – 40%
Musical curiosity – 49%

How well can you tap in time to Lady Gaga? Would you hear the difference if Barry White had been castrated? Find out here.