6:03am: Why am I up? Alarm was set to 8am. Then I hear it. The cage rattling, the whining. Yossarian, my pet Glen of Imaal Terrier, is awake. Way ahead of schedule. He wants to leave his crate to go outside to wee and poo. I trudge out of bed. Take him downstairs. I smoke. He does his business. Back upstairs. Back to sleep.
8am: Alarm goes off. I’m up. I’m up. I’m… oh I hear the kids in the living room, they’ve already awakened. Just gonna grab my phone for bit whilst I lay in bed.
8:40am: Fucks sake. Too much doom-scrolling, now I’m behind schedule. Juno, my 7-year old, has her big musical theatre performance today and needs to be dropped off by 9:45am in nearby Edmonton. I force myself out of bed. After much bargaining and negotiating, she agrees to have scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast. Zeki, my eldest (aged 11) has the same. I serve them both, make myself a coffee and take Yos out to poo/pee one more time as I have my second cigarette of the day.
9:10am: Juno still hasn’t touched her breakfast. We argue. A tantrum ensues. “I don’t want breakfast and I don’t want to do my show today.” I really don’t have time for this today. I need to drop Juno off. Then drop Zeki off to his mum. Then drop my dog off to my mum. Then drive to Dalston, meet the work lot. Pack my car. Drive to Silverworks for a day festival with 13k expected attendees. Drop off all our food. Get my festival accreditation so I can return. Leave the festival site by 11:45am, drive to Chingford to pick up my mum and head to the theatre in time for 12:30pm for Juno’s performance. Then work the festival from 4pm onwards. And now we’re already behind because she won’t touch her food. I need to shower. Do I shower? Do I have time? I make an executive decision – one which will benefit society greatly: I shower.
9:40am: Ok we really need to leave now. I haven’t had a chance to have my own breakfast yet but neither child touches the crusts of their toasts, so I scoff down the scraps. They both take their vitamins, brush their teeth and we’re off. Albeit 15minutes late. I pack Juno a lunch for her long day: fruit rolls and chocolate digestives. Awful diet, and not healthy, but today is all about survival and I’d rather put things in her lunch box she’ll actually eat rather than neglect.
10:05am: I drop off Juno, 20minutes later than intended. No time to soak in the moment, my little girl all grown up and working TWO performances today after being requested to by the show’s and theatre school’s director. She’s a star in the making.
10:50am: I am at Mangal II. Mahir, Pav, Georgie have arrived earlier and have collated everything we need to sell our wraps at the festival. Whilst they’re loading up, I decide to go to M&S to grab myself breakfast and a coffee somewhere. I reach M&S at 10:57am. Doors are shut. They open at 11am. Georgie texts me to say someone is asking me to move my car. I skip breakfast and rush back. Off we head to Silverworks.
11:30am: We reach the site. Miraculously, everything is on time. I am bewildered. No traffic. Could it be because I have been driving like a maniac all morning to try and make it on time for all my duties? I have a backwards cap on and feel like a boy-racer. I feel embarrassed, like Hans Mollman masquerading as Bart Simpson but I need to move fast. I need to hustle. The team are setting up and I depart.
12:27pm: After picking my mum up, we reach the theatre on time. Bless my mum, she’s made Juno Turkish pastries to eat after her show. I find out that an ungrateful, bad-intentioned and incompetent ex-employee who I loathe was at the restaurant last night. I call my sous chef to find out how long for and what they did, but then the lights go dark and the show kicks off and I hang up.
2:30pm: Ok, it’s official, Juno is a star! The show was amazing, all the young dancers and performers were brilliant. Mum and I are moved by the performances. Juno is the only one appearing in two shows, second at 5:30pm – which her mum and Zeki will attend. They need to keep her at the site for the next one, but I talk to the organisers and manage to coax her away for an ice-cream treat. First, though, she has to eat the pastries or no treats. She does, thankfully. She chooses an Oreo one. I tell her I love her and I’m proud of her about 700 times in the space of 15 minutes. Ok, no time to be emotional, gotta go. I drop her back, drop my mum back, and boy racer it to the festival. Wait, Mahir asked me to buy jumbo bin bags. I go to a shop in Chingford, and find some. The guy serving looks at me strangely and asks “Where do I recognise you from?” – this weirdly happens to me more often than I feel comfortable admitting. Turns out he was at the festival last week and I served him. I recall his face. His name is Arda. I don’t think I’ve had an Arda day than this. Third coffee. Fourth cigarette.
3:45pm: Man, I really miss my girlfriend Heather. She’s in France for a bit for a hen do, two weddings, and a mini holiday. We text all morning and I update her about Juno’s show. But once I enter the festival I know I won’t have any signal until I leave there at around 10pm. She’s in Marseille, and in three days I will join her. It motivates me. Let’s hustle. I park about a 20minute walk away from the festival. It is hot. I say my “I love you’s”, “I miss you’s”, and “goodbyes” to her. I enter the pit.
4pm – 9pm: Jesus, it is too hot to be by the grill selling wraps to attendees at a drum n bass festival. It’s the busiest one we’ve worked but unsurprisingly the volume of food we sell is modest. Drugs, man. All these kids aren’t here to eat. Every dude is topless and with a bucket hat. So much flesh on display. Nothing sexy about it. I don’t know what the word is for anti-horny, but I am that. We still sell a fair amount of wraps, and work non-stop. It is tiring. I am tired. But I do love being with the team. Michel of El Jardin is the 5th hand joining us to help. We all get along so well. All we do is laugh and work well as a unit. I remember that I haven’t eaten all day. The vendor’s next to me (‘Sear’) serve me the most incredible steak and chips, all cooked in beef dripping, with chimichurri and aioli. This is my breakfast. I feel like the King of Gout. But I savour every bite. Those potatoes, man. I try and get signal on my phone to find out about Juno’s second performance, and message Heather. I leave the festival for a bit, standing by the gates to see if I can text. Nothing. Silverworks is the Fort Knox of satellite communication. Oh well.
9pm: Team starts packing up and I head to my car to bring it over to load up. I leave the site and have signal. Juno smashed it in her second performance. I facetime Zeki and her. I miss them already. I call Heather. I get a dopamine hit and feel good. I smoke my 7th cigarette of the day. Maybe 8th. I lost count. I drive the car to the site, we load up, I drop everyone home one-by-one and drop the bits off back to the restaurant. I buy a Ginger Shot drink and kombucha. Not my usual go to, especially the latter, but I feel gross and want to put something healthy inside me. Mahir and I chat on the drive home as he too lives in Chingerz. I really like Mahir.
11:30pm: I am home. I missed Norway beating Brazil, and I deliberate whether to stay up for the England game at 1am. Then I hear it’s been delayed by an hour. No fucking chance. I smoke. Take Yos out for another poo/wee (he’s been home since 9pm after my mum dropped him back). Some TV. Then I sleep. I did it. I did today, somehow, and all on time.
I often think about the scene in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta documents the day of his arrest and all the tasks he had to do that day, one-by-one. It resonates with my life. As does the movie Crank, where Jason Statham has to keep his adrenaline alive because if he stops, he dies. I think of sharks, and how they never stop moving. I am Ferhat Dirik. I am multi-faceted. And I am a machine.