Fortunately, the Milk . . . by Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell

Gaiman claims this might just be the silliest book he's ever written. He's certainly had fun writing it, letting his imagination run loose through children's genres, as a boy recounts his father's story of an unlikely adventure on the way home from the shops. The result is a classic tall tale, full of memorable characters, brought wonderfully to life in Chris Riddell's cartoon illustrations. Kids should find the silliness thoroughly entertaining, while there are plenty of good jokes for Mums and Dads too, all delivered with impeccable timing. While the story has a shaggy dog element, it's perfectly formed, having fun with the twists and turns of time travel and memorably punctuated by the eponymous catchphrase 'fortunately, the milk...'

I can't wait to read it to our kids.

Rating: *****
Read: I had the great pleasure of having it read to me first by Neil himself and a cast of his friends, along with with a few thousand other people in Westminster Central Hall. Then I read it immediately again on the train home, with all the voices still in my head. Then again to my wife as a bedtime story, with a comedy attempt at some of the voices. 

Un dépaysement à la mode

“How was Burning Man?” Everyone keeps asking me. “I bet it was epic…” 

Well, yes, it was thank you. Especially the 24 hour journey to get there; the nine hour queues in and out; the seven days living in a dust bowl; the incredible landscape; the amazing art; the music; the dancing; the people; and, of course, the giant burning spectacle at the end. But it wasn't just epic. 

When people are asked about their Burning Man experience, “I can’t put it into words” is a common response. For those who haven’t been before, this might imply smugness akin to condescension – ie. “If you’ve not been, you just wouldn’t understand” - but I think that’s rarely the intention. In fact it's often quickly followed by a string of fantastical stories. We want to share, not out of boastfulness, but because it’s human nature to tell others about our experiences out of the ordinary. 

So what is this experience that’s so hard to explain? It’s hard to say. It’s different for everyone. It’s different every time. It’s not just one experience, but the culmination of months of preparation, days of travel and a whole week of living in an extremely beautiful, yet exposed, natural environment, as part of one of the most creative and thought provoking social ecologies that you’ll ever be part of. It’s a festival guided by principles which permeate every interaction and experience that you will have there. It has its ups and downs. It is what you make of it. 

The most intimidating barrier for many people thinking about going to Burning Man is its location in the kind of environment that most of us would look to avoid rather than spend any length of time in: a flat dry lake bed in Nevada known as ‘The Playa’. The heat and dust take their toll. There are no natural structures for shelter. The alkaline dust coats everything you can see with a fine film and somehow manages to work its way into everywhere else too. The desert sucks the moisture out of you. Water and shade are the most valuable resources. On top of this you’re expected to practice radical self-reliance. You are responsible for your own water, food, shelter and survival. You have to take all this with you, or at least make provision for it before you arrive. 

If this all sounds rather off-putting, it’s because I’ve missed out the most important factor in the environmental equation: people. We’re social animals. The best way to do the festival is to join a theme camp, or to find a group to start one. You don’t have to get through life alone, and you don’t have to survive Burning Man alone: we do it together. That’s right at the core of the experience, and, to bring out the best in people, there are a number of guiding principles in play.

One of the most widely known principles of Burning Man is the gift economy. This means that you cannot buy anything there, with the notable exceptions of ice and coffee (both luxuries definitely help). The mistake people make is to think that this means it’s a currency free economy of barter and trade. It’s not. It’s a gift economy, which means that you are encouraged to give freely to others without expecting to receive anything in return. What can you give? It doesn’t have to be a ‘thing’. It can be a skill, a story, some food, shelter, time, friendship, compassion. Of course people take some incredible gifts, creating moments of magic as you give or receive the unexpected or the essential. It could be just what you need: a bloody mary, an ice cream, a toothbrush, a tampon, a shoulder to cry on or ear to bend. In fact the best gift can often be yourself. The attitude to adopt is “What can I do for you?” and the more thought you put into that, whether before, during or after the festival, the more you’ll get out of it. 

So we’re all responsible, not just for ourselves, but for the experiences of those around us. We’re all participants. Nothing exists in Black Rock City unless it’s taken there or created by us. There’s no such thing as a punter at Burning Man, there is no separation between the crew and the audience. The crew is the audience and vice-versa. Although there are plenty of opportunities to spectate, there are just as many chances to participate, to help make something happen. You're encouraged to express yourself and to be creative, to open yourself up to others, whether through art, interaction or discussion. You're given the freedom to be yourself, and the opportunity to discover who you could be. If you want to do it, say it, or make it, then go for it. If you don’t know what you want to do, then help someone else. 

To counteract any impulse to judge all this self expression, there's the principle of inclusion. For those who think that Burners form some strange clique or cult, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Everyone's welcome. You just have to take part. The desert could be a lonely place, especially if you're caught out in a dust storm or have an arguement with your camp mates, but the willingness of others to invite you in often redresses the balance. Don’t sit over there on your own, come and join us. Let’s be sociable. Let’s do this together. I’ll help you. 

The upshot of all this is that it creates an open and engaged social environment that is quite different to the privacy and detachment of our day-to-day lives. Throughout the week you’ll find yourself depending on others you’ve never met before, supporting strangers who need you and talking to new people about things you’ve never even told your close friends. This will all be happening in an atmosphere of riotous creativity, fantastic costumes, incredible artworks, wonderful performances, surreal moving sculptures or art cars and wild music played at earth shaking volumes. It’s an inspiring place to be and many of the experiences and conversations you have will continue to inspire you for some time afterwards. 

Such an accepting and free environment is, as you might expect, conducive to the lowering of inhibitions. Certain by-products of this attract more attention, in the way that the slightest hint of titillation excites most people, but what inhibitions you chose to lower are entirely down to you. You don't have to take all your clothes off and run around naked, but no one's going to stop you if you want to. It's worth bearing in mind, though, that while it’s a great place explore your boundaries, you still need to respect those of others. Going to Burning Man doesn’t mean abandoning your consideration in a hedonistic free-for-all. You won't make many friends if you act like a dick and you won't find yourself popular with your campmates if you don’t pull your weight. 

But then work, with the right attitude, doesn’t have to be a chore. Contributing to the domestic well being of your camp can be one of the most rewarding forms of participation. The principle of immediacy encourages you to cherish every situation, even the washing-up. See a bad luck as a challenge, see a mistake as a learning experience. 

Like responsibility to others, a responsibility to the environment is built into the mind-set. 'Leave No Trace' or LNT is a constant mantra. No litter is to be left. Everyone in attendance has a responsibility to collect Matter Out Of Place (MOOP) whenever they see it. This is good practice at any festival, but it's more of a challenge when all waste, including water, must be taken home with you. You have to plan your disposal and recycling, which makes you acutely aware of just how much you generate (toilets are thankfully provided, and kept in great condition). With water in limited and precious supply, you realise just how much of it you normally waste, and how little you can get by with when you have too. It’s perfectly possible to have a body wash instead of a shower, and if you do take a (solar) shower you’re mindful of how much grey water you might be producing. Once the festival’s over, it’s your responsibility to clear your own camp, which you’ll be graded on by the crew who stay onsite to sweep the whole area of any human trace. If only every festival crowd could be so conscientious. 

So how was my Burning Man? 

Well, it was my honeymoon. I proposed to my wife the last time. The experience inspired to embark on life's greatest adventure with her. Our plan this year was to make sure that we enjoyed everything together and we did. 

As in 2011, we joined The Fireworks Collective, a group of fire performers formed each year from the UK to take part in the fire conclave before the man burns. It was the first year the collective has created its own theme camp, Albion - quite a feat for a group of people who live at opposite ends of another country. The camp experience brought the group closer together, bonding through shared endeavour, and we performed some of the best fire shows I’ve been part of. 

Although we helped out at Albion, setting up camp, cooking meals, training and hosting an English Tea Party together, Danielle and I actually camped with our long-term playa family at Pink Heart. Now one of the most recognised landmarks on the Esplanade, the inner circle of camps around the man, Pink Heart embodies the ethos of the festival. At its most simple the purpose of the camp is to provide shelter - shade, cushions, sofas – and to gift water – ice cold and flavoured with refreshing cucumber, which we serve to all comers 24/7. Whilst it might seem seem simple, the gifting of the two most essential commodities in a desert environment is immensely rewarding. The interaction opens you up to the whole festival, as people arrive seeking respite and stay to talk about their experiences, to share their stories. Through these conversations I find that I experience far more than I could ever manage on my own. Oh, and three afternoons of the week we also gave out vegan coconut-milk ice cream. A whole truck-full in three different flavours. You've never seen so much joy.

I’m sitting out the front of Pink Heart one evening talking to a Belgian guy who I’ve just met. In front of us the dark expanse of the desert is animated by a thousand neon lights. All manner of possibility is out there. "This really isn't like any other festival," I declare. “Why do you think that is?” “I don’t know the word for it in English”, the Belgian guy replies, “but in French I guess we’d call this a 'dépaysement'. A relocation to a place that gives you a different perspective on your life.” A change of scene, but also a change of mental state. And that's the part that's hard to explain to someone who's not been here. But I realise that the people who inspire me the most are the ones who don’t only make amazing things happen in the desert. They take what they find here, apply it to their lives and introduce it to the lives of others. That's really what this is all about.

Review: Estuary – responses by contemporary artists @ Museum of London Docklands until 27 October 2013

Between the glass cube offices, new footbridges and luxury flats, you can still see the ghosts of industry etched into the regenerated landscape surrounding the Museum of London Docklands. A pair of navy gray cranes tower like dinosaurs over the dark, placid water of India Quay, cabins level with the Docklands Light Railway that sweeps past from Canary Wharf to Limehouse. 

Leaving the train, winding down the ramp to ground level, I get the first taste of the estuary that I’m here to discover. A rusted barge bloats like a dead whale under the stout, round legs of the overhead rail, seemingly incongruous, beached out of time. 

I walk along the quayside, past the cranes, to the end of a Victorian warehouse conversion, bikes chained to balconies above wooden loading ramps, a row of chain restaurants offering the same bland choice as every dockside redevelopment from Portsmouth to Liverpool. By the water sit a gaggle of branded deckchairs, a small tent and a man with a guitar attempting valiantly to bring some cheer to this strangely sterile space.

The Docklands museum itself is at the end of the row. It’s a beautiful building, outside and in. Heavy wooden roof beams brace the ceiling, propped up by near-petrified pillars and bare,  sandy-coloured brick walls. Through the gift shop entrance there's an open-plan café, with plenty of comfortable leather arm chairs. It’s full of families, here for the fun-looking kidzone signposted with cartoon graphics that lead away to the right, and a youth group watching videos on laptops. 

The exhibition I’ve come to see is 'Estuary – responses by contemporary artists', in gallery space to the left of the café. The low-beamed ceiling echoes with the sound of waves, seagulls and clanking iron; video soundtracks ebbing and flowing in a gentle wash. 

I’m drawn directly to Jock McFayden’s horizon spanning landscapes, which seem to open out directly onto the estuary itself. Barley rippling foregrounds mirror equally blank skies. Caught between them, skeletons of cranes and concrete buildings squat the horizon, denying the flatness. Next to these Michael Andrews appears to have transplanted a section of the estuary onto the wall, stained with river sediment and washed with tides, hazy figures fishing from a groyne at the waters edge, boats blending into the land. The whole exhibition embodies this blurring convergence of land, sea, sky and industry: channeling that strange liminal zone between Greenhill and Whitstable where London meets the sea. 

My reverie is interrupted by a cacophony of clanking iron to my left, where I discover '51 29'.9' North - 0º11' East' by the Bow Gamelan Ensemble, documented on video in 1985. Amid a boneyard of rusted barge hulls, three artists in sou’westers bang, clang and blow torch a variety of makeshift objects, detritus reclaimed as percussion. The tide rises around them and darkness falls. A glorious temporary reclamation from atrophy.

Andrew Kötting’s ‘Jaunt’ is a jolly bricolage of the sounds and scenes encountered on a riverboat from Southend Pier to Westminster in 1995.The voices of locals characters intersperse with the commentary of the captain, stories told in estuary accents, giving us context to cognitively map the length of the river mouth.

The journey is reversed in William Raban’s ‘Thames Film’. It overlays original film shot in the 1980s with archive footage and photos of the shipping industry, breathing monochrome life into the ghost that haunts the rest of the exhibition. Engravings, paintings and maps extend our vision further back; to the cuckold hangings along the 17th century riverbank lined with watermills and Peter Bruegel's hellish vision of death by shipwreck, beyond ‘hope’ (the actual point at which ships returning to harbour would deem themselves as beyond harm). There are also visions of leisure, bathers past and present paddling below the concrete wall of Canvey Island funfair.

Contemporary visions of industry are to be found in Peter Marshall's Thames Gateway, photographs of telegraph poles, new-build housing estates, scrap yards and short stretches of road. This absurdity of everyday banality is echoed in Simon Robert’s Southend Pier, palm trees lining the road in throwing long californian shadows over the asphalt car parks, the coloured loops and spindle metal towers of a fun-fair, pier stretching away into the distance.  

Distance is also the focus of John Smith's 'Horizon (Five Pounds a Belgian)', a mesmerising seascape projected in HD onto the entire wall of a beam-lined screening room. The camera, our view, is looking out to sea, water, sky and their division the only defining features. A soundtrack of waves washes in, the same wave on loop or continuing waves in the same spot, it's hard to tell from the regularity. Every so often the film changes with one of these waves, not the frame or viewpoint, just the time of day, of year, of tide. The soundtrack bears no relation to the agitation of sea on screen, whether dark and white flecked or mill pond calm, it washes on like clockwork. Intermittently the shuffle pauses to allow a scene to unfold: the slow passing of a cargoship on the horizon; the playful tacking and jibing of a fleet of dinghies; a man and his dog on the invisible beach between us and the sea; a seagull emerging from fog; a lifeboat crew laying flowers, heads bowed in respect, before breaking the spell of voyeurism as they wave directly to us. How long did Smith spend on the beach to get this footage. Could one tiny stretch of coast really be so entertaining? It certainly held my attention for a good long while.

Relaxed, like I've had a day at the seaside, I leave the gallery in search of a coffee, feeling as if I've travelled much further than Canary Wharf this afternoon.