Book Review of Diary of a Witchcraft Shop 2

Each year, a gang of us descend upon Trevor and Liz's home. We're all destined for the Glastonbury Festival, and they live conveniently down the road.

On the eve of the festival, we throw up our tents in their orchard, ready for a strategic start when the gates open. When it's all over, we return for showers and a nice sit down.

It's in these circumstances that I picked up Diary of a Witchcraft Shop 2. You can read about it on page 31 of the book, where Katy (B) and I (A) discuss the toilets.

This year I perched on a wooden chair at the edge of Trevor and Liz's orchard, in order to read their book. Occasionally, one of my peers would wander by in order to take their turn in the bathroom, or to switch on the kettle.

"We can hear you laughing on the other side of the orchard." McKenna blithely informed me.

"Read this!  Read this!"  I thrust the book under her nose. There's a short pause while the American woman gets up to speed. Then laughter that you could probably have heard in Wells. "See my point?!"

"Yes."  And a grin like a chipmunk carried her into the house.

So there's the thing. While I have to declare the bias of knowing these people (and drinking their tea, demolishing their mead, abusing their hospitality at every turn), I still feel quite justified in recommending their witchcraft shop diaries to all.

In fact, McKenna's friend and traveling companion Ember returned to the shop the very next day to get a copy of the first installment!

You don't have to know these people (or these animals, or these entities) in order to enjoy the anecdotes on offer. By the time you finish the book, you'll feel like you know them anyway, as they are very vividly brought to life. Or conjured into being.

Magic and insanity exist in Glastonbury in equal measures, often as pretty much the same thing. The authors react to all with an open-minded practicality, which is the only sane way to meet incidents such as they encounter.

Unless you're Jamie - one of the Voodoo boys - who seasons his reactions with quips and hilarious one-liners, some of which are dutifully recounted in these pages.

If you're not wide-eyed with wonder that such-and-such a thing actually happened, then you're crying with laughter over it. The sort of laughter that can be heard across acres.

We all read these diaries to watch the eccentric and bizarre trotted out for our amusement. But sometimes those concerns trip past the point of harmless fun, into real danger.

My smile certainly froze on my face, when I read of the local lunatic who arrived wielding weaponry at Trevor and Liz's front door.  There was a downright frown at the antics of the paranoid individual, who seemed convinced that they were cursed by all and sundry.

It was a stark reminder that the very difference, which makes Glastonbury so special, can also lead to people spinning out beyond the pale.

So too do we meet those blinkered individuals, who believe that Glastonbury is somehow magically shielded from the rest of the country. While Britain struggles beneath its prolonged recession, there are those in the town who think that it doesn't apply on certain areas of the Somerset plains. As if the Tor will save them, when the ruin on the top is itself testimony to Glastonbury's place in politics and the wider scheme of things.

To complete the spectrum of human experience and emotion, we also travel with Trevor and Liz to the funerals of family members. The sadness underscores the hilarity elsewhere.

Do I recommend this book?  Absolutely yes.  In fact, I'm now hanging on for the third one!