Later that night, Nikki and I will walk for miles trying to find a cab back to the hotel, grinning and admiring the gravel For a pair of miserable cows, this is a novelty. We feel huge Carly Simon smiles inching across our faces, which we trace with our fingers, trying to catch them, like trying to see the backs of our heads in the mirror. Why? People are dying of tuberculosis on our streets, and those who claim the moral high ground are fooling around building Saxon roundhouses for singing and storytelling.Never mind Learn to juggle Make some crystal pendants Sniff some essential oils Cast the runes Get your Tarot cards read Eat some sunflower seeds. Tree Spirit want to plant native broad leaf trees - an excellent aim - and also "hope to create a deeper sense of awareness and affection for trees, woods and the natural environment as a hole [sic]" How lovely. They've bought some land and are planting it up; they are also - wait for it - going to build a "Saxon-style roundhouse". New Agers gather about them this indiscriminate hodge-podge of borrowed culture, other cultures' playthings.

Sitting on a beach playing a conch shell is lovely, but if you don't get on with it and cultivate the manioc, you're stuffed come the rainy season. Ultimately, whatever the power of spirituality, survival comes first. You can't heal people if they're starving to death.Sellotaped to the inside of a loo door, I found a leaflet from a charity called Tree Spirit. Is there anybody in the New Age movement who actually does something useful? It's all very well running drumming workshops and teaching people to make chalk carvings, but these are the accoutrements of a leisured society. But as the old West Country proverb goes, fine words butter no parsnips. "I don't know, you just blow really hard until it stops sounding horrible."And this is the problem. Everywhere you look there are posters and people earnestly discussing the necessity for love and sharing, and making beautiful things out of bits of wood.

see me now, aged and haggard from your poisons..."On the edge of a beautiful round garden made from driftwood, willow strips and shrubs in pots, a woman summons people by blowing on a conch shell. They join hands and energise, smiling lovingly at one another Someone asks her how you play a conch shell and she shrugs. Parked nearby is a van belonging to Southampton Scrap, who "turn waste things into play things". There's a PA system run by bicycle power, and generating it is popular with pre-pubescent boys. It pumps out flutey, drummy Goddess music with the sort of lyrics I got embarrassed about writing around the age of 13: "Sun spread your rays to embrace the celebrants"; "I am as old as the earth itself ... Voices issue from the open flaps: "Andrew! I said no kicking!" "Would Alasdair like some cheese?" "I just love it in here. I can close my eyes and play for hours..."Each tent, each vehicle, carries a sign: cider 3 litres pounds 4, scented flares pounds l, didgeridoos pounds 15/pounds 20; reflexology; massage, osteopathy; chinese herbs; reconfigure your DNA; dressed salads pounds 1.50; yoga; t'ai chi; aura readings.