Glastonbury tales

Time for an epic post rounding up our recent trip to Glastonbury. Yes, this year we managed to get tickets again for the three day music festival held in a farmer's fields. It doesn't sound like much, does it, but it's so popular that the phone lines went down and the internet site crashed as soon as tickets went on sale. I spent from 8pm until 1am next morning clicking the refresh button on my browser with one hand and redialling my mobile phone with the other. Not fun. I got up again twice in the night to see if things were back up and running, but no joy.

Luckily, I'd sent everyone that usually goes to Glasto a reminder that tickets would be on sale. When I made it to my computer again at 9am, tired and tetchy, there was an email from one of the Daves (I have six friends called Dave, if I ever needed an alibi I'd say I was with Dave and skip the country while the police were doing the rounds). This particular Dave asked if I'd got through yet, and his email contained a magic link that missed out all the crashed web pages and took you straight into the page where you paid.

Five minutes later and the nightmare was over, Cinderella would go to the ball!
As a present for two of my friends I'd also decided to buy them tickets. They're married and looking to buy their first flat in London, which means either selling
your kidneys on the black market or cutting out treats like Glastonbury tickets. Or both. But they'd been there at my first Glastonbury and helped make it so special, and they'd also been amazingly helpful during my wedding period this year, so I really wanted them to come. I figured buying the tickets would take the cost off them and I could justify it by skipping their birthdays for the next few years. Unfortunately, it was the whole cost they were trying to save - train fare and spending cash included - and they had to turn them down. I found this slightly embarrassing, as I'm sure they did as well. In a funny way it reminded me of one Christmas when I was going out with a girl who loved musicals. I bought us matinee tickets to Phantom of the Opera, took her for a meal, then we went to the evening performance of Les Miserables. She went to her family for Christmas and I went to mine, and she never spoke to me again - not even to break up. I'm not sure there's a moral to these stories, unless it's that I should save extraordinary presents for my wife, who by law has to smile and accept them and still be around after Christmas.

The other unusual thing about Glastonbury is that the tickets go on sale before there are any properly confirmed acts. "How can you buy tickets to a musical festival when you don't even know who's playing?" people ask. My reply is always "You've never been to Glastonbury, have you?" The music is almost there as
an afterthought, you can see everything you want to or just drift around and catch things by accident. I don't want to come over all hippy, but most people go there for it's unique vibe. It's the one thing I look forward to all year and it makes all the other day-to-day crap you go through seem worthwhile. You want to put a downer on my year? You don't need to swap all my CDs to Morrisey albums, just tell me I'm
not welcome at Glastonbury.

The only other pre-Glasto bit of strife concerned the gazebo, a sort of tent without sides that's designed to keep the sun or rain off you rather than for sleeping in. You might think that's a poncy thing to take to a festival, but it's a remarkably useful bit of kit. When you camp, it's standard procedure to have friends pitch their tents in a circle, all facing into a patch of grass in the middle. This is the bit of grass you're going to sit on when you're hanging around your tents. That is, until someone turns up two days later and decides they can fit their tent on that patch of grass, blocking off the doors to all your tents in the process. To stop this happening we've been pitching the gazebo in the middle, so it's not a vacant spot anymore. But this year there were only going to be a few of us, so it didn't seem to be worth it. Also, my wife was coming down the day after me, so I was already carrying our tent and our huge airbed/sleeping bag thing. I didn't want to be lugging the gazebo as well. After much cajoling by my friend ("If I carry it down there, will you carry it back?") I still refused to have anything to do with it, and
thought the matter was done.

When I turned up at the train station on Thursday, I was surprised to see the gazebo strapped to a large wheeled carrying device. It seems my friend had decided to bring it after all - he easily wins the Most Stubborn award of all my friends so this shouldn't have been a surprise - and this was the solution to any of us carrying it. But as long as it wasn't adding to my weight load that was fine with me.
Having established that I had my Glasto ticket (last year I left it at home and had to get a later train), I drew some money out and we were away. We had to change trains once to get to Castle Cary, but apart from a couple of sets of stairs to lug the wheeled contraption up and down this wasn't much of a hassle. At least that's what we thought.

When we arrived at Castle Cary my friend searched the train pretty thoroughly before we got off. It seems the bits we need to connect the gazebo together were
in a bag strapped to the wheeled carrier, and now that bag was missing. Chief culprit for knocking the bag off seemed to be the stairs at the last station. As my
friend kicked his remaining luggage around the platform, I asked the station manager to call back to the last station to see if they had the bag. After a 10 minute wait it wasn't good news, no sign of the bag anywhere. Bugger. Not only had my friend carried it all the way here for no reason, but it wasn't even his and he'd lost the bits to make it work! We trooped on to the bus for the final leg of the journey, slightly wary of my friend's bad mood.

The bus journey from Castle Cary station to Worthy Farm takes about half an hour in normal conditions, but about an hour upwards if you do it on the Friday when the festival traffic's at its peak. The site everyone's waiting to see is the first glimpse of the festival, from the fields full of tents and the large marquees, to the rows of cars with the sun reflecting off their windsheilds like a giant mirror. As usual there was a cheer on the coach when we reached this point, and I got my first little Glastonbury shiver of joy down my back.

Once you're through the ticket check, the only task left before you can officially start having fun is to pitch your tent. In previous years we've come down on the Wednesday so we can get a great spot on the hill overlooking the main stage. But this year we fancied a change, and were going to try for somewhere near the
Glade (for late night dance music) or the Stone Circle (for a more chilled, less chavvy [link] crowd than you get on the hill). It had rained badly on the Wednesday, so we thought that would have kept some of the early birds away. We also hoped my friend's mate had saved us a spot near the Glade, especially since we'd saved him a spot the year before. But a quick call established that he hadn't bothered, which put my friend's already fragile mood down even further. After consulting one of the stewards (top tip: don't camp near the dance tent as that's where most thefts occur), we decided to risk going up to the stone circle to see if we could still get into the field next to it. The spot we found after an hour's search wasn't big enough for both our tents to be next to each other, but we could split up and only be about 10 yards apart. That was partly because we'd both bought bigger tents, in fact we'd bought the exact same model! My tiny two-man effort had been retired because it had "Congratulations on your engagement" written on it in nail varnish after I popped the question last year. And because we wanted a bigger tent.

Tents pitched, it was time to relieve some stress with a beer or two. The important question of the day was whether the England versus Portugal match was going to be shown on the big screen. With so many people already there on the Thursday night, the festival organisers didn't want them all heading into the
surrounding tiny villages in search of a pub with a TV. Getting a licence for the festival is enough of a hassle each year without stories of thousands of footy
fans bothering the surrounding area. As we rolled up to the main stage it was obvious they were planning to show the game, or there were about to be about 60,000
very disappointed people. I was quite proud to be part of the largest gathering of fans anywhere in the world watching the game. The match was a true gem of English
football madness, made even more surreal by the fact that I was watching it in a field with so many other fans. The great atmosphere was only spoiled by the disallowing of Sol Campbell's goal, and the inevitable losing on penalties to the Portugese. I can't remember England winning a penalty shoot out in my lifetime,
although I'm sure it must have happened. We were out of the tournament, but at least on the upside I now had three days of Glasto joy to take my mind off it.

Friday arrived with the same sunny flourish as Thursday, and Wednesday's muddy wetness seemed a far away nightmare. The missus was coming down today, giving me the only serious drain on my mobile phone for the weekend while we sorted out meeting up. I was looking forward to seeing her, last year I was so happy to see her I proposed straight away, not able to wait until Saturday night as had been my plan. She runs the risk of missing some good bands by coming down on Friday afternoon - the year before The Darkness had opened the main stage on Friday morning - but there wasn't too much to miss this year. And it does mean she's clean for one more day than me. Frankly I'm glad she comes at all, I can't think of any previous girlfriend who would camp for three days with no possibility of a private shower. After dropping her stuff off we, ahem, tested that the airbed/sleeping bag contraption was fully working. It's best to know these things. Then we got some nosh and met up with my other friends.

Before you go to Glastonbury you should be aware that the meet-up matrix has been completly reversed. In layman's terms what this phenomenom means is that if you plan to meet up with someone at Glasto it won't happen, just resign yourself to talking to them when you get home. If you didn't plan to meet someone, you will bump into them at some point. This isn't as easy as you think with 120,000 wandering around, but it was the case with Dave (the same one who gave me the link to tickets in case you're wondering, Mr McCormack to give him his full name). Sitting waiting for Goldfrapp to come on, I got up to go and get a bottle of water. Sitting two people behind us was Dave McCormack, so I was able to introduce yet another Dave to my wife and have a chat about tickets, toilets, thieves and bands - all the Glasto big issues. I was also able to thank him face to face for the link that got us here in the first place.

The missus and I had never seen Goldfrapp before and they were sensational, our real find of the weekend. They carried on the furry/plushie theme the Flaming
Lips started last year by having two dancers dressed in stag heads. Not that I get off on stuff like that, I'm not a Tory MP you know. It's a sign of how good they were that the missus ordered their first two albums from CDWow as soon as we arrived home.

Following Goldfrapp were our band of choice, the Chemical Brothers. My first ever Glastonbury had Fat Boy Slim followed by the Chems in the dance tent, which was a superb night. That was before the Surrender album came out, so was one of the first
times anyone had heard Hey Boy, Hey Girl. The whole place - including myself - went crazy. While I haven't had the same experience since, the Chems never fail to disappoint and they were suitably on form again.

It's at this point that I should explain about the Glade. A few years ago it was clear that dance music was becoming a bigger part of the festival, with acts headlining the main stages rather than being stuck in the ghetto of the Dance Tent. One of the offshoots that appeared was the Glade, a very small forest area with some chillout garb hanging from the trees that played ambient music. It was a superb place to crash for an hour if the festival became too much. Some big-name dance acts played, but always under a pseudonym to avoid drawing big crowds and the line-up only appeared in the daily Glastonbury paper.

Fast-forward a few years to today, where the Glade has a bigger built-in stage and the listings appear next to those for the other stages. The small comfortable cafe of the past few years has been replaced by a larger tented bar and food hall. Not only that, but it's now one of the only places onsite to have a late music license. With the Chemical Brothers about to finish their set on the Other Stage, the drug-enhanced chatty dance crowd had only one topic of conversation: once the Chems finished, Fat Boy Slim and then The Chems would be playing The Glade. How did they know this? Because the listing for the Glade read Drunk Soul Brother followed by the London Dust Explosion, aliases the fans could easily work out. So when the
lazer lights finally dimmed on the Other Stage, 50,000 people all had the same idea - let's go and see Fat Boy Slim at that place that holds a maximum of about 1,000 people (if that). We spent about half an hour trying to get anywhere near it before knocking the idea on the head completely and going for a wander instead.

Saturday morning brought with it the dreaded rain. We were well prepared for this, because of the rain midweek. That didn't make us feel any better, though.
I'd never been to a muddy Glastonbury year before, I started coming after the last deluge. But the media always portrays it like a good thing, look at all
these people diving in the mud and enjoying themselves. Isn't it great! The mother-in-law always says "Ooooh, I hope it rains for you, I know you love the mud" when we mention Glastonbury. And every time - again and again - we both say "No, we don't want it to rain, we don't want it to be muddy, we want a nice sunny festival". But it just doesn't get through, the media influence is too strong. To be fair, the same
thing happened this year. When the rain came down and the ground became muddy, out came all the usual idiots to dive in it for the TV cameras and get their pictures in the tabloids. But take it from me, 99.99999 per cent of the people there were doing their best to stay clean, dry and mud free.

The only real bonus of the rank weather was a true Glasto moment that happened when we were dodging the rain. The Leftfield Tent, a beer tent with a stage for left-leaning acts, always looked full from the outside. But having been in it the day before we knew there was plenty of space inside. So when the rain came down we skipped inside, grabbed some drinks and sat down. When we realised who was on stage, we grinned. Glen Tilbrook from the Squeeze was playing with his new band, but was doing a lot of old Squeeze material. What a find!

During the set, the staff on the Co-operative stand in the tent started to hand out hundreds of multi-packs of crisps. As these made their way into the main crowd, people were opening the big bags and throwing individual packets forward to people nearest the stage. Liking this generosity on everyone's part, I decided to do the same. So I trooped over to the side of the crowd and chucked one. I think the expression "throw like a girl" might not be completely unjustified, as rather than winging its way into the crowd the bag twatted the bloke just in front of me in the head. Quick thinking, I spun on my heels, turned my back and walked away as if it wasn't me that threw it. I didn't want my good intentions to end in a fist fight.

Getting a bit low on funds, I decided to see if the rain had dampened the fires of cashpoint hell. Getting money out at Glastonbury is always fun. If you turn up at four in the morning you might only have to queue for 20 or 30 minutes. If you turn up at prime-time Saturday night, expect to miss the next two acts as you moan and kick the ground for the next two and a half hours. So as we came upon the queue and it seemed to be really short, we joined it. "Oi!" said a voice behind us, "the queue's back there." He was right, but where the queue met the two cashpoints it split into two, and as the two lines drifted apart other people kept joining it. We moved to go to the back of the queue and six other people joined where we'd just left. There was no way I was going to the back of a queue that people were pushing into every five minutes, so we rejoined at the same point. It wasn't very Glasto but it was very common sense. The small, annoyed man behind us then moaned for the 40 minutes it took us to get to the front. In a loud voice. Just to make sure we could hear. Apparently he'd been queuing for three hours. What he didn't realise is
that the two queue's were supposed to go in opposite directions - one to the left and the other to the right - to avoid this very problem of people pushing in. That's how they'd been every other time I'd been past. So we let his annoyed comments bounce off and marked time in the mud.

When we reached the front I had a real nightmare moment. I typed in my card number and it was wrong. Oops, I thought, must be more careful so I tried again. It was still wrong. I then realised I couldn't remember what it was and had a full-on panic. Oh-my-god I had only used it days before at the train station. If I typed it in a third time and got it wrong it would probably eat my card. I took the only option available and called the missus over, borrowing money from her. Thank god we'd queued together!

That night we decided to see Paul McCartney on the main stage. Paul was late coming on so a dance DJ warmed up the crowd, which was probably not the right choice for this audience. We could tell the crowd was a little different because there were so many people sat in chairs, with picnic baskets of wine and snacks at the ready. But this came home full force when another bangin' choon came on and a cultured Oxbridge accent somewhere behind us exclaimed "Oh come on Sir Paul". The missus and I exchanged looks and tried desperately not to laugh out loud. When Paul finally
arrived we wished he hadn't bothered. He kicked in with a lot of Wings material, and after three songs we fled to see Basement Jaxx. I wasn't willing to wade through an hour and a half Wings retrospective just to hear him finish with Hey Jude.

By the Sunday the mud was back in full force. This didn't really matter for most of the day, as we hadn't planned to see much. The English National Opera performing Ride of the Valkyries was worthy of note, especially for the bondage-clad opera stars pulling the chariots. Bringing opera to a whole new audience indeed. And the man himself, the Godfather of Soul, Mr James Brown played a competent if not blinding set. The funniest moment was when the huge build up by his personal MC led to someone else coming on stage and singing the first song. Cue massive double-takes by the crowd looking at the big screen and whispers of "That's not him is it?" Eventually there was an even bigger bigging-up by the MC for the next song and
James himself appeared. My mates also appeared with some exotic-smelling cigarettes, which is the kind of good timing you need when a soul legend is playing his
last possible gig (no offence, but surely every gig these days could be James' last gig).

The only other gig of choice that day was Orbital on the Other Stage. This really was supposed to be Orbital's last ever gig, following their London shows earlier in the week. But the boys couldn't help sneaking in a few more festival dates and some classic venues (Chelmsford anyone?). But the fact that I was seeing them for the final time made it special for me. Orbital's version of Doctor Who in my first
Glasto year was one of the first tracks I ever downloaded from the internet. It gave me goosebumps every time I heard it, and put me back among a massive crowd in a stupidly small field. It's since been wiped along with everything else on a dead PC, but I'm definately going to track it down again. The boys have a long history of Glasto appearances and did themselves proud with the massive fan base that turned out to see them. The mud made it hard to dance too vigorously, unless you wanted to look like a giant cow pat, but we couldn't keep our feet still to the passing of such greatness. The only shame was that my little video camera has appalling sound when those on stage crank it up to 11.

And with that another Glastonbury clanged shut like a nun's legs. We were leaving very early in the morning but I was too hyper to sleep. The missus was worse, spending the night wandering around taking photos before taking refuge in the large swiss log cabin to make notes and write her personal diary. When dawn came we packed up our tent and wandered off to beat the rush for the train. The trek across the Other Stage field was perilous, with my massive backpack threatening to take me down into the mud at every step. The discarded piles of wellies at the bus stop showed we were back to civilisation and dry land.

I'm already looking forward to next year. But it's getting harder and harder to get tickets every year, so if you're reading this disregard everything good
I've said and skip it in 2005. Just look at those idiots diving in the mud, do you want to end up like that?