Glastonbury

I have never seen so much mud in my life!!! There’s a distinct risk that this blog could become all about mud. Let me tell you about mud. There’s the super sloshy mud, where you have to walk very carefully to avoid splashing it from head to, well let’s say knee as your toes are already well out of view. The other risk of this mud is stepping down a hole you can’t see and filling your wellies. Then there’s the slightly drier gloopy mud, where if you stop moving you’re stuck forever. Also known as the wellie catcher and the thigh burner – I must have burnt some serious kilojoules wading through this stuff. Straight after rain, this mud can turn into quickmud – stand still and you’ll just sink.

But worst of all is the deceptive, clay like slippery mud with a thin coating of gloop. At least with the gloop you’re pretty solid on your footing. In fact, you could probably try to fall over and the mud would hold you at a 30 degree angle from the ground. But with the slippery mud, one false move and you’d be down. This fortunately did not happen to me, as I think it would have ruined me (good English phrase that), what with the lack of showers and all.

The Glastonbury Festival is legendary. Held over 3 days, ostensibly in summer, thousands of people descend upon what for the rest of the year is a working farm to watch big name rock bands from around the world, less well known bands, famous DJs, comedians and lots, lots more (including acts that can only be classified as “other”). In this year’s case, it was 177,000 people! That’s a hell of a lot of people in a few acres. I’m writing this on a train to Newcastle and I have no internet access but I encourage you to go on the BBC site and others and look at the photos. (I didn’t take my camera – see above section on mud to understand why).
Everyone stays on site, which means there was a sea of tents. At first, approaching the site from a distance, you think that it’s a massive car park. Tents so close to each other that lines are crossing.

{Side note – my train’s just been delayed near Mossley because of some theft of cable involving the signalling, so the train’s having to be signalled through by hand. Copper’s bringing a high return in the UK lately!}

I got a lift down from Manchester with some nice people who I met through a website, liftshare.org. Really good idea to help people save on transport costs (petrol here is £1/L). They’d bought the super expensive £300 tickets (mine was half that) which got them into a special camp area (which apparently had real toilets and even showers!). I set up my £10 tent round near one of the main stages, with the benefit that I could hear the first act each day at 11am without getting out of bed. I carefully selected a spot when I could find a spare bit of grass (on Thursday afternoon, there was still grass to be seen, and again on Monday morning when people pulled up there tents) near an aussie flag sticking up as a beacon to help me find my way home each night.

I should clarify at this point that apart from when it was raining and when I was having difficulties catching up with my friends at various points (for some reason the mobile networks couldn’t handle 100,000 simultaneous text messages) I did have an amazing time. I realise it might not sound like that so far! But everyone was so friendly, the crowds were super polite even at the big acts, the duchy was well and truly being passed… It was just a real community atmosphere wherever you went. We spent a lot of time at the smaller stages (which had the benefit of usually being in tents, so when it was raining, tiny cabaret acts like the poet who only used the vowel ‘a’ and who expected maybe 10 people to show up suddenly had 100 times that!). These were set up in little corners of the site so they became mini villages in their own right.

The food stalls were amazing. Not a dagwood dog in sight. I spent some time whinging that if I could get a fantastic Caribbean goat curry, or a gourmet chicken pie, or a French crepe or udon noodles for only £5 at Glastonbury, why the hell couldn’t I get that for lunch in Manchester? I had carefully only taken a small amount of money though, so I didn’t sample too many of the stalls. I did sample quite a bit of the mulled cider on the first night, but after that tried to avoid the alcohol as much as possible, as beer = toilet. And that’s all I’m going to say on that subject.

Highlights:

1. The Cat Empire - I was working my irony here because I skipped the big main stage act, the Arctic Monkeys (from Sheffield) because I’d seen them in Perth in favour of the little Australian band I’d never got round to seeing. They were awesome. You should have seen them doing the gum boot shuffle too. I managed to get all the way to the front and centre. Of course, this was the only act where there was a bit of pushing and shoving (because the crowd was full of australians).

2. Dame Shirley Bassey – what a pro. She performed one flawless number then told the Arctic Monkeys that that was how you did it, before thanking them for having done her the honour of covering Diamonds are Forever (wish I’d seen that). She herself did an awesome cover of the Doors’ Light my Fire. Absolute class.

3. The Broken Family Band – small local act, really great music, very funny too.

4. The Hold Steady – little US band, and the lead singer from Minnesota just looks like Mr Everyman from some American movie: smallish, 40ish, balding, paunch, glasses, a bit hunched, whiney nasal voice, stripey shirt – and he just rocked out!

5. A morning in Left Field – dual play on words, as in out of left field and politically very left (eg this was where Greenpeace had their tent). Really funny comedians (although come on, the USA is just too easy a target) and also a very moving speech from Tony Benn. He served under Churchill, introduced nuclear power and now campaigns fiercely (and very eloquently) against nuclear anything. There was a scary Yes Minister moment when he talked about how, despite being the Minister for Energy, he wasn’t told that waste from the peaceful nuclear power he’d embraced after the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was being processed into american weapons.

6. Mica in the dance tent with giant bunnies on the stage (don’t ask)

7. Lots of little weird moments, like the irish gypsy band in a corner somewhere at sunrise singing Brittney Spears. The three skimpy opera singers in a pub called the Saloon bar, singing Brittney Spears…. The wine bar selling wine in water bottles next to the australian steak stall that attracted custom by blaring out sing-a-long songs like Bohemian Rhapsody until 3am (and the small crowd doing the singing along). The sculptures near Lost Vagueness (for when everything else was shut). The climate change education tent where you could sit on a bike and make your own fruit smoothie. The drums in the stone circle. The hippy family with the 8 yo girl leading a huge conga line to the latin band on the jazz stage (there was a surprising number of kids. I thought this was a bit iffy at first, but they all seemed happy, no tears and lots of mud pies).

And of course all the great people I met. One of the funny things about being in a place where people have come from all over the country is that you just don’t know what someone’s going to sound like when they open their mouths! The number of accents in this country is just crazy! A couple of bronzed, bleached blonde girls that I was sure were going to be aussies but spoke with a proper midlands accent for example.

Not highlights – the Killers, because one of the speakers wasn’t working, and Babyshambles – gratuitous use by lead singer Pete Doherty of girlfriend Kate Moss. To make up for the fact he really can’t sing.
Well, this has been a long one. Next up, english weddings and scottish bombs.