Well, I'm back from Glastonbury in one piece! You may have heard that it was a bit wet
this year, and it was. Wetter than 2005 I'd say, but the new drainage stopped the
flooding. It didn't stop the mud though! Anyway, more on that in a bit.
Our bus was due to go at 8:45 on Wednesday morning, but I got a text on Tuesday evening
saying that it had been changed to 2pm. Slightly irritating, but that would mean getting
on-site by 3pm or so, which isn't bad. We got to Bath coach station around 1:20 and
settled in to the short wait, only to discover that the buses were rather disorganised.
Our bus got gradually later, as did everyone else's. There was one guy from See Tickets
who were running everything, supposedly) and he was being mobbed by the 200 or so people
waiting, but didn't know what was going on. He did have all of the tickets in a carrier
bag though, and the first few people who asked got their tickets and made their own way.
This got the guy a telling-off from his bosses though, so he soon stopped that. Time
icked on and the police turned-up as they didn't like 200 increasingly-annoyed people
hanging around the coach station. There wasn't much they could do though (apart from
telling people off for drinking), so everyone sat around getting frustrated for a few
hours. Some reporters from the local paper
turned up, but the only real story was See Tickets being inept.
Anyway, our coach finally left at around 6pm, and we were on-site by 7. Despite my earlier
lofty plans to head for Dragons Field, we set-up in Woodsies as usual - it's a good spot,
especially when rain is expected as it doesn't get too muddy. Even better, it's right next
to gate A where we came in. Having set-up the tents we headed into the markets to look
about. Foolishly we thought that the solstice was on Thursday night, not Thursday morning,
so we missed all of the celebrations at the stone circle. Bah! Still, we grabbed some food
from the excellent Garlic Kitchen (this guy
is also a fan), then after a bit of wandering around went up to the cinema tent to watch
Serenity. After that it was back down into the markets for a bimble about, then back to
the tent for a relatively early one. Little did we know that it was the last time we'd see
much on the ground other than mud.
It rained on Thursday, quite a lot. However, when it finished the ground didn't seem too
bad. We did some things, but also drank quite a lot so I don't remember much about it. We
spent some time in Chai Wallahs drinking their
rather excellent chai, doing some wheatgrass shots, and listening to some of the guys from
One Taste, including the really, really good
Jamie Woon. Not only is he a great
singer/guitarist, but he does a very impressive local loop one man band thing. You really
have to see it. I can't remember anything else we did, but we were in the Leftfield
drinking quite a lot.
On Friday the ground had got pretty muddy, but it was still just about ok in the morning.
The bands had started of course, and we all had timetables in mind. First on my list were
Flipron on the Avalon stage. I'd convinced Nicole
that they were worth seeing, and I think she was convinced. They're always great and it's
just a shame that the set wasn't longer. It was getting muddier all the time though, and
after Flipron it was getting to the point where moving between stages had to be carefully
considered as it took so flippin' long. More beer seemed to help my balance though. I
caught Rory Motion and '4 in a Field' in the cabaret tent, although I only really laughed
at a couple of the comedians (Sean Hughes was good, and Ed Byrne was a good compere). We
caught Rufus Wainwright and Arcade Fire on the Other stage. I didn't bother with the
Arctic Monkeys, but I probably heard most of Bjork as I was stuck in the human traffic
jam heading towards the Pyramid stage.
Saturday was even wetter. The rain not stopping had got less funny, but it wasn't going to
stop us! The mud gave it a good go though. We poked around the Green Fields, then spent a
very enjoyable (and dry) afternoon in the cabaret tent watching Nina Conti, Simon Munnery
Paul Nathan, Murray Lachlan-Young, Jeremy Hardy, Rhythm Wave, Marcus Brigstocke, Phil Ka
and Mitch Benn. The highlights were Jeremy Hardy and Marcus Brigstocke, but it was
pretty much all good. I'm not sure what it says about me that the main thing I wanted to
see on the day was comedy though! Anyway, after that it was off to the John Peel stage
to catch 'Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly', then back to the cinema tent to catch Hot Fuzz,
although we gave up before the end (it was cold, and I've seen it before... it's good
though!). Oh, and we got into the Guardian photo montage thing,
around about the 1:20 remaining mark. That's us, in yellow ponchos!
My main objective for Sunday was the Leftfield. We saw George Monbiot
talk about his environmental ideas which are always very insightful.
Eric Faulkner (yes him, from
the Bay City Rollers) then played two guitars at once, which was very impressive. Then
there was a debate called 'Another World is Possible' with Tony Benn, George Monbiot,
and some union people. George Monbiot got very angry about the Iraq war and made some
very good points again. The next act was Marcus Brigstocke again, with a
reduced (but slightly different) version of his set from the day before. Still funny.
Then Ed Byrne did a really funny set, Tony Benn talked about nuclear weapons and
Trident, Shazia Mirza did her 'angry feminist Muslim' thing, then Mark Thomas
did his funny (yet alarming) mass lone protest thing, ending with the good news that
Gordon Brown has suggested that he'll scrap the restrictions on protesting near
parliament. After that we hoofed-it up to the Avalon stage to catch
Billy Bragg, in great form as ever. Sadly,
far too many other people wanted to see him too, so we were stood some way outside the
tent. Still a good gig though - he's always great to watch. After that we went back to
the Pyramid stage and caught a bit of the Manics, but then gave up and went to Chai
Wallah's again instead to drink chai and catch more Jamie Woon.
And today.... dear God, the organisation! Or lack of it. Our bus was due to go at 8am,
so we were up early putting our tents away in the rain (it had rained all night), and
trudged over to the site bus station. Of course, none of the buses were working and
nobody knew what was going on. The mud was the deepest at the festival, and it actually
came over the top of my boots for the first time all weekend. We gave-up waiting where
we were meant to as it clearly wasn't going anyway, and went and stood near where the
buses were coming in. It was very wet and windy, and some people were clearly very cold,
despite the foil heat blanket things that were handed out. A bus for Bath eventually
turned up at around 10, and about five coach loads of people tried to get on. We were
lucky and made it in, but a lot of people didn't. I dread to think how long they had
to wait. Urgh. So I got home just before midday, cold and wet, but overall happy.
It has easily been the wettest and coldest Glasto so far - even the floods of last time
went away by Sunday, and it was sunny then too. This time the rain was just relentless,
and the mud. I won't forget that in hurry. As for my highlight... Jeremy Hardy? Not very
rock'n'roll, but there you go. And Billy Bragg from a musical perspective I suppose, but
then I know all of his songs and agree with his views, so I probably got more out of it
than the other guys. Jaime Woon was good too, and I intend to check him out...
Well, I'm back from Glastonbury in one piece! You may have heard that it was a bit wet
this year, and it was. Wetter than 2005 I'd say, but the new drainage stopped the
flooding. It didn't stop the mud though! Anyway, more on that in a bit.
Our bus was due to go at 8:45 on Wednesday morning, but I got a text on Tuesday evening
saying that it had been changed to 2pm. Slightly irritating, but that would mean getting
on-site by 3pm or so, which isn't bad. We got to Bath coach station around 1:20 and
settled in to the short wait, only to discover that the buses were rather disorganised.
Our bus got gradually later, as did everyone else's. There was one guy from See Tickets
who were running everything, supposedly) and he was being mobbed by the 200 or so people
waiting, but didn't know what was going on. He did have all of the tickets in a carrier
bag though, and the first few people who asked got their tickets and made their own way.
This got the guy a telling-off from his bosses though, so he soon stopped that. Time
icked on and the police turned-up as they didn't like 200 increasingly-annoyed people
hanging around the coach station. There wasn't much they could do though (apart from
telling people off for drinking), so everyone sat around getting frustrated for a few
hours. Some reporters from the local paper
turned up, but the only real story was See Tickets being inept.
Anyway, our coach finally left at around 6pm, and we were on-site by 7. Despite my earlier
lofty plans to head for Dragons Field, we set-up in Woodsies as usual - it's a good spot,
especially when rain is expected as it doesn't get too muddy. Even better, it's right next
to gate A where we came in. Having set-up the tents we headed into the markets to look
about. Foolishly we thought that the solstice was on Thursday night, not Thursday morning,
so we missed all of the celebrations at the stone circle. Bah! Still, we grabbed some food
from the excellent Garlic Kitchen (this guy
is also a fan), then after a bit of wandering around went up to the cinema tent to watch
Serenity. After that it was back down into the markets for a bimble about, then back to
the tent for a relatively early one. Little did we know that it was the last time we'd see
much on the ground other than mud.
It rained on Thursday, quite a lot. However, when it finished the ground didn't seem too
bad. We did some things, but also drank quite a lot so I don't remember much about it. We
spent some time in Chai Wallahs drinking their
rather excellent chai, doing some wheatgrass shots, and listening to some of the guys from
One Taste, including the really, really good
Jamie Woon. Not only is he a great
singer/guitarist, but he does a very impressive local loop one man band thing. You really
have to see it. I can't remember anything else we did, but we were in the Leftfield
drinking quite a lot.
On Friday the ground had got pretty muddy, but it was still just about ok in the morning.
The bands had started of course, and we all had timetables in mind. First on my list were
Flipron on the Avalon stage. I'd convinced Nicole
that they were worth seeing, and I think she was convinced. They're always great and it's
just a shame that the set wasn't longer. It was getting muddier all the time though, and
after Flipron it was getting to the point where moving between stages had to be carefully
considered as it took so flippin' long. More beer seemed to help my balance though. I
caught Rory Motion and '4 in a Field' in the cabaret tent, although I only really laughed
at a couple of the comedians (Sean Hughes was good, and Ed Byrne was a good compere). We
caught Rufus Wainwright and Arcade Fire on the Other stage. I didn't bother with the
Arctic Monkeys, but I probably heard most of Bjork as I was stuck in the human traffic
jam heading towards the Pyramid stage.
Saturday was even wetter. The rain not stopping had got less funny, but it wasn't going to
stop us! The mud gave it a good go though. We poked around the Green Fields, then spent a
very enjoyable (and dry) afternoon in the cabaret tent watching Nina Conti, Simon Munnery
Paul Nathan, Murray Lachlan-Young, Jeremy Hardy, Rhythm Wave, Marcus Brigstocke, Phil Ka
and Mitch Benn. The highlights were Jeremy Hardy and Marcus Brigstocke, but it was
pretty much all good. I'm not sure what it says about me that the main thing I wanted to
see on the day was comedy though! Anyway, after that it was off to the John Peel stage
to catch 'Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly', then back to the cinema tent to catch Hot Fuzz,
although we gave up before the end (it was cold, and I've seen it before... it's good
though!). Oh, and we got into the Guardian photo montage thing,
around about the 1:20 remaining mark. That's us, in yellow ponchos!
My main objective for Sunday was the Leftfield. We saw George Monbiot
talk about his environmental ideas which are always very insightful.
Eric Faulkner (yes him, from
the Bay City Rollers) then played two guitars at once, which was very impressive. Then
there was a debate called 'Another World is Possible' with Tony Benn, George Monbiot,
and some union people. George Monbiot got very angry about the Iraq war and made some
very good points again. The next act was Marcus Brigstocke again, with a
reduced (but slightly different) version of his set from the day before. Still funny.
Then Ed Byrne did a really funny set, Tony Benn talked about nuclear weapons and
Trident, Shazia Mirza did her 'angry feminist Muslim' thing, then Mark Thomas
did his funny (yet alarming) mass lone protest thing, ending with the good news that
Gordon Brown has suggested that he'll scrap the restrictions on protesting near
parliament. After that we hoofed-it up to the Avalon stage to catch
Billy Bragg, in great form as ever. Sadly,
far too many other people wanted to see him too, so we were stood some way outside the
tent. Still a good gig though - he's always great to watch. After that we went back to
the Pyramid stage and caught a bit of the Manics, but then gave up and went to Chai
Wallah's again instead to drink chai and catch more Jamie Woon.
And today.... dear God, the organisation! Or lack of it. Our bus was due to go at 8am,
so we were up early putting our tents away in the rain (it had rained all night), and
trudged over to the site bus station. Of course, none of the buses were working and
nobody knew what was going on. The mud was the deepest at the festival, and it actually
came over the top of my boots for the first time all weekend. We gave-up waiting where
we were meant to as it clearly wasn't going anyway, and went and stood near where the
buses were coming in. It was very wet and windy, and some people were clearly very cold,
despite the foil heat blanket things that were handed out. A bus for Bath eventually
turned up at around 10, and about five coach loads of people tried to get on. We were
lucky and made it in, but a lot of people didn't. I dread to think how long they had
to wait. Urgh. So I got home just before midday, cold and wet, but overall happy.
It has easily been the wettest and coldest Glasto so far - even the floods of last time
went away by Sunday, and it was sunny then too. This time the rain was just relentless,
and the mud. I won't forget that in hurry. As for my highlight... Jeremy Hardy? Not very
rock'n'roll, but there you go. And Billy Bragg from a musical perspective I suppose, but
then I know all of his songs and agree with his views, so I probably got more out of it
than the other guys. Jaime Woon was good too, and I intend to check him out...