There's nothing quite like it.......

I’d decided that we had to leave early, as early as we could manage. I didn’t want to be stuck in a baking, heat haze of immobile cars for half the day, so I suggested that we get up at 5am and leave by 5.45. Our frenzied attempts to get ready the night before trailed on and on, it turned out I finally made it to bed by 1.30am, which would have been fine, except that what followed was a Christmas Eve type of excitement which meant I failed to get any real sleep at all. I watched the second half of a horror film and then the second half of ‘Confessions of a Dangerous Mind’, by which time it was 4am and I fitfully dozed for an hour.

I made giant mugs o’ coffee and Aron and I got ourselves going on schedule. We collected our dear friend Clare and off we went. We got there at about 6.40am, the air warming up already, our backpacks attached and we were ready climb. I knew that our friends Wesz & Cat had arrived a day early and had kindly put up our tent for us. I also knew that they had decided to camp at the highest point and therefore knew a lengthy walk with many breaks in which the unfit (me) could recover.

We arrived at the tent at about 7.45am and unceremoniously awoke Wesz with our relieved yells of arrival. Cat turned up with Vegetarian breakfast baps, which was exceptionally welcome but rather difficult to eat since it was SO packed full and I lost a considerable amount of filling out the sides. This didn’t matter though and I ate as though starved for some months, not 12 hours. We sat in the sun and talked and drank and burned quite nicely for sometime. Then Clare and I went for a stroll and I bought an inordinate number of blankets (I felt sure we’d need them). We glanced at the floor length waterproof ponchos, and then at the sky, the blistering sun convinced us to ignore them, so we did.

After a few hours of wandering we decided we had sun-stroke (headaches and the need to sit down before falling down) which lead us to the ice-cold smoothie stand where a four berry smoothie with crushed ice sorted us out good and proper. We headed back to the tent to await the arrival of another bunch of mates who were arriving that evening. They arrived to much jollity and we had a few turns with the celebratory rum.

We were formulating our plans for the evening when Aron said he had spotted some flickers in the sky, right on the horizon in a south easterly direction. We thought it might be fireworks. Aron kept pointing out flashes until we all agreed we could see something, although very far away and silent. Not even remotely phased by such distant flickering, a few of us headed to the Jazz Field at about 11pm. We met more friends, we drank an unmentionable quantity of Pear Cider (legendary and mind-bending, apparently), laughed an awful lot and bonded a great-deal too.

I hadn’t even noticed that it was almost light. We looked around (we'd been sitting in a rather exclusive circle) to find the place deserted and covered in green cider bottles. There was a rather funny colour in the sky and we decided to get back to the tent. For discretion’s sake I won’t mention the reason that none of us had noticed the time and daylight, but more importantly we hadn’t noticed that the flickering had been getting brighter but now we were jolted into sobriety but a deafening crack of thunder. It was right overhead and we pegged our way back to the tend, bringing everyone with us.

I have never heard such thunder, it lasted almost 12 hours in total and when the rain came…….? We had 4 weeks rain fall in 2 hours. And it was flooded. We got back to the tent and sat there listening to this almighty storm, thinking…….’Bugger’. Lightning struck several things on site and the power went out. The tents at the bottom of the hill were the target of the flash-flood and tent occupants were given minutes to get out of their tents before they were washed away or filled with water and mud. If you’ve seen the pictures, then you’ll know that some tents were completely submerged, some had just a few inches above water and many people lost all the stuff they had with them. The acoustic tent became an impromptu shelter for those with nowhere to sleep or even sit to avoid the rain.

That day the market area flooded and many of the stages became thick with knee deep mud and when the first batch of wellies arrived on site there was something of a riot, the Police were called in but wound up helping out and selling the boots to the amassed crowds to help the stall-holders.

But you know the thing about Glastonbury?? Rain, mud in mind-boggling quantities, flooding, no power, no clothes, no bed.........? It simply didn’t dampen the spirits. People just put on bin-liners and swam to the beer tents. They sailed to the burger stands in canoes and air-beds. They leapt around to their favourite bands even though falling over and becoming smothered in glue-consistency mud was inevitable if you tried to move. We cheered, we built mud sculptures and when the sun came back out and 90’000 people watched Brian Wilson on Sunday afternoon, every single person sang to Surfin’ USA and the atmosphere was so upbeat, I felt rather watery in the eye region.

Of course I complained though; my legs hurt from walking up hills in 2 sizes too big boots, my bottom hurt because there was nothing but uneven or wet ground to sit on, apart from the breakfast bap I barely ate for 4 days, I didn’t sleep the whole time, I got sun-burn, sun-stroke and blisters......................................

I’ll see you back there in 2007.