Sometimes you make me feel like I'm living at the edge of the world
It's July. Near the end of July, in fact. Oh no, wait, by the time I posted it: August. At the end of June it was, of course, Glastonbury.
tl;dr - very hot, no mud, singalongs are fun, there's a lot more than just bands, The Cure still rock.
Word-free version can be found on Flickr.
Wednesday
This year's festival was, for reasons that will become apparent, a bit of a weird one and my travelling arrangements were frankly ludicrous. However, it started off OK with us noodling fairly gently down in the car. After some dithering about by a map we pitched our tent in Pylon Ground, a flattish open field area under the electricity pylons. The camp sites this year were taking a rather more active approach to discouraging gazebos - there were certainly way fewer than usual and (relatedly or not) a much more spacious camping environment. We kept expecting more tents to pile into the gaps, but none did. Sadly none of our neighbours seemed inclined to chat (or not to us ;) but otherwise Pylon Ground proved a pretty nice home.
We started off with a nice prowl around, heading through The Woods to admire their treehouse and willow-work mermaid before accidentally getting involved in some mildly weird Shakespeare sketch comedy. With puppets. We headed slowly across the site, collecting as went a pint of Proper Cider, some vegetable pakora, and an ice cream sandwich, and wound up at the top of the Park for a nice view over the festival. This was not an especially original thought, and the slopey hillside above the Park was absolutely packed with people lounging about on the grass.
We slid back down, and continued our general inventory of the area, finding Glasto Latino, the festival's salsa venue, in its new home of West Holts and (much more importantly) discovering a new stall which sold nothing but multiple varieties of fruit crumble. I was a little disappointed to discover that what they really sell is stewed fruit plus an after-the-fact crunchy topping, but it was still an excellent idea (rhubarb with gingerbread topping and custard, since you asked).
Over in the Greenfields, in an area I never quite managed to locate again, we found an unusually-shaped wooden building with a roof that rose and fell in fairy-tale peaks, and a wood-burning stove in the middle. Smoke rose from the chimney and singing spilled out of the windows. What's this? This is... a man playing a piano. And a crowd, occasionally fuelled by tea brewed on the stove, cheerfully if rather tunelessly, singing along. The pianist was good, churning out twiddly-jazz improvised versions of Police songs before moving onto Radiohead. I mean, I'm not sure Karma Police is the best choice for a mass singalong but people gave it their best shot. The pianist opted for a more chorus-friendly Starman and someone appeared out the back of the building with a clarinet, and someone else piled in through the doorway and grabbed a guitar...
It was, indeed, a beautiful and slightly chaotic way to spend the time until the fireworks started and the wooden phoenixes (phoenices?) went up in flames on the hillside.
Thursday
Beans on Toast, Will Varley, Frank Turner, Elvana, Old Dirty Brasstard
I started Thursday getting some of my Glastonbury staples in: kedgeree from the Goan Fish Curry stall for breakfast, a shiatsu massage in the healing fields, and a little tour of the beautiful gardens in the Water Circle. Every year, little gardens and water features are created - and some years they all but disappear under the mud but this summer they were vibrant under baking sunshine. A man, "helped" by two small children, was turning a pile of clay next to one of the pondlets into some frolicking otters.
I love a bit of a wander in the Greenfields, so wafted around in that area, popping in to say hello to the Water Dragon sculpture and accidentally finding a wedding in the Stone Circle (so many cameras!) The craft workshops were all going full tilt, and people were bending willow, forging pewter, painting in wax... A stonemasons' tent was playing banging hardcore through big speakers while people hammered away in time to it.
The Circus Fields were also glorious in the sunshine, and a crate stacking contest was in full swing. Don't worry, everyone involved was properly roped up, meaning that people falling from heights of twenty feet or so as their wobbly pile of crates eventually tips over is perfectly OK to laugh at :) Kids seemed, in general, to be doing way better than adults, presumably a lower body weight is a big help (not to mention probably greater sobriety).
Favourites Bootworks Theatre were there again with their Jukebox show, so we paused to watch it and then got involved with the Play Ninjas with their giant multi-coloured play 'chute. Play Ninjas are basically people with a remit to get large numbers of people to do silly things, which sounds like a pretty splendid lifegoal to me.
The first proper band set of the day was Glastonbury stalwart Beans On Toast who had an absolutely packed crowd on the Greenpeace stage. Greenpeace's cause this year was the rainforest, which they were celebrating with a giant artificial tree labelled "JUNGLE IS NOT MASSIVE". The open area in front of the stage, the platform around the tree, the wooden walk ways, right up to the skate ramp and climbing wall were rammed full of people singing and clapping along. The crowd still managed to part to staff get through to an injured (or ill? not sure) person and then bring them out, but the whole area was busy.
I mean because it's Glastonbury there was still a stilt-walker patiently making her way along, carrying a triple-decker cake plate of biscuits (which she offered to people) and a huge brass teapot of cold water (which she poured samovar-style for people who wanted some). Turning round at just the right moment I spotted a guy swiping a biscuit from her plate. "That's rude! You weren't offered one!" she snapped, pouring water from her teapot straight onto the top of his bald head.
By the end of the set we were boiling to death, and we headed into Greenpeace's bar-cum-Museum of Extinction for some shade. A few songs into Will Varley's set we'd perked up enough to venture back into the crowd, and found ourselves standing more or less directly behind
satyrica ready for our traditional cuppa in the Tiny Tea Tent afterwards. Frank Turner rocked up for the final song (and, I thought, did an excellent job of lending a bit of celebrity glamour without stealing the stage).
We tried to catch the "acoustic brass off" - presumably some form of competitive situation involving a number of brass covers bands with which the world currently seems to be infested. Unfortunately the Truth Stage seems to have deeply bizarre licensing conditions and it was literally acoustic. There was enough crowd that it wasn't really easy to get within hearing distance, so instead we just pottered about admiring the junk sculptures, posters, and giant artworks that litter the South East Corner.
Frank Turner was doing a not-that-secret secret set in Strummerville, a tiny, steeply-sloping area with its own campfire and al fresco sofas, and we managed to make our way in in time. There was a huge queue of people who wanted to be inside Strummerville but were held back in the narrow passageway by three slightly harassed-looking stewards. For the most part people were pretty good, but after Mr Turner came on stage the waiters started getting restless. Occasional bunches of people broke through security and made a run for it, others climbed the fairly flimsy fences to jump over (one particular bloke was last seen tumbling arse over tit down a hillside after making a leap...). I found the whole atmosphere a bit uncomfortable, and it dented my enjoyment rather. We fought our way out before the end and went to Glastonbury-on-Sea instead.
Where there is, of course, a pier. With amusements, candy-floss, souvenirs and a pinball arcade.
I was a bit confused by it, actually, as it seemed rather more geard towards selling things than the festival usually is (though the arcade machines were all free) but the structure was very impressive.
I'd never heard of Elvana, but was reliably informed that they are an Elvis-fronted Nirvana covers band. Of... course they are. Williams Green was full of people dancing, so we joined them and stayed for Old Dirty Brasstard.
Friday
The Vaccines, Bjorn Again, (Lewis Capaldi), The Wombats, (Fontaines DC), Bastille, Matthiel, Life, SOAK, Morcheeba, George Ezra, Billy Bragg, Tame Impala, Interpol.
ChrisC and I had different ideas about how to start Friday; he went off to watch Bjorn Again, and I wanted to see The Vaccines. I got, I think, a particularly good section of crowd for The Vaccines: lots of enthusiasm and singing along and a really lovely atmosphere. I watched the end of Bjorn Again's set from the back of the field: they are clearly frustrated rock enthusiasts trapped playing the Abba set you want but will never get from actual-Abba. Don't think I didn't notice that Smoke on the Water bassline shoe-horned into Money Money Money.
The Wombats are a festival favourite and were good value as always, sadly the sun was a bit ridculous and by the time we made it up to the fuggy sauna of the John Peel tent for Fontaines DC ChrisC had gone all limp and bedraggled and had to be towed into the shade of The Woods to recover.
We watched a little Bastille, then decided to blow them off in favour of Matthiel (mostly on the grounds of seeing Bastille at another festival later in the year). Matthiel were on the Greenpeace stage, and we were hoping to secure a spot in the shady bar from which we could see the stage. With accidental genius timing we arrived as some people left, meaning we grabbed their seats atop a small and vaguely inexplicable tower, inside the bar, with a perfect view of the band. My extremely positive impression of Matthiel may be as much down to the lovely shady seat as the raucous, bluesy rock and roll :-)
We were really only planning to nose in on Life, in the Leftfield, on the way somewhere else but they were so great we stayed. I'm pretty sure I saw one of the venue's security guards being told off by his boss for paying too much attention to the band and not enough to his actual job ;) Life manage to combine an apocalpytic punk outlook with a lot of joyous fun, I'd certainly seek them out again.
SOAK was up on the Park stage, which is east-facing. So by the time I got there flopping down in front of it for some soaring acoustic music, in the shade, was ideal. ChrisC did something ridiculous involving the Charlatans and more sunshine, but I was very grateful for a small window of calm. The chap carving a giant sand sculpure in the Park had decided that really, it was far too hot for anything, and had escaped from his sand pit. He had a can of beer in one hand, and a garden hose set to "fine mist" in the other. I chatted to the guy running the postcard stall while person after person rant towards the hose demanding to the sprayed. Yes, it was really quite hot weather.
Morcheeba were... really no different to listening to a CD, to be honest, so we settled instead for the mainstream brass-soaked fun of George Ezra before back to the Leftfield to make sure we got the festival minimum dose of Bragg. In between songs, he said actually the most sensible things I've heard anyone say about Brexit in ages, told everyone how great the crumble stall was, and finished with a singalong New England that nearly took the roof off.
Suffering indecision, I split my headliner time between Tame Impala and Interpol, which I actually slightly regretted. Tame Impala were all fuzzy, undemanding, shimmery guitar noise that was quite nice for a relaxing summer evening. Interpol, whom I'm usually very excited about, were decidedly limp and underwhelming. I hung around hoping they'd go big for a finale, but they never seemed to.
At which point I grabbed my stuff from the property lockup, and went out to find the car. Despite my protestations that I could find my own way perfectly, ChrisC accompanied me... which turned out to be just as well, as I was hopelessly disorientated coming out of a different gate in the dark. Not to mention the logistical problem of finding one's way out of the field when there is no queue of festival-leavers to follow. I should have let ChrisC out the car before I left the site, but didn't, and then there was a lot of palavering around while we figured out how to get back to somewhere viable for me to drop him off, and then for me to get back on the right road again... I was heavily reliant on Google for directions, but of course Google doesn't know about the vastly complex system of closed roads, one way roads, temporary traffic lights and unexpected diversions put in place for the festival.
Anyway. I made it out eventually, and ChrisC made it back to the tent. And I stayed in a Travelodge, and headed off early Saturday morning to Roo's wedding.
... which is why I have no write-up for Glastonbury Saturday :-)
Sunday
Babymetal, Kylie, (Miley Cyrus), Ten Tonnes, (Miley Cyrus), Blue Aeroplanes, Vampire Weekend, Josefin Ohrn & the Liberation, The Cure
I leaped out of bed on Sunday morning, into the car again, and hoofed it down the A303 back towards the festival. Honestly, getting to Glastonbury doesn't actually take that long when there aren't about a million other people trying to do the same thing. I meant, the traffic still sucks around Stonehenge, but that's because people will insist on looking at the megalithic wossname rather than where they are going.
I noodled in, and parked in a very-far-out car park. One of the key things that was worrying me about this whole, ridiculous, up-and-down-the-landscape thing was that, from now on, only I knew where the car was. My sense of direction and place is, to be blunt, crap. Finding the car (on any occasion, but especially when it is parked in a mess of meandering fields rather than something more easily navigable) is ChrisC's job. But ChrisC was, at this point, several kilometres away watching (I think) Circa Waves. Meeting at Glastonbury is hard, and phones are unreliable. We had plans, back up plans, and back up back up plans.
I had firm instructions to note down the What3Words address for the car. So I sent that to ChrisC by SMS, and got an immediate response: are you sure? The address I had sent was on the wrong side of the A37. Inside a building. See also, phones are unreliable. GPS is not a very exact science. I tried again, and sent another address which was deemed "plausible". But was it correct? Who knows.
Now. I am basically geographically dyslexic, but I am not an idiot. So I got out my notebook, and drew a sketch map of my route into the festival. It was hideously not to scale (because my guess at route was wrong, and I started on the wrong side of the page and had to squash everything up to make it fit). I noted turnings, car par numbers, camper van field numbers, flags, floodlights, security checkpoints, colours of fences, changes of road surface... anything that might actually mean I could find the sodding car again later. From car to festival gate was - at a brisk pace with no luggage - around a 45 minute walk.
There was a monstrous queue to get in the festival gate but, in the event, it moved reasonably quickly. I came in through the circus fields, headed to Wiliams Green, and ran almost directly into ChrisC. Without any obvious destination we noodled gently through the circus fields, and found some people running a slackline workshop. A remarkably poorly attended slackline workshop. I have always wanted to have a go at slackline, so took my shoes off and joined in.
Balancing on a flat piece of bouncy webbing (mercifully only about 18" above the floor) turns out to be really quite difficult. I fell off. A lot. But it was fun, and made me want to do more of it. Y'know, in all that free time I have at the moment.
My first band of the day was Babymetal: think of your average heavy metal band, but fronted by three young(ish) Japanese girls with extremely slick synchronised dance routines. No, really, it was a lot more fun than I just made it sound. I stood directly behind a guy proudly flying a Metallica flag while watching them, and the big screens showed that they had an extremely healthy circle pit going down the front (was that the first occurrence of a sarcastic pit? who knows).
Kylie was one of the stated aims for the day. I had always assumed that the Pyramid would be absolutely packed for Kylie, ChrisC seemed much more relaxed about getting there. (For the record, of the two of us, he is the bigger Kylie fan.) As it turned out, I was right and the whole field was absolutely heaving. We watched from a long way back - giving us a beautiful view of her rainbow glitter cannons when they went off. And of the people who had ingeniously mounted 1980s album covers on badminton rackets, the better to wave them over their heads. The enthusiasm in the crowd went all the way out to the edges, although it dropped disappointingly when she was joined by Nick Cave for Where The Wild Roses Grow.
We waited by The Tree until our friend Xian showed up, and caught up with him and his doings. He was flagging somewhat, as he was at the festival on a Block9 crew pass and was camping right next to a stage that runs until 6am, meaning sleep was something of an optional extra. We watched a few songs of Miley Cyrus, then a combination of wanting to see Ten Tonnes (us), wanting to get back in time for a crew meal ticket (Xian) and not really wanting to stand near that staggeringly enthusiastic 4 year old screaming unbelievably loudly and continuously for Wrecking Ball (everyone) we shuffled off. Later, ChrisC and I shuffled back to catch a cover of Head Like a Hole (yes, actual cover, I think, not the Black Mirror rewrite) and, in fact, Wrecking Ball.
We seemed to be running out of festival fast, and caught some odds and bits of bands while hoovering up hog roast and cassoulet and (excitingly for me) running into ex-colleague Mark. Then we were back at the Pyramid, pushing our way into the middle of the crowd to see The Cure.
Which was... weird. OK, so The Cure have not got the hang of this being a festival crowd-pleasing act. If you are a hardcore fan, then watch the whole 2 hour set before it disappears off the iPlayer because it is bloody brilliant. If you quite like them, maybe watch the last 90 minutes. If you don't really care for The Cure and just want the hits then somewhere between the last 15-30 minutes will be plenty. The crowd around us seemed quiet and attentive, but almost completely unfamiliar with almost everything they played. They woke up for Friday I'm In Love (possibly one of my least favourite Cure songs, but at least well-known and easy to jump up and down to) but beyond one solitary bloke behind me clapping along in the distinctive offbeat rhythm for Close To Me you'd genuinely think no one had ever heard any of these songs before.
For me, the two hours of the Disintegration and The Head On The Door-heavy set flashed by, in the way it always will when you're listening to songs you've loved for close to thirty years.
And the we drifted off along the high route to the circus gate, collecting ChrisC's luggage and tent from a lockup. You'll be pleased to know we found the car :)
[Originally posted at https://venta.dreamwidth.org/539891.html]
tl;dr - very hot, no mud, singalongs are fun, there's a lot more than just bands, The Cure still rock.
Word-free version can be found on Flickr.
Wednesday
This year's festival was, for reasons that will become apparent, a bit of a weird one and my travelling arrangements were frankly ludicrous. However, it started off OK with us noodling fairly gently down in the car. After some dithering about by a map we pitched our tent in Pylon Ground, a flattish open field area under the electricity pylons. The camp sites this year were taking a rather more active approach to discouraging gazebos - there were certainly way fewer than usual and (relatedly or not) a much more spacious camping environment. We kept expecting more tents to pile into the gaps, but none did. Sadly none of our neighbours seemed inclined to chat (or not to us ;) but otherwise Pylon Ground proved a pretty nice home.
We started off with a nice prowl around, heading through The Woods to admire their treehouse and willow-work mermaid before accidentally getting involved in some mildly weird Shakespeare sketch comedy. With puppets. We headed slowly across the site, collecting as went a pint of Proper Cider, some vegetable pakora, and an ice cream sandwich, and wound up at the top of the Park for a nice view over the festival. This was not an especially original thought, and the slopey hillside above the Park was absolutely packed with people lounging about on the grass.
We slid back down, and continued our general inventory of the area, finding Glasto Latino, the festival's salsa venue, in its new home of West Holts and (much more importantly) discovering a new stall which sold nothing but multiple varieties of fruit crumble. I was a little disappointed to discover that what they really sell is stewed fruit plus an after-the-fact crunchy topping, but it was still an excellent idea (rhubarb with gingerbread topping and custard, since you asked).
Over in the Greenfields, in an area I never quite managed to locate again, we found an unusually-shaped wooden building with a roof that rose and fell in fairy-tale peaks, and a wood-burning stove in the middle. Smoke rose from the chimney and singing spilled out of the windows. What's this? This is... a man playing a piano. And a crowd, occasionally fuelled by tea brewed on the stove, cheerfully if rather tunelessly, singing along. The pianist was good, churning out twiddly-jazz improvised versions of Police songs before moving onto Radiohead. I mean, I'm not sure Karma Police is the best choice for a mass singalong but people gave it their best shot. The pianist opted for a more chorus-friendly Starman and someone appeared out the back of the building with a clarinet, and someone else piled in through the doorway and grabbed a guitar...
It was, indeed, a beautiful and slightly chaotic way to spend the time until the fireworks started and the wooden phoenixes (phoenices?) went up in flames on the hillside.
Thursday
Beans on Toast, Will Varley, Frank Turner, Elvana, Old Dirty Brasstard
I started Thursday getting some of my Glastonbury staples in: kedgeree from the Goan Fish Curry stall for breakfast, a shiatsu massage in the healing fields, and a little tour of the beautiful gardens in the Water Circle. Every year, little gardens and water features are created - and some years they all but disappear under the mud but this summer they were vibrant under baking sunshine. A man, "helped" by two small children, was turning a pile of clay next to one of the pondlets into some frolicking otters.
I love a bit of a wander in the Greenfields, so wafted around in that area, popping in to say hello to the Water Dragon sculpture and accidentally finding a wedding in the Stone Circle (so many cameras!) The craft workshops were all going full tilt, and people were bending willow, forging pewter, painting in wax... A stonemasons' tent was playing banging hardcore through big speakers while people hammered away in time to it.
The Circus Fields were also glorious in the sunshine, and a crate stacking contest was in full swing. Don't worry, everyone involved was properly roped up, meaning that people falling from heights of twenty feet or so as their wobbly pile of crates eventually tips over is perfectly OK to laugh at :) Kids seemed, in general, to be doing way better than adults, presumably a lower body weight is a big help (not to mention probably greater sobriety).
Favourites Bootworks Theatre were there again with their Jukebox show, so we paused to watch it and then got involved with the Play Ninjas with their giant multi-coloured play 'chute. Play Ninjas are basically people with a remit to get large numbers of people to do silly things, which sounds like a pretty splendid lifegoal to me.
The first proper band set of the day was Glastonbury stalwart Beans On Toast who had an absolutely packed crowd on the Greenpeace stage. Greenpeace's cause this year was the rainforest, which they were celebrating with a giant artificial tree labelled "JUNGLE IS NOT MASSIVE". The open area in front of the stage, the platform around the tree, the wooden walk ways, right up to the skate ramp and climbing wall were rammed full of people singing and clapping along. The crowd still managed to part to staff get through to an injured (or ill? not sure) person and then bring them out, but the whole area was busy.
I mean because it's Glastonbury there was still a stilt-walker patiently making her way along, carrying a triple-decker cake plate of biscuits (which she offered to people) and a huge brass teapot of cold water (which she poured samovar-style for people who wanted some). Turning round at just the right moment I spotted a guy swiping a biscuit from her plate. "That's rude! You weren't offered one!" she snapped, pouring water from her teapot straight onto the top of his bald head.
By the end of the set we were boiling to death, and we headed into Greenpeace's bar-cum-Museum of Extinction for some shade. A few songs into Will Varley's set we'd perked up enough to venture back into the crowd, and found ourselves standing more or less directly behind
satyrica ready for our traditional cuppa in the Tiny Tea Tent afterwards. Frank Turner rocked up for the final song (and, I thought, did an excellent job of lending a bit of celebrity glamour without stealing the stage).
We tried to catch the "acoustic brass off" - presumably some form of competitive situation involving a number of brass covers bands with which the world currently seems to be infested. Unfortunately the Truth Stage seems to have deeply bizarre licensing conditions and it was literally acoustic. There was enough crowd that it wasn't really easy to get within hearing distance, so instead we just pottered about admiring the junk sculptures, posters, and giant artworks that litter the South East Corner.
Frank Turner was doing a not-that-secret secret set in Strummerville, a tiny, steeply-sloping area with its own campfire and al fresco sofas, and we managed to make our way in in time. There was a huge queue of people who wanted to be inside Strummerville but were held back in the narrow passageway by three slightly harassed-looking stewards. For the most part people were pretty good, but after Mr Turner came on stage the waiters started getting restless. Occasional bunches of people broke through security and made a run for it, others climbed the fairly flimsy fences to jump over (one particular bloke was last seen tumbling arse over tit down a hillside after making a leap...). I found the whole atmosphere a bit uncomfortable, and it dented my enjoyment rather. We fought our way out before the end and went to Glastonbury-on-Sea instead.
Where there is, of course, a pier. With amusements, candy-floss, souvenirs and a pinball arcade.
I was a bit confused by it, actually, as it seemed rather more geard towards selling things than the festival usually is (though the arcade machines were all free) but the structure was very impressive.
I'd never heard of Elvana, but was reliably informed that they are an Elvis-fronted Nirvana covers band. Of... course they are. Williams Green was full of people dancing, so we joined them and stayed for Old Dirty Brasstard.
Friday
The Vaccines, Bjorn Again, (Lewis Capaldi), The Wombats, (Fontaines DC), Bastille, Matthiel, Life, SOAK, Morcheeba, George Ezra, Billy Bragg, Tame Impala, Interpol.
ChrisC and I had different ideas about how to start Friday; he went off to watch Bjorn Again, and I wanted to see The Vaccines. I got, I think, a particularly good section of crowd for The Vaccines: lots of enthusiasm and singing along and a really lovely atmosphere. I watched the end of Bjorn Again's set from the back of the field: they are clearly frustrated rock enthusiasts trapped playing the Abba set you want but will never get from actual-Abba. Don't think I didn't notice that Smoke on the Water bassline shoe-horned into Money Money Money.
The Wombats are a festival favourite and were good value as always, sadly the sun was a bit ridculous and by the time we made it up to the fuggy sauna of the John Peel tent for Fontaines DC ChrisC had gone all limp and bedraggled and had to be towed into the shade of The Woods to recover.
We watched a little Bastille, then decided to blow them off in favour of Matthiel (mostly on the grounds of seeing Bastille at another festival later in the year). Matthiel were on the Greenpeace stage, and we were hoping to secure a spot in the shady bar from which we could see the stage. With accidental genius timing we arrived as some people left, meaning we grabbed their seats atop a small and vaguely inexplicable tower, inside the bar, with a perfect view of the band. My extremely positive impression of Matthiel may be as much down to the lovely shady seat as the raucous, bluesy rock and roll :-)
We were really only planning to nose in on Life, in the Leftfield, on the way somewhere else but they were so great we stayed. I'm pretty sure I saw one of the venue's security guards being told off by his boss for paying too much attention to the band and not enough to his actual job ;) Life manage to combine an apocalpytic punk outlook with a lot of joyous fun, I'd certainly seek them out again.
SOAK was up on the Park stage, which is east-facing. So by the time I got there flopping down in front of it for some soaring acoustic music, in the shade, was ideal. ChrisC did something ridiculous involving the Charlatans and more sunshine, but I was very grateful for a small window of calm. The chap carving a giant sand sculpure in the Park had decided that really, it was far too hot for anything, and had escaped from his sand pit. He had a can of beer in one hand, and a garden hose set to "fine mist" in the other. I chatted to the guy running the postcard stall while person after person rant towards the hose demanding to the sprayed. Yes, it was really quite hot weather.
Morcheeba were... really no different to listening to a CD, to be honest, so we settled instead for the mainstream brass-soaked fun of George Ezra before back to the Leftfield to make sure we got the festival minimum dose of Bragg. In between songs, he said actually the most sensible things I've heard anyone say about Brexit in ages, told everyone how great the crumble stall was, and finished with a singalong New England that nearly took the roof off.
Suffering indecision, I split my headliner time between Tame Impala and Interpol, which I actually slightly regretted. Tame Impala were all fuzzy, undemanding, shimmery guitar noise that was quite nice for a relaxing summer evening. Interpol, whom I'm usually very excited about, were decidedly limp and underwhelming. I hung around hoping they'd go big for a finale, but they never seemed to.
At which point I grabbed my stuff from the property lockup, and went out to find the car. Despite my protestations that I could find my own way perfectly, ChrisC accompanied me... which turned out to be just as well, as I was hopelessly disorientated coming out of a different gate in the dark. Not to mention the logistical problem of finding one's way out of the field when there is no queue of festival-leavers to follow. I should have let ChrisC out the car before I left the site, but didn't, and then there was a lot of palavering around while we figured out how to get back to somewhere viable for me to drop him off, and then for me to get back on the right road again... I was heavily reliant on Google for directions, but of course Google doesn't know about the vastly complex system of closed roads, one way roads, temporary traffic lights and unexpected diversions put in place for the festival.
Anyway. I made it out eventually, and ChrisC made it back to the tent. And I stayed in a Travelodge, and headed off early Saturday morning to Roo's wedding.
... which is why I have no write-up for Glastonbury Saturday :-)
Sunday
Babymetal, Kylie, (Miley Cyrus), Ten Tonnes, (Miley Cyrus), Blue Aeroplanes, Vampire Weekend, Josefin Ohrn & the Liberation, The Cure
I leaped out of bed on Sunday morning, into the car again, and hoofed it down the A303 back towards the festival. Honestly, getting to Glastonbury doesn't actually take that long when there aren't about a million other people trying to do the same thing. I meant, the traffic still sucks around Stonehenge, but that's because people will insist on looking at the megalithic wossname rather than where they are going.
I noodled in, and parked in a very-far-out car park. One of the key things that was worrying me about this whole, ridiculous, up-and-down-the-landscape thing was that, from now on, only I knew where the car was. My sense of direction and place is, to be blunt, crap. Finding the car (on any occasion, but especially when it is parked in a mess of meandering fields rather than something more easily navigable) is ChrisC's job. But ChrisC was, at this point, several kilometres away watching (I think) Circa Waves. Meeting at Glastonbury is hard, and phones are unreliable. We had plans, back up plans, and back up back up plans.
I had firm instructions to note down the What3Words address for the car. So I sent that to ChrisC by SMS, and got an immediate response: are you sure? The address I had sent was on the wrong side of the A37. Inside a building. See also, phones are unreliable. GPS is not a very exact science. I tried again, and sent another address which was deemed "plausible". But was it correct? Who knows.
Now. I am basically geographically dyslexic, but I am not an idiot. So I got out my notebook, and drew a sketch map of my route into the festival. It was hideously not to scale (because my guess at route was wrong, and I started on the wrong side of the page and had to squash everything up to make it fit). I noted turnings, car par numbers, camper van field numbers, flags, floodlights, security checkpoints, colours of fences, changes of road surface... anything that might actually mean I could find the sodding car again later. From car to festival gate was - at a brisk pace with no luggage - around a 45 minute walk.
There was a monstrous queue to get in the festival gate but, in the event, it moved reasonably quickly. I came in through the circus fields, headed to Wiliams Green, and ran almost directly into ChrisC. Without any obvious destination we noodled gently through the circus fields, and found some people running a slackline workshop. A remarkably poorly attended slackline workshop. I have always wanted to have a go at slackline, so took my shoes off and joined in.
Balancing on a flat piece of bouncy webbing (mercifully only about 18" above the floor) turns out to be really quite difficult. I fell off. A lot. But it was fun, and made me want to do more of it. Y'know, in all that free time I have at the moment.
My first band of the day was Babymetal: think of your average heavy metal band, but fronted by three young(ish) Japanese girls with extremely slick synchronised dance routines. No, really, it was a lot more fun than I just made it sound. I stood directly behind a guy proudly flying a Metallica flag while watching them, and the big screens showed that they had an extremely healthy circle pit going down the front (was that the first occurrence of a sarcastic pit? who knows).
Kylie was one of the stated aims for the day. I had always assumed that the Pyramid would be absolutely packed for Kylie, ChrisC seemed much more relaxed about getting there. (For the record, of the two of us, he is the bigger Kylie fan.) As it turned out, I was right and the whole field was absolutely heaving. We watched from a long way back - giving us a beautiful view of her rainbow glitter cannons when they went off. And of the people who had ingeniously mounted 1980s album covers on badminton rackets, the better to wave them over their heads. The enthusiasm in the crowd went all the way out to the edges, although it dropped disappointingly when she was joined by Nick Cave for Where The Wild Roses Grow.
We waited by The Tree until our friend Xian showed up, and caught up with him and his doings. He was flagging somewhat, as he was at the festival on a Block9 crew pass and was camping right next to a stage that runs until 6am, meaning sleep was something of an optional extra. We watched a few songs of Miley Cyrus, then a combination of wanting to see Ten Tonnes (us), wanting to get back in time for a crew meal ticket (Xian) and not really wanting to stand near that staggeringly enthusiastic 4 year old screaming unbelievably loudly and continuously for Wrecking Ball (everyone) we shuffled off. Later, ChrisC and I shuffled back to catch a cover of Head Like a Hole (yes, actual cover, I think, not the Black Mirror rewrite) and, in fact, Wrecking Ball.
We seemed to be running out of festival fast, and caught some odds and bits of bands while hoovering up hog roast and cassoulet and (excitingly for me) running into ex-colleague Mark. Then we were back at the Pyramid, pushing our way into the middle of the crowd to see The Cure.
Which was... weird. OK, so The Cure have not got the hang of this being a festival crowd-pleasing act. If you are a hardcore fan, then watch the whole 2 hour set before it disappears off the iPlayer because it is bloody brilliant. If you quite like them, maybe watch the last 90 minutes. If you don't really care for The Cure and just want the hits then somewhere between the last 15-30 minutes will be plenty. The crowd around us seemed quiet and attentive, but almost completely unfamiliar with almost everything they played. They woke up for Friday I'm In Love (possibly one of my least favourite Cure songs, but at least well-known and easy to jump up and down to) but beyond one solitary bloke behind me clapping along in the distinctive offbeat rhythm for Close To Me you'd genuinely think no one had ever heard any of these songs before.
For me, the two hours of the Disintegration and The Head On The Door-heavy set flashed by, in the way it always will when you're listening to songs you've loved for close to thirty years.
And the we drifted off along the high route to the circus gate, collecting ChrisC's luggage and tent from a lockup. You'll be pleased to know we found the car :)
[Originally posted at https://venta.dreamwidth.org/539891.html]