Saturday 26th June

9.30am
Yesterday’s sunburn is a distant memory. The Big Man Upstairs must have been listening to Jason Pierce last night when he was singing ‘Lord, Let It Rain On Me’, for lo, the heavens have opened and the site is transformed, the ground covered in the watery brown slop that seems to be unique to Worthy Farm. Memories of the apocalyptic scenes of ’98 come flooding back, but, as it did then, Dunkirk spirit soon kicks in. We can get through this. The weather can’t rain on our parade. The show must go on.

10.45am
Americans RILO KILEY (Other Stage) are a band about as far from cutting edge as you are ever likely to find. Indier-than-thou par excellence, they sound like they have shrines to Stephen Malkmus in their houses at which they worship every night. They play a song about “that jackass that runs our country” as if what they say is going to change anything. But, closing my eyes, I’m pleasantly reminded of The Delgados (though without the mordant lyrical wit), and that certainly isn’t a bad thing.

11.45am
For the second time in two days I’m smitten, this time by Leila Moss, singer and tambourine basher with Parallax View favourites THE DUKE SPIRIT (Other Stage). She might fail to halt the rain and bring the sun out as promised, but her magnetic presence and vocals turn what is already an instantly appealing blend of stomping riffs and screeching feedback – think Black Rebel Motorcycle Club meets The Raveonettes – into something really special. Cacophonous closer ‘Red Weather’ has me drooling buckets. It ain’t rocket science, but then the best rock ‘n’ roll never is.

1pm
Time to take the plunge and investigate the “real Glastonbury”. We head for the Lost Vagueness field (so named because even a short visit makes you feel lost and vague) and enter the Chapel Of Love And Loathing, a kind of church made out of corrugated metal. Inside we find a boxing ring, in which a “marriage” ceremony is being conducted by a woman wearing white wings and suspenders and brandishing a Barbie doll nailed to a small cross. As members of the congregation, “the angels”, we are encouraged to shout out “love” when requested, but not everyone enters into the spirit of things – when we’re asked if anyone knows of any reason why the couple shouldn’t be married, someone yells “It’s his sister!”. Wearing a full wedding dress and veil, the bride gets all too emotional, before the ceremony ends with the “balloon of love” – an inflated condom filled with confetti – being burst over the happy couple’s heads. Once outside, one of our party shakes his head and mutters, “Tree-hugging hippy bullshit”.

2pm
Someone’s spray-painted the bastardised Latin phrase from Margaret Atwood’s ‘A Handmaid’s Tale’ onto one of the metal fences: “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum”. It’s not the bastards but the weather that’s in danger of grinding us down, though.

3pm
What we need are SCISSOR SISTERS (Pyramid Stage) and songs like ‘Rock My Spot’ which, Jake Shears announces, is about “eating pussy”. The anti Rilo Kiley, they’re all jumpsuits, trilbys, prancing and camp disco / soft rock gems. It’s safe to say that this lot don’t wear their New Yorkness on their sleeves as a badge of uber-indie-coolness like The Strokes, but instead believe in a thing called performance. ‘Take Your Mama Out’ is an inspired opener with ‘Laura’ and ‘Tits On The Radio’ following shortly afterwards, both of which exhume the corpse of late 70s Elton John but make it smell remarkably pleasant, while their wonderfully bizarre cover of ‘Comfortably Numb’ is a gleeful two fingers up to the pofaced-prog-loving blokes watching on in disgust. “How does he fit into that outfit?” “Isn’t the guitarist great?” “Is Ana Matronic a man?” “Do you actually enjoy eating pussy?” Scissor Sisters inspire all these questions, but, most important of all, suddenly the rain and mud don’t matter, and thousands of people are reminded they’re here to have FUN. And told to have sex in tents.

4.15pm
LOSTPROPHETS (Pyramid Stage). Gap Kids rock. Sorry, boys, but ‘The Fake Sound Of Progress’ and ‘Wake Up’ won’t halt the exodus, and neither will a Strokes cover. Awareness of meteorological realities returns with a vengeance.

5pm
Hairy men. Very hairy men. MY MORNING JACKET (Other Stage) may look like the Kings Of The Stone Age, but they eschew the expected doomy onslaught in favour of Southern-flavoured 70s rock. Likewise, Jim James’s soaring vocals are a revelation when you’re anticipating grunting, gurning and gnashing of teeth. This is the first time I’ve seen them in their new incarnation, with a new rhythm guitarist and keyboard player, and although there seems to be precious little I recognise from last year’s fine It Still Moves LP, it’s a rollicking good set.

5.30pm
STEWART LEE (Cabaret Tent) tells jokes I heard two years ago in this very venue – about Ben Elton and the inflatable ALF he spotted left outside Buckingham Palace amongst all the flowers in the wake of Princess Diana’s death. Halfway through his set, there’s a power cut and he’s forced to use a loudspeaker in a darkened tent, but he doesn’t let it detract from the show. I’m laughing like a drain even before he’s delivered the punchlines. “I said: ‘Granddad, what’s the worst thing about growing old?’ And he replied: ‘It’s having to watch all those around you slowly dying off.’ ‘Well’, I said, ‘you fed them those berries.’”

6.30pm
You just want to grab BRITISH SEA POWER (Other Stage) by the collective shoulder, shake them and tell them to forget all that other stuff and just stretch the end of their set out for three quarters of an hour. The likes of ‘St Louis’ and ‘Remember Me’ are decent in a gawky post-punk way without being at all spectacular, and it’s not until the last ten minutes that the fire of interest is really stoked. My Morning Jacket might have a massive brown bear on their album cover, but BSP go further by inviting one onto the stage, accompanied by a First World War drummer boy. Of course, all this, as well as the leafy branches and stuffed birds, is peripheral to the music and suggests that they themselves realise the songs aren’t their strongest selling point and need some kind of quirky garnish.

7.30pm
Having given up reading the colourfully cartoonish pamphlet that passes for the NME these days, not being a fan of radio and not having access to satellite music channels, I know nothing about THE KILLERS (New Tent), so when they’re announced as “the band everyone’s talking about” that’s not strictly true, and my first impressions really are just that. Call me cynical – I won’t deny it – but they seem to have been calculatedly created in some lab precisely to fill the gap between The Strokes and Duran Duran, but with more than just a nod to the disposable singalong pop that the likes of Good Charlotte are inclined to believe constitutes punk rock (see: ‘Mr Brightside’ and ‘Somebody Told Me’ for a start). Basically, utter toss. Their album’s called Hot Fuss, and I’ve given it a couple of spins since returning. My thoughts haven’t changed. A lot of Fuss over nothing.

8.30pm
Of The Killers I expected nothing. That’s why HOPE OF THE STATES (New Tent) – aided and abetted by members of Franz Ferdinand and The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster – are all the more disappointing. They might be given a rapturous reception, but it’s hard to see why when Sam Herlihy can’t sing and spends most of his time complaining about his equipment. What’s worse is that, on the evidence of songs like their latest single ‘The Red, The White, The Black, The Blue’ and the clichéd images of militaristic marching projected onto the roof of the tent, they seem to be turning into a neatly packaged radio-friendly post-rock soundbite – Godspeed! You Black Emperor for Keane fans. Sorry, chaps – you had this heart and this mind won, but you’ve just surrendered them.

10.30pm
Oh Christ. PAUL MCCARTNEY (Pyramid Stage), wearing a truly heinous purple jacket, has kicked off his headlining set with ‘Jet’ and now he’s saying something about the “leylines buzzing, man” in the manner of an extremely embarrassing dad trying to impress his 16-year-old daughter’s friends. Fasten your seatbelts, we’re in for a bumpy ride. The next few songs do little to dispel the feeling that ‘Mull Of Kintyre’ is lurking just around the corner, and, as a friend puts it, “What you really want is to be able to see the setlist, and to make him skip through it with a remote control”. After six songs we can’t take any more.

11.15pm
This is more like it – a party atmosphere. BASEMENT JAXX (Other Stage) are busy mashing up ‘Seven Nation Army’ and ‘In Da Club’, before kicking up a storm with ‘Romeo’. A very welcome breath of fresh air after the fustiness of McCartney’s Mojo-rock.

11.45pm
SQUAREPUSHER (Glade), however, is perhaps a step too far. After his schizoid barrage and screams of “COME ON YOU FUCKING CUNTS!” distracted me from watching Doves last year, I resolved to devote my attention to Tom Jenkinson this time around. Now I feel like an embarrassing dad myself, in my drunkenness desperately trying to hold onto something, anything amidst the pummelling mish-mash of sound and stop myself from thinking those terrible few words that spell the end of youth: “It’s just not music, is it?” Losing my grip and losing my edge.

1am
Apparently Macca granted 80,000 people stood in a field the once-in-a-lifetime chance to bellow out “Na, na, na, na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na, hey Jude” in unison. And I wasn’t there. And those who were also got ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Get Back’ whilst being spared ‘Mull Of Kintyre’ and ‘The Frog Chorus’. Arse. Damn you, sir, for setting sail on such a deceptively bollocks course.

Bands or performers I would have seen in an ideal world but missed due to clashes / rearranged running orders / excessively packed tents / my own sheer laziness or stupidity: The 22-20s, Dogs Die In Hot Cars, The Von Bondies, Phil Kay, Josh Rouse, The Stills, Jetplane Landing, Katastrophy Wife.