Friday 24th June

6am
Peals of thunder are only just audible over the roar of rain on canvas. I’m fast learning that the single-skin tent I "acquired" at last year’s festival isn’t exactly waterproof. I contort my 6ft frame uncomfortably to avoid touching the sides, before discovering I’ve just been dunking the end of my sleeping bag in a pool of standing water.

8.30am
After a brief period of respite the storm starts up again with greater force and intensity. More pools are collecting inside the tent, at the top end too now and faster than I’m able to mop them up with an assortment of grubby T-shirts. It’s soon apparent I’m fighting a losing battle, and I abandon the rapidly sinking ship with all my stuff for the relative dryness of Dan’s twin-skinned three man tent. Chris soon joins us, all his clothes drenched.

9.30am
We unzip the tent cautiously and look out and JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! What was standing water outside the tent is now a full-on river running through our camping area and indeed under some of our tents. Martin and Andy, who’s been enjoying the experience of sleeping on a waterbed, are awoken by a girl screaming "GET OUT!". Andy opens his door to see a box of wine floating out of his porch and off down the hill. Martin’s first words on seeing the scenes unfolding outside his tent: "I’ve read about this in the Bible. This isn’t weather, this is an attack". Micky, whose tent is facing uphill, opens his door and, as water streams in, frantically scrabbles around trying to locate his phone. Meanwhile Graham sleeps through it all.

10.30am
Rob and Steph’s tent, directly in the flow of the river, collapses into the water despite careful attempts to keep it dry while taking it down. Chris and me paddle around barefooted, like the others trying to help out as best we can. Micky, who has just about managed to save the contents of his tent, cracks open a can of lager. We all gradually convene under a neighbour’s gazebo, the spirit of community, camaraderie and friendly assistance strong as it always is here. Huddled together around a portable radio, we hear Chris Moyles tucked up in his London studio chuckling about the atrocious conditions and power cuts which are preventing Jo Whiley from broadcasting her show live from the site. Right on cue comes ‘Why Does It Always Rain On Me?’

11am
Moyles has got Michael Eavis on. His customary bullishness wins us over, as he insists the show will go on and it’ll be fantastic. The rain peters out and there’s a remarkable sense of euphoria as the sun breaks through. He may just be right…

11.30am
The rain starts up again.

12noon
It’s stopped once more, thankfully, and the river is dwindling to a stream. Soaked to the skin, I take a walk down the hill in search of warm caffeinated sustenance and encounter the carnage at the bottom by the railway track, where a couple of hundred tents are submerged in as much as four foot of muddy water. People stand around clutching what they could salvage in the panic and scratching their heads in disbelief. We’ve got off lightly – it could have been much, much worse. After all, that’s where we were camped last year.

2pm
A small patch of deep mud has been fenced off and has a yellow plastic duck floating on it. A sign reads: "Glastonbury Nature Reserve: Don’t Fuck With The Duck". Shortly afterwards we spot our first two completely mud-covered revellers.

2.45pm
Despite the power cuts, lightning strikes and mud which necessitated the cancellation of several acts, the music has been underway for over two hours. First up for me are Mancs NINE BLACK ALPS (John Peel Stage), who’ve attracted such a sizeable crowd that it seems impossible to squeeze into the tent. Solid rather than spectacular, they blast through tracks from debut LP Everything Is, proving that the litany of Nirvana comparisons are well-founded. Recent single ‘Not Everyone’ in particular could have dropped off the end of Nevermind, such is the melody married to its muscle. I just hope for their sakes they don’t go the same way as the last band to be hyped up as the new Nirvana, The Vines. At least there are no drippy ballads clogging up the Nine Black Alps set.

3.45pm
The first stupendously good set of the festival, and it comes courtesy of the first half of a Geordie double bill, MAXIMO PARK (John Peel Stage). A fledgling outfit they may be, but they’ve got fantastic new-wave tunes coming out of their ears - from ‘Apply Some Pressure’ to ‘Now I’m All Over The Shop’, from ‘The Coast Is Always Changing’ to forthcoming single and set closer ‘Going Missing’. And that’s without even mentioning the crowning glory of ‘Graffiti’. Paul Smith is a magnetic figurehead, scissor-kicking around the stage only to stop occasionally and read his lyrics from a book, but in keyboard player Lukas Wooller Maximo Park effectively boast a second frontman - when he’s not hunched over his instrument Wooller hops around chopping the air robotically like a short-circuiting member of Kraftwerk. Lively doesn’t really do this performance justice.

4.45pm
YOURCODENAMEIS:MILO (John Peel Stage) are, appropriately enough, the only band ever to record a Radio 1 session for John Peel on the strength of a demo alone and, even though it’s only Friday afternoon, I think they can fairly confidently lay claim to being the heaviest act of the festival. Certainly their rejection of airbrushed Funeral For A Friend style post-hardcore in favour of a far more complex, intricately crafted and interesting racket isn’t to everyone’s taste, though it was to Steve Albini’s, who produced debut mini-LP All Roads To Fault. For the most part my reaction is one of bafflement - these songs are undoubtedly good but very hard to follow on first listen, and I’m also wondering whether the guitarists are massive or whether frontman Paul Mullen really is that small. Mood music for schizophrenics.

5.30pm
Ah, the calm that inevitably follows the storm. M83 (John Peel Stage) are on hand to ease those frayed nerves and soothe away the headaches that Yourcodenameis:Milo had threatened to bring on. It might seem like a lazy comparison given their shared Gallic origins, but M83 really do sound like Air, albeit performed by a T-shirt-and-jeans-clad indie band with a My Bloody Valentine obsession. The trouble is that the festival’s young and I’m not really in the mood for anything quite this placid. Of course it’s just as we decide our afternoon’s residency at the John Peel Stage should come to an end and walk out of the tent that M83 strike into something with more of a pulse.

6.15pm
Elvis lives! Well, ELVIS COSTELLO (Pyramid Stage), that is. Perhaps it’s my unfamiliarity with his back catalogue, but for a long time there seems precious little to enjoy except the sight of the keyboard player from his backing band The Imposters who – dressed in loud shirt, orange trousers and shades and with long hair and beard – looks like the sort of acid casualty with whom Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski would hang out. Thankfully, Costello comes good with ‘Oliver’s Army’, ‘(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding’, ‘Monkey To Man’ (from his recent The Delivery Man LP), ‘Alison’ and ‘Suspicious Minds’. Amidst all the excitement a somewhat chemically refreshed girl persuades Martin to lift her up on his shoulders (much to the embarrassment of her boyfriend), and he gets his back covered in mud from her wellies for his trouble.

7.45pm
An object lesson in why you should never get your hopes up – they’ll only get dashed. If there’s one band I’ve been most looking forward to seeing for the first time it’s BLOC PARTY (Other Stage). And they turn out to be a major disappointment. Well, no, maybe that’s a bit harsh - after all, they’re still enjoyable enough. But it would be hard not to be, given that they have one of my favourite albums of the year up their sleeve and songs of the quality of ‘Helicopter’, ‘This Modern Love’ and ‘Like Eating Glass’ to call upon, all tense wiry guitar lines and frantic drumming. Therein, perhaps, lies the problem. Accelerated up the bill by the relentless hype machine, they look and sound a little awkward, as if they’re suffering from vertigo, and so rely on the standout tracks from Silent Alarm to see them through, but are unfortunately able only to muster fairly flimsy facsimiles. If there’s something specific that doesn’t translate, it’s the sheer edgy excitement of the record.

9.45pm
I don’t like THE KILLERS (Pyramid Stage). Not one bit. But that doesn’t stop me from appreciating they’re putting on a half-decent show. That said, ‘Indie Rock ‘N’ Roll’ is a truly heinous crime against music in any context, and by sporting a light pink jacket Brandon Flowers is saying to us all: "Look at you, you peasants, all covered in mud – and then look at me". My views of the band remain unchanged, and I curse my laziness for missing out on Willy Mason.

11.15pm
Dan and Chris appear, saucer-eyed and grinning, just in time for THE WHITE STRIPES (Pyramid Stage): "We’ve earned four crystals with what we’ve been through. And we didn’t get locked in once". Fuck me if Jack White doesn’t look ridiculous with his Mexican pimp ‘tache. And Meg still can’t sing. And we REALLY don’t need marimbas. But when the duo avoid material from Get Behind Me Satan (‘Blue Orchid’ aside, which I hear for the very first time tonight), there’s no doubting they’re electric. The set is a procession of fantastic songs, starting with ‘Dead Leaves And The Dusty Ground’ and taking in ‘Hotel Yorba’, ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’, ‘I Smell A Rat’ and the brilliant ‘Ball And Biscuit’ (split into sections and dispersed) before coming to a close, predictably enough, with ‘Seven Nation Army’. But the stage set-up and White’s general demeanour is all a bit pretentious. A part of me can’t help but recall with fondness their Pyramid Stage debut of 2002, even more thrilling because of the complete lack of anything to detract from the music. Then it was just two people bashing out some wonderful modern blues, and now it seems more like the sort of self-conscious spectacle put on by a pair of global rock stars.

1am
Back at base camp, the river has disappeared. I can feel the onset of trenchfoot, but miraculously, after a bit of mopping, my tent is sufficiently dry as to be habitable.

Bands or performers I would have liked to have seen in an ideal world but missed due to clashes / rearranged running orders / my own sheer laziness or stupidity: Tom Vek, Hot Hot Heat, Editors, Doves, Secret Machines, Willy Mason, Stewart Lee.