Saturday 25th June

9.30am
Waking up this morning proves less traumatic than it was 24 hours ago. Until we discover there’s a poo in a bag next to our tents, that is.

11.30am
Is this some kind of joke? Well, obviously, but HAYSEED DIXIE (Pyramid Stage) are playing a song about keeping an ex-girlfriend’s poo in a jar. Purveyors of what they call "rockgrass", they deal mainly in hillbilly covers of metal classics and tales of "hog farmin’ moonshiners from Bristol, Tennessee". There’s an awful lot of banjoing and fiddling as they storm through near-unrecognisable versions of ‘Ace Of Spades’, AC/DC’s ‘Highway To Hell’, Queen’s ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ and even Outkast’s ‘Roses’. Finger pickin’ good.

12.15pm
I spot Vernon Kay and then, walking past the Radio 1 tent, have the misfortune to hear Chris Moyles’s unnecessarily amplified voice. Keep out of my way, you fuckers.

12.45pm
More bands should be introduced on stage by bearded turban-wearing men beating miniature gongs. MODEY LEMON (Other Stage) hail from Pittsburgh. This we know because frontman Phil Boyd tells us on countless occasions. After recent support slots with Dinosaur Jr, Yourcodenameis:Milo and Secret Machines, they’re in good shape, powering through a glut of swampy Stooges style garage rock. ‘Crows’ and ‘Tongues (Everybody’s Got One)’ – from an album called, yes, Thunder + Lightning – thrash around in particularly impressive fashion, but the material from new LP The Curious City, such as ‘Mr Mercedes’ and the single ‘Sleepwalkers’, signals a greater sense of focus and an increased emphasis on the groove, not least because the deep Moog sound is more prominent. Brevity is a virtue they’re yet to discover, though, and they wind up with a very stern-looking stage manager glaring at them. A rather fine prospect live nevertheless, though judging by the sparse crowd gathered at an extraordinarily muddy Other Stage most festival-goers miss out on the experience.

2pm
Drugs! Guns! Rap! Rollerdiscos! Yes, it could only be GOLDIE LOOKIN CHAIN (Pyramid Stage). They announce that Bob Marley’s coming to make poverty history at 4pm - I’m not at the Pyramid Stage to find out. Will the joke wear thin? Without a doubt, but it’s still raising a smile here and the bad news for the haterz is that the Chain have got some new material. Critical faculties are futile. C’mon kids, all together now: "Commodore Spectrum ZX84 / Wanna be a fuckin’ robot after smokin’ loads of draw"…

2.45pm
"Art Brut, play me the sound of freshly cut grass". ART BRUT (John Peel Stage) respond to the request of their frontman Eddie Argos with a brief improvised cacophony. In truth, aside from length, there’s little difference between this and one of their songs. The likes of ‘Formed A Band’ and set-closer ‘Bad Weekend’ feature the sharply fringed Argos narrating rambling Cockerlike tales of frustration and disappointment over a shambolic mess that would make The Fall sound positively polished and cohesive.

3.45pm
If Art Brut are all about idiosyncrasy and eccentricity, then THE RAKES (John Peel Stage) seem to be all about conformity, a laser-guided missile calculated to explode at the precise intersection of The Strokes, Bloc Party and The Jam to maximum revenue-making effect. Phill points out that overexcitable vocalist Alan Donohue has evidently been earnestly studying videos of Ian Curtis in performance, and even their name owes a huge debt to The Libertines. They have no identity of their own whatsoever. The singles ‘Retreat’ and ‘Strasbourg’ have me tapping my feet, and The Rakes are a pleasant enough way to spend half an hour, but any memory of them vanishes clean out of my head the minute I step outside the tent.

5pm
After Bloc Party’s rather lacklustre showing yesterday, was I right to have got all excited about the prospect of THE FUTUREHEADS (Other Stage)? Why of course! This band just doesn’t do disappointment. The set starts slowly enough with ‘Le Garage’ and ‘The City Is Here For You To Use’ before gathering pace and climaxing in style with ‘Carnival Kids’, ‘Hounds Of Love’ (for which the crowd are split in half to sing the two vocal parts), ‘Man Ray’ and ‘Piece Of Crap’. Of their eponymous debut, only ‘Trying Not To Think About Time’ doesn’t get an airing – we’re even treated to a rare appearance of the a capella ‘Danger Of The Water’, in addition to The Television Personalities’ ‘A Picture Of Dorian Gray’ and new song ‘Area’. The band’s front three Barry Hyde, Ross Millard and bassist Jaff have always combined to create some stunning vocal harmonies to overlay their jerky XTC style new wave punk, but over time they’ve developed a real comic repartee, to the extent that they almost come across as a music hall act. As much as I enjoyed them two years ago in the New Bands Tent, they’ve come a long way – from kings of the toilet circuit to stadium rock showmen.

6.30pm
Is it THE CORAL (Pyramid Stage) who are slightly flat, or is it the crowd? Of course it doesn’t help the Hoylake mob’s cause that their most summery tunes ‘Pass It On’ and ‘Dreaming Of You’, though still capable of inspiring a fair amount of jigging, are played out beneath cloudy skies. Nevertheless, and despite James Skelly’s apparent lack of interest, they still do enough to remind me of their status as national treasures. Opening up with a song called ‘Goodbye’ is genius, and ‘Arabian Sand’ is, like many of the tracks from new album The Invisible Invasion, darker and more menacing in tone than earlier material, but with an added bile and bite that strikes a cleverly discordant note on which to end.

7pm
Mudwatch: deep and becoming increasingly sticky. Mobility and stability are problematic, particularly after a few pints of lager.

8pm
I don’t suppose anyone goes to see INTERPOL (Other Stage) expecting laughs a plenty or witty banter. Just as well, because today they’re as lugubrious and serious as ever, without even Paul Banks’s bowler hat or the litter tornado of two years ago to lighten the mood. ‘Next Exit’ gets things underway, my enjoyment tinged with slight disappointment at the knowledge that this means ‘Untitled’ will again go unplayed, before ‘Slow Hands’ shifts the pace up a gear or two. Overall, there seems to be a growing confidence in the material from second LP Antics. Particularly impressive is ‘Not Even Jail’, for me perhaps the stand-out track from Antics, but even that is overshadowed by the by-now familiar brilliance of ‘NYC’ which preceded it. "Turn on the bright lights"? Nah, let’s stay in the dark.

9.30pm
Felicitous indeed that I can take in the entirety of Interpol’s set before making my way leisurely across the site to see the band the New Yorkers are most frequently (and unjustly) accused of aping. Well, not quite – after all, this is NEW ORDER (Pyramid Stage) rather than Joy Division. Yet we’re still fortunate enough to get ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ and the song that started it all, ‘Transmission’, during which Martin turns to me and says: "I told you I’d get a hard on if they played this…" Within the first six songs we’ve had ‘Crystal’, ‘Regret’, ‘Transmission’, ‘Krafty’ and ‘True Faith’, but the euphoria can’t last and sure enough out comes Ana Matronic of Scissor Sisters for a run through execrably bad recent single ‘Jetstream’. Mercifully, we’re temporarily distracted from proceedings by a girl from Virgin Radio who alights upon Gav as a suitable interviewee. Technical problems curtail the set so we miss out on ‘Blue Monday’, but ‘World In Motion’ is nevertheless a decent enough conclusion, despite the fact that a chunky Bernard Sumner and a grizzled Peter Hook are joined onstage by Keith fucking Allen, filling in in John Barnes’s absence.

10.30pm
From legends fully made to legends very much in the making. I arrive just in time to catch THE MAGIC NUMBERS (John Peel Stage) wrapping up their set to the most rabid reception afforded to any band I’ve seen so far this weekend. As encore ‘Wheels On Fire’ draws to a close, people are going fucking insane for them, not least the hairy gnome-like stage announcer, and, as in Birmingham last month, they’re genuinely humbled, not the kind of band to take it all for granted. Look out for them when the festival returns in 2007 – they won’t be performing in a tent again, that’s for sure.

11.30pm
Following The Magic Numbers on that sort of form is a tall enough order without finding yourselves hampered by technical difficulties, but unfortunately for Brighton’s twelve-legged feelgood machine THE GO! TEAM (John Peel Stage) that’s precisely the predicament in which they find themselves. Their hour-long headline slot is less green light and full steam ahead than a procession of untimely halts. And yet, in the brief flashes we do get - not least ‘Ladyflash’ itself - there’s more than enough to suggest that they could have triumphed. There’s certainly no one quite like them out there, slinging frenzied guitar into the mix with funk basslines, the odd semi-epic keyboard line with energetic rapping. (Incidentally, The Go! Team have gone one further than Modey Lemon, naming their album Thunder, Lightning, Strike - perhaps there’s some wag on the technical team holding them responsible for yesterday’s meteorological onslaught...)

1am
I arrive back at the tents. Andy’s on the phone to his ladyfriend back in London, who’s stoned and giggly, watching the BBC’s Glasto coverage and insisting on singing Keane songs to him. He’s not amused.

3am
Our drunken campfire party is gatecrashed by a toothless drug-wreck who’s barely able to laugh let alone speak. Gradually we manage to coax out of him the fact that he’s called Emile, he’s Swedish and his mate’s given him a load of horse tranquillisers. After a while he stumbles off into the distance, apparently lacking any concept of where his tent might be.

4am
Gav’s body, which has been slumped unconscious in a chair for a couple of hours, suddenly comes back to life and his mouth begins spewing forth nonsense in a splurge that will last for the best part of three hours. Two sample comments: "I am to Dudley what Michael Palin is to the world" and "The problem with Magnus Magnusson is that his north-south equilibrium is all fucked up". Well, quite. Time for bed, I think.

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: Echo & The Bunnymen, Rilo Kiley, Longcut, The Earlies, Simon Munnery.