SWSL Glastonbury 2005 Diary

Delayed by a combination of illness and slackness – but, as they say, the best things come to those who wait…

(For what is in effect a précis of this, check out my 15 Festival Earworms at Swiss Toni’s Place.)

Wednesday 22nd June

6.30am
Up at what is for me an ungodly hour, so we can beat the rush, get down there quicksmart and secure a prime Pennard Hill spot. The bleary-eyed face with a month’s worth of patchy beard growth staring back from the bathroom mirror reminds me that I’ve successfully managed to cultivate the look of a semi-feral road protestor who’s been holed up underground before the festival’s even started.

9.30am
And we’re off!

10am
Traffic jam. Arse.

1pm
We celebrate our arrival at the back of the queue to get onsite with a Ginsters pasty (well, we ARE practically in Cornwall, aren’t we?). Nearly there…

3pm
After a long and arduous walk from the E3 car park, the tents are up and we – Rob, Steph, Gav, Martin and myself – are cracking open our first beers of the day under clear blue skies and in scorching heat. It doesn’t get much better than this.

5.30pm
I help carry a crate containing several burst cans of lager to the tents, and realise that I now look AND smell like I should at the end of the festival – yet the first bands are still two days away.

7.30pm
The rest of our party arrive – Mark, Micky, Graham, Andy, Dan and Chris. On the path leading through the Pennard Hill campsite from the Glade to the Stone Circle walks a man selling hits of nitrous oxide from a canister. Two passers-by take him up on the offer, and we watch as the first doubles over unable to control himself and the second crumples slowly and spectacularly to the floor in a fit of hysterics. Having inhaled nothing but Glastonbury air, we laugh ourselves stupid at the whole spectacle.

9.30pm
Meeting up with Andy P and Phill by the Jazz World stage, I decide I’m already sufficiently alcoholically disorientated and pass up the opportunity to sample some of the infamous Brothers Bar pear cider.

3am
Far too drunk, I find myself at the Stone Circle stood around a big fire while a half-naked satyr-like figure chunters incessant nonsense over the sound of tom-tom drums. I set off down the hill for home.