By David Dewhurst
June 26 -Too Early
Wake up, just. Set off with friends to catch the coach from Manchester. Excitement mounts until I realize how much I hate Shreddies, after eating three, whilst still asleep, for breakfast.
Get a guided tour of the sights and sounds of Manchester before being dropped off and have to walk with very heavy rucksacks to the bus stop.
Wait for bus. Listen to messages on Tanoy. "All passengers to the Glastonbury Festival please wait at platform C" We are at platform A. Hobble over to platform C carrying all the heavy bags and rucksacks. "All passengers to the Glastonbury Festival please wait at platform A" Hobble over to platform A carrying all the heavy bags and rucksacks. "All passengers to the Glastonbury Festival please wait at platform C" Hobble over to platform C carrying all the heavy bags and rucksacks.
Finally decide to stay at platform C before we develop permanently disfigured backs. Suddenly discover we are standing right under a very loud tanoy speaker as another announcement is bellowed in our ears. "Would the owner of vehicle registration E231... Err... registration E23... what does that say George?... registration E231..." Find this exceedingly funny when bellowed in our ears at 100 decibels. We wonder if we will ever know the registration of the vehicle.
Coach arrives. Hurray! Have to wait for Jimmy and Susie to return from camping shop to get some gas. Worry about missing bus. Get strange, worried look from bus driver as two of us have enough luggage for over four people. Have to explain it IS for four people. Get on Bus. Leave Manchester. Hurray!
- Afternoon sometime
Stuck in traffic. Forced to listen to Radio Avalon. Run by generators on bicycles and sounds like it too.
Relief at realization my radio will not go low enough down the scale to reach Radio Avalon.
- Late Afternoon sometime
Stuck in traffic. Listen to the reports of MUD blocking the entrances, massive queues and predictions of a full scale disaster. Cool!
Leave bus and start long walk down hill to the site. Look in vain for things to jettison from bags. Wait in long queue. The rain falls. The mud grows. The fun starts.
- Evening, I think
Struggle with tent. Realize our tent has no zip! Decide to use copious amounts of sellotape and thirty-two tent pegs. Then realize we should have been outside the tent when we did that. Damn.
Decide to go down into the market and slide in the mud. Want to explore, but somehow get stuck in a queue for the three telephones one hundred thousand people all want to use at the same time. Then realize I have been left in the queue on my own and I don't even want to use the phone. Four hours later I am rejoined by my friends and we have nearly reached the telephones.
Someone notices that there are three queues all for the same telephone... Yes! We reach the telephone. The telephone is broken. Spend half an hour pushing phone cards in and out, pushing redail, pushing follow on call, hitting the phone with a large stick and generally cussing. We finally get a call though. But by this time the rest of England is asleep.
Have a walk round the market. I never realized so much mud could possibly exist in the same place with out upsetting the fabric of the space-time continuum.
We decide to sleep so we can get up in the morning and watch the Shirehorses with Mark Radcliffe and Lard. The popular beat combo from the Radio One breakfast show.
June 27 - Way too early
Edwin and I get the insane idea to go and look for Mark and Lard, who are doing the breakfast show from there today. We hope to join in in the Pixie/Pirate dancing. Spend two hours wondering round half asleep. Give up looking for them and go in search for the stone circle of miss-fortune. Get lost. Decide to go back to the tent and get some breakfast before ten, when the Shirehorses will appear.
- 10 am, Still way too early for me
The Other stage is already one big mud swamp. The Shirehorses appear. It's Mark and Lard! "A band with a singing drummer, has to be a novelty act" says Lard. They then receive a record contract offer, amazingly.
We get ready for a long stay at the Other stage as there are lots of good bands scheduled for this morning. Silence.
LOOK! On the stage! JAMIE THEAKSTON!!! Screams rise from the crowd as he reports to camera about the rain that stopped play for the Other stage. The first maga-star of the day, and he's from the O-Zone.
Calamity! The stage is sinking, the security barricades have collapsed, the straw is on fire, Michael Eaves has sunk and everyone is getting glued to the floor. Or so we are told. So there will be no play until Placebo tonight.
Instead we have a great time with Finlay Queye, and so does the rest of Glastonbury judging by the size of the crowd.
Have a super haircut with Beck. I get lost and miss the Prodigy but watch the amazing Massive Attack on the Jazz World stage instead.
28 - June Around midday so my watch says
Miss Silver Sun. Miss Dub War. Well every cloud...
I wish I could start every day with a live performance by the 60ft Dolls, with Ash's Tim Wheeler watching from the wings. They even smash up their guitars. Rock 'n' Roll as they say.
We decide to forget the emergency foot paths that move painfully slowly and just run through the mud. Great fun, until the trench foot sets in...
We are amazed by the Pyramid stage's amazing shape. If you stand upside down and squint you can just see a faint triangle in the ceiling of the stage. Still, the mud decorations are very attractive.
The highlight on the weekend comes as we go and see Radiohead later after the enjoyable Ocean Colour Scene. Radiohead put on an amazing show, complete with flashing lights and fireworks.
The roaring show leaves the whole crowd buzzing, I am wide awake. So we decide to go and look for the stone circle.
It is an amazing experience. The hill leading up to the circle is full of people gathered around burning torches in little circles, talking, singing and playing the guitar. An amazing panoramic view of the whole of the site is below us, full of thousands of lights, fires and tents lining the hills. A giant laser points from the middle of the valley up over the stone circle, sweeping and flashing in the sky like some enormous bat sign. A tribal beat emanates from the circle. The whole thing is like a stone-age gathering, a shared experience, and a unity of purpose.
29 June - Time? It's a quarter past Travis
Big disappointment on waking up as I realize I have missed The Glastonbury Town Band. Doh!
We get to the Other stage in time for 3 Colours Red and Symposium which, whilst there music is not the best, the entire mud contents of the field is simultaneously thrown at Symposium. And a massive bout of crowd surfing, with giant muddy hobnail boots on, begins.
Suddenly realize everyone else is afraid of getting covered in mud and getting a Doc Martin for lunch, so I am left to haul the surfers single handidly over. By the end I am clapping clods of crud and am totally nackered.
Michael Eavis is wheeled on to appeal for a cease fire in the Mud Triathalon. The crowd cheers for the man who made this event all happen. The mud stops. Mr Eavis then considers stopping the festival after the year 2000 and joining the UN peace keeping force.
Billy Brag is next on at the "Pyramid" stage, so we decide to go for the chilled-out-at-the-back-on-the-grass approach. But this turns out to be just as muddy as moshing in the mush at the front. Billy Brag, in his short slot, manages to be really funny and have great songs at the same time. Quite an achievement.
Mansun arrive and start their set. Then stop. Then start again. Then stop. Then start again. Then stop. They walk off and say the PA system isn't working. It was good whilst it lasted. But it didn't.
The Bluetones then wrapped up my musical experiences at this years Glastonbury in blue paper with a shiny blue ribbon.
- Late night / Early morning, whatever
Edwin decides he is not going to sleep tonight, and we all wonder how long that will last. He and I go off in search of a film and discuss whether or not to have a mud fight...
We eventually find the open air cinema in the freezing cold and prepare to watch Microcosmos. It is an amazing film following the lives of insects, with no David Attenboroughs or Bellamys wittering on in the background. Just the insects and great music. A brilliant film even though I am freezing and half asleep.
In the film the heavens open and the rain falls. In real life the heavens open and the rain falls. In the film the rain slowly stops and silence falls. In real life the rain slowly stops and silence falls. An interesting experience, I think, as I freeze, soaking wet, wallowing in the mud.
We walk back to the tent through vast empty fields full of litter and smoldering fires strewn about. Like an aftermath of some war or refugee camp.
Have to fight through thousands of dome tents camped around "No Camping! All Tents Will Be REMOVED By Security" signs. Develop guide-rope ankle as our path is mapped out behind us from the collapsed tents we have pulled over.
Fall Asleep.
June 30 - Ahhh! Were late!
Slowly wake up exhausted and realize we have thirty minutes to put the tent away, pack everything up, and walk three miles up hill to catch the bus.
I now realize how stupid it was taking the zips from by bag off to try and use them on the tent when they don't fit. Frantic stuffing, folding, and Sellotaping follows as we stumble off towards the exit. I realize I will never walk again as by rucksack has one strap broken, so the whole bag is weighed on one shoulder.
The hill goes on for ever. I am hot, sweating, half asleep, and aching all over, but a good time was had by all.
- Later, it seems like years
Get to the bus stop. It is a long country lane. A LONG country lane. We walk for miles looking for a Manchester bus. We are told we passed a Manchester bus a mile back down the road, so we trudge back.
Were on the bus! At last! I need the toilet. Have to wait for services.
- Much Later
Exeter is sign posted as we drive past. Discover the driver has been driving the wrong way for the past three hours. "Right? I thought Manchester was Left!" The driver suddenly becomes a very unpopular person. We stop at Exeter services. I kick myself as I realize that there is a toilet on the bus! But at least now my bladder is much stronger...
- Much, Much Later
Pass Glastonbury on the way to Manchester.
- Much, Much, Much Later
We arrive in Manchester, and trek across city in search of the railway station. Discuss alibis for our absence from sixth form as we wait.
Travel to Blackburn, where I promptly get stuck in the train door with my rucksack. Wonder whether I'll have to be surgically removed or have to carry on to Clitheroe. I escape.
- Home time
Have a bath, which quickly turns into a mud bath, so it feels like home...
Copyright David Dewhurst 1997