Glastonbury, oh how I love you so. How I await your call to arms, how I delight in the knowledge that you’re around the corner, treating me to your music and madness and your temporary insanity.

You are certainly a challenge, but you make it worth every bit of effort I can summon from my bag of skin, bones and blood. You eat people up, you consume them and spit you out. You put us out to the elements,  ask us to withstand anything and everything the weather can chuck at us.

You should be painful, but you’re not.

Except for a little bit where  the dried mud pulled out my leg hair, leaving spotted bald patches on my legs. And the aching, and odd bowell movements from the Mexican place. Despite that, you’re (relatively) painless.

Anything can happen at Glastonbury.

You could end up covered head to toe in mud, showering for the third time to get the remnants of the mud out of your nails. But you’ll always be fine.

You could end up lost in a flame-lit field in the dark, drenched by rain, with no phone battery and no mates in sight. But you’ll always be fine. You could slip and crunch your ankle, falling to lay spread-eagled in  rain, mud and litter and piss. You could eat fatty, greasy food irregularly to fill your stomach with stodge and carbohydrates. By Sunday, you could almost pass for a wino with your beard and cheap wine bar booze. But you’ll always be fine.

You could end up hitting on strangers, drinking wine (an I quote, Morrison’s ‘GOOD SICILLIAN WINE’) from a box, dancing to ‘Come Up and See Me (Make Me Smile)’ next to a burger van in 12 inches of mud. You could end up using the same line each night: “Could you teach me how to dance in wellies?” And you’ll be fine.

You could get trashed on the last night and then be a little taken back while watching the Chemical Brothers when a scary 50-foot clown suddenly appears on the big screen, mouthing “Do it again.”

But my dear Glastonbury; as you consume us for the weekend, pulling your pilgrims collectively into your belly-town of fabric houses, marquees and mud, you give us something back. Spirit rises in your people; the rain may be cold and muddy, it may stick to me and become an effort to walk but it will not stop me having a good time. You are a challenge, and each person approaches you differently.

See, you could watch the Magic Numbers in the rain, in more rain, then briefly in a little bit of sun, then more rain and then feel the smile come across your face when the lead singer looks out across thousands of people who stand in front of the Pyramid stage and says humbly into the microphone… “Thanks for making my dream come true.”

You could see Fatboy Slim, in a dress, stripping to ‘Hot in Herre’ facing 500 welly-wearers, dancing monged in a medium marquee glamourously called a ‘Ballroom’.

You could end up sitting in a tipi, watching a half-naked mate and an old kaftan-clad hippy as they shuffle in their seat, smoke and unconciously (or subconsciously?) flash their willies at you.

You could laugh yourself into stitches when a mate tells you he was pissing hungover into a bottle in his sleeping bag last night and had too much for the vessel, hence it overfloweth.

You could aim to fulfill an ambition to see a band that you’ve always wanted to see. But you also know that your stage of debauchery, not you, will define whether you’d get to see them (did: Manic Street Preachers, didn’t: Arcade Fire).

You could wake up in the morning, feeling horrible and hungover and formulate the instant logic that you can get wasted in order to feel better. And you always, most definitely do.

You could wake up in the morning on your birthday, feeling that desperate pain in your stomach and have to ask a nice woman exiting a portaloo whether you could ‘borrow’ some toilet paper.

It’s the opposite to reality there.

You communicate and (gasp) people are nice and friendly, they share their resources (although she’s not getting that toilet paper back obvioulsy). They don’t look down at the ground there, they look up and smile happy. That’s it… Glastonbury is the opposite of the Tube.

Two guys even invited us to an ex-wife’s marital blessing at 6pm at the Lost Vagueness chapel. It could have been a lovely story – but unfortunately, you get drunk and forgot. It’s always, always, always the fault of the 7% pear cider.

If you teach us one thing Glastonbury, it’s the simple and obvious fact that reality just isn’t the same. People can’t wander around, getting wasted, watching music, doing what they like legitimately in the real world. The beautiful temporary meetings, the passing of ships and all that. Shame on us all.

But then, as you get home and adjust, you realise that real life isn’t so bad, it does have its good points – family, friends, toilets that don’t make you want to vomit, etc.

But I’ve been there before and I’ll be there again.

I love Glastonbury. And I think it loves me too.

 (This post was originally published on 30 June 2007 on another website)
© J. Grainger, 2007