Glastonbury... The Universe and Everything

Ok people, for those of you who are not interested in the pre-amble, skip forward to the bit that says ALL ABOUT GLASTO 2010...

So it’s been a while. June has been a slight barren month due to being slightly busy and mainly due to being away. Yes. A-W-A-Y. From evenything. I think I have started a craze - two holidays bolted together. So it ends up feeling like FAR longer.

The main thing I am going to vocalise is Glastobury. Yeah yeah yeah. You’ve heard your friends going on and on about how beautiful it is and how wonderful the people are and how spiritual the healthing fields are and how magical the stone circle is. Y’know what. THEY. ARE. RIGHT. I knew so few people who went this year. This was bitter/sweet for me. I loved being on my own and doing my own thing but I slightly missed going off on the tangents that other people’s input creates… I am going to try and NOT hyperbolise everything to within an inch of it’s credibility. I am not going to lie to you BUT I might well fail.

I’ll tell the abridged version of the lead up story - I have 20mins before I have to head off somewhere. I was going to go with my ex EX girlfriend. Someone whose company I loved but sadly being ex’s it appears we were destined to fail as friends? I miss her sometimes. Never as much as I did over Glastonbury weekend. We’d have rocked that show. The reason we failed (mainly my fault to be honest) was because I started seeing someone else. SHE turned out to be a fair bit N.U.T.S. No anagram. JUST plain fucking bat-shit crazy. She wanted love, but she had such low self-esteem that she couldn’t believe someone would love her for who she is – I did and then some (if you even think of starting to play air violins I will come to your house and I will cut you). Sadly this manifested itself in the most evil creature I have ever met. Don’t get me wrong. She is a wonderful person, she just wasn’t ready for a meaningful relationship. Her loss. My loss. The reason she is important in this story is because she said she wanted to go with me so I bought my ticket. So shit went down. She has disappeared. Glasto was the last meaningful thing in my life that was directly connected to her. Her way of coming to terms with things is to forget they exist. For me. That is one of the hardest things I have ever had to come to terms with. So maybe this weekend, finally being over was an exorcism for me. Something I badly needed. I have not been very well since she dumped me (blub blub, waaa waaa etc etc.) and for a long time I was not going to go. So the exorcism coupled the pure unadulterated joy that wells up in abundance when I am in proximity to the Glastonbury Tor laid the foundation for what ended up being the best weekend of my year so far and hopefully a possible turning point in 2010 (MAY BE LIFE). Also it was beautifully sunny! SCORE. In your faces naysayers!

So we get there (I went with a couple of girls I tenuously knew). They were newbies and so had packed FAR to much. We also got there fairly late on Thursday so had to traverse the WHOLE of glasto from the car park East 6/7 with a shitload of food and other unnecessary auxiliary stuffs. Tents up. Haze descending. Moral increasing. I took a shit in my favourite type of loo (long drops rule all). Suddenly, lying in the grass. Life is good again for the first time in far to long.

I’m going to digress for one minute. I feel like I need to do some character development here. I am a happy guy. I am motivated by helping other people, making their lives happier or at least getting them to smile and laugh a bit more. Recently (since Feb/Mar) I have hardly been the shell of myself. I am tired of [my] life. I need to make some changes. I'm barely a shadow. Unrecognisable to others. I’m still not myself but I am getting there. I never thought I would have to rebuild myself so comprehensively. I never thought that I would ever psychologically collapse like that either. I am stupidly loyal and this often only bites me in the arse. If you take anything away from reading me then PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE be true to yourself and good to eachother.



ALL ABOUT GLASTO 2010
So I turned up late afternoon on Thursday, carried a shitload of stuff that wasn't necessary of which only a small holdall was mine, booze, food, tweed jacket and all essentials included. I LOVE that place. From the minute I was nearing pedestrian gate C I felt that wonderful safeness. I'm not sure if I am alone in this feeling. You will also have to get used to the words wonderful and blissful. Ended up having to walk a long way, got sorted with the tents, I took a shit and i lay down. THIS is where I start to get a little wanky(er) so your choice. Looking up at the blue sky, in the grass shorts on, feet out with m'head resting on the tweed jacket which was second hand but unworn by me until then I had moved into my own version of bliss. Something that happens rarely and is sorely lacking all too often. These moments in whatever form it takes, everyone has their own happy place, these are the moments we live for. It wasn't long before I had had my first conversation with a passer by. It involved discussion around what the world would be like if Glastonbury as a town lasted for a month as opposed 5 days. My theory was that it would start a modern day religion. The people who took on this life so longer than a week would be effect for a long time. They would multiply.

Drink was drunk, shoes were discarded, the sky was up and the earth was down. Everything was happy, people struggled with the heat almost as much as they did with the wet of previous years. I took on the mentality of a cold blooded creature mixed with Arnold Schwarzenegger character in Twins when he has JUST arrived in the States. Everything was interesting, everything was exciting and I BASKED in the sun. I was in my element. I felt like instead of everyone trying to catch up with the world, the world and everyone were in keeping within this tiny microcosm. This made me feel the happiness and content seem back into my bones and broken spirit. Life was [becoming] good again.

Y'know, every year, that first Chinese (?) lantern that you see drifting away never fails to stop me dead in my tracks. There is something so serene about fire when it is placed unobstructed so close air and water - I've been told that i need to go and see the funeral pyres on the Gangees. I will oneday. Soon I hope.

I feel very stop start on trying to explain why I enjoy Glastonbury, there are many many things that make things super special while there but on their own or out of context they mean very little. I for one am happy that there are flags there, not only are they navigation point BUT they add and create their own atmosphere. I have a weird respect or admiration for standard bearers. This goes for flags and generally hanging floating flappiness in general I suppose because I found myself drawn to bunting made of clothes (in the picture at the top) and the Tower in the Park and the rings of flags at the back of the West Holt stage and well everything.

I consider myself a version of a veteran now. This was my third in a row (I'm so cool). I was most nervous this time because I was the one who had been before. Maybe I was slightly selfish in my desire to stick to my original 'plan' and so I let the girls go off and do their own things (which included reading Heat magazine, checking work emails and substituting loosing something for someone stealing something...) In their defence, if they go again, they will enjoy it more now that they have done the tourist bit. BASICALLY, I LOVED the wondering with no aim. Always knowing that no matter what direction I walked and whatever direction I looked when I got to wherever I ended up, I KNEW there would be something I could EASILY draw a great deal of happiness from. I saw few of the headline acts or the big names, I looked at the schedule very little and fortunately/sadly my phone died quite early on. Fortunately because I had no desire to be contactable. Sadly because I missed seeing my friend Kimmy which sucked and I had no means of photographing anything. A new approach that I had never needed to take was having next to no money. I ducked and dived and mainly ate Dole fruit pots. THEY ARE A MUST FOR ANY FESTIVAL GOER.
I have said and prossibly will say very little of what I saw, I will give you a basic list if you want BUT I am trying, whether I'm succeeding or not I don't know or care.

Broken bells just because,

Beth Jeans Houghton singing about maths,
Chou Chou caramel Cashews,
Park stage,
The T-shirt bunting near the back of the park in between the tower and the bins - my favourite stop of the entire site.
Sweat in the rabbit hole.
Shade under a rock in the stone circle.
Peaceful bliss of Tipis
Edith Bowman
Stopping off at the BBC Introducing tent and always catching the end of the act
XX – 8am til I come
Shlo mini set… Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
The desire for Goan Fish curry and the failure to satiate that curry desire
Ali the Scouse at Mumford
Muse. Sick. Adam. Sick. With Baby Lube fella. I'm Danny Dyer.
Keane wondering passed at Toots
Rodrigo y Gabriella,
Michael Harvey – Bimble Inn
Rabbit Hole
Beach House
Watching the sun set and the full moon rise simultaneously each night
Quiet reflection
Stoned in the stone circle.
Introducing legal highs to a friend
Rusko being quiet & CUBE henge
The first Glasto arguement I had seen (I was domestic)
The smile on Gabbie’s face after she had had some time to do her own thing.
The comfort of being amongst thousands of like minded people - the happy buzz
If Glasto was a month long... a new world regilion would be created
Ukcreations.co.uk - beautiful iron work
Hammocks.co.uk - beautiful hammock work
Halloumi burger - Halloumyou,Halloumi
Dan and Pip. True spokespeople for our generation.

It's funny, there is ONE RESOUNDING image I cannot shake from my head. If I am sitting trying to conjure brilliance and diversity about my adventures of Glastonbury 2010. All I get is THIS.

I'll set the scene. It was Sunday afternoon. We had just traipsed all the way back to the car, I could pack up my tent properly and we still had most of the cans of food and heavy things so I marched, sweated, stumbled... CONQUERED the journey with the girls and got back to the car in the BLAZING sunshine. I made a makeshift sun shelter and lay there. For a while. Then we headed back in various directions (including picking up a phone that had been handed in) agreeing to meet at the car at the end of the night. My world only really has room for one at the moment. England were playing Germany, Slash was making genius come out of his fingers so I meandered in the opposite direction up hill. In the real world, I would instinctively wonder downhill, so this is significant. I got to the stone circle. HOT but not-so-bothered and lay down. Snooze, dosed and napped for while in the shade of a wonderful rock. I had a family come and go and a pair of youngish West Country folk. They were nice and then I took this picture. I was happy. PERFECTLY HAPPY. As good as it gets for me.