1pm? It's Tequila time!

Summer weather is something that can never be replied upon - as evidenced by many of the summer festivals from last year that suffered from tempestuous conditions. Glastonbury was struck down with some bad weather, so WOMAD later in late July, but Glade Festival had some of the worse conditions of the summer. Two months rainfall in just a few hours meant that the opening acts had to wait as the stages had power problems. The emergency services were stopping people from coming to the festival as Aldermaston was under four foot of water, and potential festival goers were floating down the road refusing to leave their cars. A year has passed, and fingers were kept crossed for some fine weather for the weekend of July 17-20 - hopefully it would prove to be a return to some of the sunstroke weekends of Glades in the past.

One thing stood on our side though and that was knowing that we would be working inside as we were to be working behind the bar at the Origin Stage for Friday and Saturday afternoon. Amy and I were really looking forward to working for Peppermint Bars and the weather forecast was looking pretty good so all in all I was expecting a great festival. We had forgotten a map to the site but we knew the way, just about, but trying to find out where to sign in was a little more difficult. After going to gate one, we were then directed to gate two. We parked and queued to get our staff wristbands only to be told to go back over to gate one, where, eventually we got our bright red and yellow passes. They had to choose colours that clashed with my hair!

Finally arriving we spent a nice evening having a few beers with some of Amy's old friends, Paul and Slap, meeting new ones and generally getting our heads around the new layout to the site. The festival hadn't sold out, and in order to keep to budget some of the smaller tents had been merged with the larger ones to save money, not a bad idea really and it definitely worked. It was noticeably quieter on the Thursday than in previous years, though I had a feeling that this wouldn't be a bad thing as it would help to make the atmosphere a little more intimate, and I was looking forward to a good few days. We spent a rather sedate evening for a Thursday at Glade just having a few drinks before catching an early night in preparation for our first shift behind the bar the following day.

Although the idea of working at a festival might seem like an easy way to get a free ticket and being able to watch plenty of bands perform, it doesn't always work out so easy. Working for Oxfam can often mean being placed out near a car park a long way from being able to hear any music whatsoever. However, working for Peppermint Bars would bring some welcome comfort to that particular lottery, we knew exactly where we would be working, and that we'd be able to see plenty of Dj's play throughout Friday and Saturday afternoon at the Origin Stage. This is the outdoor psytrance stage with a brilliant sound system provided by Funktion One. They tested the speakers each morning by playing a recording of Formula One cars racing by and it was amusing each day to see people walking by the stage to be suddenly startled by the roar of a race car streaming from one corner of the dance floor to the other. We were going to be fortunate enough to be positioned with a great view looking back over the dance floor towards the Origin Stage enabling us to enjoy watching everyone dancing as soon as the music would begin. The Origin Stage is always packed, every year no matter what the weather from as soon as the music starts at 12pm, until it stops much later in the evening.

Amy and I were both looking forward to work, it's not difficult serving beer at a festival as you don't even have to operate the till; just take the order and the money, tell the cashier what the order was, give the customer the change and their drinks. The Origin Bar isn't one of the busiest bars and this means that you can always have a good bit of a chat with the customers and have a bit of a laugh while you work. Amy was happy because we got to see an artist called Slack Baba, not that she'd ever heard of him, she just found the name amusing! Our shift ran from 1130am to 630pm, but for most of it we were having a dance and a chat with the various drinkers who kept rocking up. Glade operates a no under 18 policy on its ticket holders, which is actually quite nice and makes serving much easier as one of the main issues that I've seen over the course of the summer is the amount of under age drinking. Not so much from alcohol that they've brought with them, but drinks bought at the festival. So not having to worry about IDing people would make things much better and meant we could focus on the music and having a laugh. We had plenty of amusing customers come up to the bar throughout the day, a couple of my favourites were two South African guys who insisted that they had to drink triple Bacardi and Cokes – not cheap at around nine pounds a drink! Amy had her fair share of customers too, and she was wearing her small straw boater which drew comments from pretty much everyone that she served. Her original story was that it had shrunk in the wash, but this later changed into a story involving the Rabbit Hole (the open mike tent), some cookies, and outgrowing the hat. Another welcome addition to our day came when Paul stopped by the bar to give us some presents. Two knitted finger puppets! Amy got a little red riding hood, and got a fox. Paul already had a monkey he had named Malcolm, there was also a Shrek (that Slap thought was Yoda) and a Kermit. The majority of the shift went by pretty quickly, but as with most jobs it was always the last hour that dragged on and we eventually finished up, getting our two free drinks before heading off for our meal that was included with work.



The psytrance had been pretty good for most of the day, it seemed more varied than most psytrance is, but after seven hours we needed something different and we were looking forward to heading out in the evening to listen to some breaks and catch Pendulum headline the Glade Stage. One of the advantages of Glade is that all the tents are pretty close together, yet you never get a crossover of music due to the quality of the sound systems. This means that you can save your energy for dancing instead of having to walk for ages just to get to the next tent, plus with the camping area so close it makes it easy to head back to the tent quickly if you've forgotten something. Most of what we wanted to check out on the Friday was happening in the Breaksday Tent and the Glade, so we wandered down around 830pm towards the Breaksday to watch a bit of the Drummatic Twins, before Noisia came on. Noisia are a Dutch trio whose music is mostly based in the Drum n Bass genre, and they have recently released a mix CD on the well known FabricLive label. Their set started pretty slowly, but they took things up a gear after half an hour and they played some great stuff with some really good samples. It seems that this summer everyone is remixing, or sampling, The Prodigy and we've been hearing a variety of songs all summer. Noisia were no exception and they had the whole place going when they pulled out a remix of No Good (Start the Dance).



By the time they had finished we were wanting more and we walked over to the Glade Stage next door to check out Pendulum. I've seen Pendulum a couple of times before, doing a DJ set as well as live, and I was looking forward to seeing them again. They started off strongly enough, playing a good mix of tracks off their new album, as well as Hold Your Colour, but they peaked far too soon in my opinion when they remixed The Prodigy's (who else!) Voodoo People. This remix is full on, brilliant and savagely strong when performed with a live band, but the problem was it was so good that they never reached those heights again. The rest of the set seemed a little self-indulgent and uninspiring as they just seemed to be lead by a sweaty, overweight man who just wanted the crowd to bow down to him every thirty seconds. I spent most of the second half of the set watching someone who kept doing the devil horns with her hand, but I couldn't work out if she had a really disproportionate little finger, or if she'd had part of it amputated. I'm still not sure.

It was shortly after Pendulum that my night took a turn for the worse when I lost Fantastic Mr Fox off my finger after we sat down for a breather. Amy and I had lost the others so we flitted from tent to tent for a while, drinking our ciders until we walked through the Glade Stage again and I found Mr Fox straight away, two hours after I had lost him. We went to the Pussy Parlue, a 1920s Speigeltent that hosts burlesque dancing and cocktails to celebrate and met up with our friends before eventually calling it a night with the nagging fact that we had to work again the next day.

The Saturday was looking like it was going to be a good sunny day, despite the wind, and I was quite happy to be under cover where the sun couldn't burn me! We were much busier on the Saturday afternoon, we reasoned that maybe everyone had drunk the booze that they had brought in with them so they were having to frequent the bar more often. But after having my breakfast, some amazing sausages from a stall called Sausage Fest, I felt good enough to last the day and deal with the festival going public. I had to laugh at a bunch of young lads who came to the bar at one point clinging onto their empty cans of Stella:

“What can I get you?” I asked.
“Got any Stella?” mumbled one of them,
“Just Red Stripe I'm afraid,”
“Oh, forget it then,” and then they shuffled off again.

The psytrance on the second day was nowhere near as good as on the Friday, it seemed to lack some imagination that the Djs on the previous day had, and by the end of the shift I was pretty glad to be getting my free drinks and my food before concentrating on enjoying the rest of the weekend now that we had nothing else to worry about.

Glade Festival for me isn't just about the music, it has a great atmosphere and the festival goers are some of the best I've ever come across at a festival. It's a festival that is as much about the people as anything else, and there's always someone to chat to or something interesting to watch. We had a selection of Ents this year who were parading around the site, and there were also two dinosaurs – a converted beetle that was a Triceratops, and a Land Rover Stegosaurus. We met plenty of great people on the Friday, and we were to meet many more on the Saturday as we had a full night of music and dancing ahead of us.



We spent most of the early evening in the Breaksday Tent with the Stanton Warriors from Bristol who are some of the most respected breaks acts around today. The got the evening off to a good start playing a great set before we headed into the Overkill tent to watch Autechre who were reasonably good, but to be honest I was expecting something a little better from such a well respected act and I felt that they fell a little flat. After this we spent sometime in the Breaksday and walking around a bit chatting to people. We met two girls who Amy had served earlier on in the day who also had small hats, and we also spoke to another girl who wished we could all hark back to the bygone days of Victorian romance where in order to speak to a suitor you'd have to send a message through seven aunts and a scullery maid. I think I put my foot in it though when I told her that her dress was orange as opposed to red. We bumped into our hat friends again later on but we had to leave as I saw a messed up a guy with the freakiest eye I have ever seen. His was semi-passed out with one eye closed, but the other was half open but rolled back in his head darting from side to side. Not good! With dawn approaching we had a few nice cups of chai down at Chai Wallahs, before sitting in the ID Spiral for a a while until the need for bed came round, and we finally retired for the night at around 5am.

Glade Sundays are usually a relaxed affair as the full throttle antics of the previous few days slowly begin to catch up with everyone. There was only a couple of artists that I wanted to catch on the Sunday, with Red Snapper being the first and seeing as they weren't on until 3pm we could lounge around for a bit down at the Rabbit Hole and back at camp. Red Snapper were excellent down on the Glade Stage, playing some great music with their jazzy, hip hop based tunes. The only downside of the set was the lack of any vocalist for some of the songs that needed it, which was a small downer but ultimately it was a great set. After this we checked out the Breaks Tent with Tayo providing the tunes until we grabbed an enchilada for dinner before going to the Glade stage for the final act of the evening with The Orb. The Orb are a legendary British group in the electronic scene, bringing ambient house music to the masses in the nineties and they would surely be ideal end to a great festival.

Of course they didn't disappoint at all, starting with a Star Trek sample to ease us in, they then played a solid set with some of their classic songs such as Little Fluffy Clouds before leaving the stage to the strains of 'Dream a Little Dream of Me' (I think!). It was a fine way to finish off the music, and we spent much of the rest of the evening having a few drinks in the Pussy Parlure, watching some guys attempt to break dance before heading back to the tent for a final few beers and some games of Badger, Fox, Rabbit (Paper, Scissor, Stone with animals).

The whole weekend had been a great festival, a real bonus compared to last year's mud bath, but attendance figures were still down – the festival didn't sell out – yet everyone had a smile on their faces despite it being a Monday. It was another sunny day, yet we were all content with a weekend well spent and after saying our goodbyes Amy and I set off back towards Bristol. Glade Festival is so different to all the other festivals that I've been to and that is something that for me makes it incredible unique. It is a very hectic festival and you do feel exhausted by the time Monday comes around, but it's a good feeling with plenty of new good memories (the ones you can remember anyway), and I always come away from Glade having met more people than any other festival I go to. However, it always comes to an end, and sometimes that end comes just in time before your mind turns to Angel Delight. I must have been close to that point as I became slightly confused when we drove through Aldermaston on the Monday,

“We should phone Paul and stop at this pub for a Sunday lunch!” I said excitedly,
“James, it's Monday,” replied Amy, laughing at me.