That's so funny I don't even know how to laugh!

Usually in the run up to Glastonbury I spend an inordinate amount of time studying weather forecasts, line ups and wondering what flavour of Super Noodles we should be taking. However, the small fact of having to work at this year's Glastonbury made my preparations seem slightly low key. I had none of the usual anticipation that I usually have, and this year I remained remarkably blase about the weather, it always seems to rain at some point, I reasoned, so why worry about it?

Arriving on site this year early was certainly different compared to rocking up on a Wednesday lunchtime with thousands of other people in the heat and queuing for hours at the train station, and then again at Pedestrian Gate A. Tuesday afternoon felt much more civilised, it was still warm but cruising in the Polo listening to the Raconteurs felt like a much more relaxed experience. When you normally turn up on a Wednesday, or whenever, it can be hard to get a grasp of just how much behind the scenes work has gone on. There's around 37,000 workers at Glastonbury, and most have these people have been turning up from the previous Saturday helping build stalls, stages and just preparing for one of the best festivals on the planet.

Amy and I spent much of Tuesday evening wandering around the site, checking out some of the new additions such as the extended area above the tipi village, and the replacement for Lost Vagueness - Shangri-La. On first inspection the Shangri La doesn't appear much different to its previous incarnation, with the themes seemingly quite similar. There's a 50s style diner and dance floor, a tilted disco designed to make you feel a little more unbalanced than is natural plus a SlumberRave - dressing gown optional. It's very unusual walking around the huge site with so few people around, each of the camping grounds seem outrageously big with no tents in them and it's hard to comprehend that within 24 hours all these fields will be full of people all ready for 5 days of hedonism. In the mean time though Amy and I planned an early night, with a romantic dinner consisting of chicken Super Noodles (an old favourite), and a couple of glasses of Sainsbury's Strong Dry Cider. Classy.

Wednesday morning began for both us with some short meetings regarding our work. Amy was going to be working for the Green Police which basically involves educating the Glastonbury public about the effects that pissing in hedges and littering has not just on the environment, but how it can also have an effect on Glastonbury's future. Amy's training brief in the morning consists of learning facts and figures that they can use on patrol to help get their message across. Apparently Glastonbury Festival is closely monitored by the Environment Agency and they check the water supply in the rivers that flow through the site for contamination. Apparently around 5-6 years ago approximately 6000 fish were found dead in one stream and this was a contributing factor to problems with renewing the license for the following year.



My job on the other hand wasn't going to be quite as important, stewarding the Kings Meadow field, otherwise known as the Stone Circle, would certainly be a different kettle of fish. My shifts for the weekend appeared not to be too bad, 2am-8am Thursday morning, 2pm-8pm Saturday afternoon, and 2am to 8am Monday morning. Not too bad, though I wasn't too impressed by that Monday morning shift and if my memory of any previous Glastonbury served me well I would be serverely jaded come the early hours of Monday. But there was plenty of time before then, and once my basic training was over and done with I concenrated on hooking up with one of my Glastonbury friends from last year who works up at the Festival Medical Services, James Gibbons, who even came over to Scilly last year in September.

With thoughts of having to work in the early hours of the next morning I wasn't too sure how to approach to following hours, should I try and stay awake, or should I get some rest for a couple of hours. I left Amy with her Green Police friends, met up with James and his friends before setting up my second tent down at Pennard Hill. Amy's camping ground was up near the farm, which would basically place me at the opposite end of the site to where I would be working. To save on walking time I intended to set up a second tent in the field next to the Stone Circle and leave some warm clothes there for the evening shifts so I didn't have to travel too far. So once all set up and ready for the next few days an obligatory trip to the cider bus was required. The cider bus is literally that, a coverted double decker bus that houses many cider casks, and will dispense some of Burrow Hill's finest cider for a small fee. If you're feeling a bit cold they will even add some brandy to your glass, though the demand for this doesn't seem too great. The cider bus is a great place to watch the world go by, with al sorts gathering for some appley goodness. Myself, James and Layla got accosted by one girl who just wouldn't stop going on about how much she hated the toilets. She was stating the obvious a bit here, and she just would not stop moaning about them, she believed the reason for this was because no toilet paper was being handed out at the gates this year. Quite how this works out I'm not too sure. Eventually, though, she left and was replaced by an absolute great character under the name of Roiston who has been coming to the festival for 20 years and not only was his costume fantastic, his entourage also handed out little bags of haribo to us all!



After a few more swift pints of cider Amy suggested that I might want to get a couple of hours sleep before starting work, probably a good idea really as anyone who knows me would say I can have something of a problem staying awake when I've had a couple to drink. So I decided to make the one sensible decision of the weekend and get a couple of hours sleep before my early morning shift at 2am. Fortunately so far the weather had been pretty good and the only thing I was worrying about was how cold it might be due to the clear skies. I even managed to make myself up a flask of organic espresso coffee that Amy had brought back from Costa Rica. I've got to say, this coffee is rocket fuel and is so tasty it can be easy to drink a lot of it, but it will keep you up for days!

Stewarding up at the Kings Meadow basically involves just making sure everyone up there is safe, and most specifically, not climbing up the 20foot wooden Dragon that dominates the left hand side of the field. You might think something like this would prove a nightmare to look after, but most people seem pretty relaxed about it, and during the whole 6 hours not one person even attempts to scale it. I must say I was quite disappointed! We work in teams of four, and take it in two person teams to look after the Dragon, while the other two keep the fire stoked at the bottom of the field near the entrance. The vast majority of the shift goes pretty easily, with only a few eventful conversations. At one point I was accosted by two eastern european girls who mistook me for a policeman and kept stroking my face and telling me how cute I was. Once I explained to them that I wasn't a policeman they seemed to lose interest and just ran off giggling to one another. Once the sun started to come up, quite early around 5am, we strolled around the field a bit more looking for lost property and chatting to people. We found a few wallets, one guy I met handed in a wallet with £210 pounds in it, a very honest man. I picked up a mobile phone, plus someone else found a wallet which we took back to HQ before stoking up the fire once more because even though it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day we were having a very cold morning. During one of my regular walks out to the Dragon I came across a couple of very interesting Mancunians, one of which was very passionate about his views on the litter on the festival site. Now that it was daylight you could see just how much rubbish people had left behind up at the Stone Circle. There were crushed paper cups everywhere, cans on the floor and dotted around the field were burnt circle where people had made fires to keep warm during the night. My Manc friend took it upon himself to launch himself into an impassioned speech:

"Why do they need all these fires? The firefighters must be pissed off. All these fucking hippies, they're talking shit. Fighting nature, that's what everyone's doing, you can't win. Fucking fires, it's not on. Look at this rubbish too, if I was Michael Eavis I wouldn't stand for it. You see this bottle here, Jakobs Creek in here, seven quid a bottle, proper class. I've had this in my hand all night, and you knwo what? When I done I'll put it in a bin," at this point he turned around and addressed the entire field and shouted " All you cunts! Clean up this fucking rubbish!" and with this he turned around and stormed off out the field.

It's always the case with any job that you do that the last hour or so is always he longest, but with this job I didn't mind because I probably laughed more in the final hour than I did all night. The fire that we had kept going was a gathering point for everyone who was leaving the field, and we had a good collection of characters for the end of our shift. We had a few musicians, one playing guitar and another on a Melodica who were really good at playing some quality tunes. Apart from their gathering of friends we were also joined by a silent chap called Jake, and a young lad with multicoloured microphone hair called Barnabald, or Barnaby for short. After meeting Barnaby he told me how he would like to be an actor, but he couldn't remember lines very well, a bit of a problem I suggested, but he didn't seem to think so. Another favoured topic of his was clothes, and how he felt we should all feel comfortable enough to run around naked, and how he felt we shouldn't feel embarassed as a society to see naked bodies. I also learned that his favourite colour was blue, and his attempts to take people on at a game of mercy only brought more laughter. I can honestly say that I've never met anyone quite like Barnabald, and he only confirmed this by announcing that he was a hopping race champion. He went on to prove this as we arranged a hopping race at the bottom of the field, which, to our amazement, he duly won. Finally though, my shift came to an end, Barnabald and co departed, though I did leave the enigmatic Jake standing by the fire gathering his 'chi' before breaking his silence with the occasional giggle. By this point it was early morning, and I needed some sleep before some of music began later that Thursday.

There's normally something of a Scillonian contingent at Glastonbury - last year we had Eldred Bandfield, Mike and Lou Knappman, Ant and Ade Robson, Dr Vic plus myself and others. This year sees a few less, and some who appeared out of nowhere. Mike and Lou were still going, and I met up them briefly on Thursday, and then when I bumped into them later on in the weekend they said that they'd bumped into Dr Ranulph Hessing(pissed up at 10am) and Erica Hicks (working), Amy saw Natalie Graham, but unusally for me I met nobody from Scilly that I didn't knwo was there. Unimpressed. Still, maybe they saw me at some point running around grinning!

Thursday was an esygoing day, with not much happening, though I did hear a rather crap cover version of Prodigy's Outta Space being played down in the Leftfield. last year we saw Seasick Steve play at the Leftfield on a Thursday afternoon, I even got to shake his hand which was nice (and dirty). This year the Levellers were playing a set at 2300, but from previous experience I felt this would probably be too busy so I knew I was going to miss it. I spent most of the day hanging around with James down at the Park Stage drinking my cider, and watching the cast of Alice in Wonderland play croquet with members of the public. Once Amy finished her Green Policing for the day, she only had to do a couple of hours, we had some music for the evening down on paper. We were going to watch DJ Yoda do an AV set in the Silent World at the Dance Village. The spread of the Silent Disco has now reached other parts of Glastonbury, giving punters the chance to listen to sets on wireless headphones whilst not disturbing any sleeping residents. By early evening though the rain had started, and it was not relenting whatsoever. Before I left I decided to check the forecast at metcheck.com who had informed me that we could expect some rain in the early hours of Friday, and using my Radio Scilly Weatherman knowledge, I suspected that this was the weather arriving early. Of course, once the rain begins to fall it gets muddy very quickly, and then every avaialbe covered arena fills up faster than you can say "portaloo". Our plans to watch DJ Yoda were scuppered by queues, partially due to the rain, and also because all the Silent venues are space limited due to the headsets. However, we did get to see one of my highlights of the festival, Smerins Anti-Social Club. These guys are from Bristol, and we only dropped by because our Bristol friends were going to see them, and they were excellent. Check out their website here. Their blend of live dance music was good enough to get the pacjed crowd going in the Dance Lounge, and although we weren't able to see the band due to the crowd, the music did appear to be emanating from a giant pink ball suspended in the ceiling. The band were excellent, and were even joined onstage by MC Xander, a guy we had seen at Glade last year who is also excellent. It being a Thursday night, we actually made another sensible choice and called it an evening due to the rain. After all, the actual music hadn't even begun yet.

Early Friday morning gave us a few more brief showers, though nothing too serious, and the rest of the day wasn't too bad for weather. Cloudy, with a chilly breeze, though there was only the occasional light shower - nothing as bad as previous years, and the ground wasn't even that muddy really, there were still green patches! Amy got up early to start her Green Police duties, but I had no work to do until the following day, so I decided to catch up on my sleep to try and get my body clock back to normal. I managed to wake up hear a little of Kate Nash singing about lemons, but it nothing special enough to make me want to get up, so I ended up sleeping in for a couple more hours before making any real start to my day. I went for a bit of a wander around, grabbed myself a cider and thought about maybe having a pie for lunch, but instead I thought I'd wait until later and get something from the Green Fields with my free meal ticket. One advantage that I had over Amy was that my meal tickets got me good food, not the school dinners that they were handing out in the Oxfam tent!

I ended up catching up with Amy later on at Alabama 3 who were performing on the Jazz World Stage. I've seen them a few times before and their set was as tight and predictable as ever. They certainly have a distinctive sound, and are always good to see even if you've caught them a few times before. Amy and her mate went off to get changed from their GP gear and I sauntered around until meeting them at the Pyramid Stage to catch some of the Gossip's set. Not a band I particularly like, but Beth Ditto is certainly a brilliant entertainer. She works the crowd really well, and this set is one of the surprise highlights for me, I would recommened them to anyone going to a festival who has a gap in their personal line up for the day. She wasn't enough, however, to make me miss Gideon Conn who was playing at the Bandstand, a small stage about 10 foot across that is located in th middle of the Market area. It's a good place to catch random acts, but after hearing of Gideon Conn through Ben Morton-Clark I really wanted to check these guys out. After a few problems getting the sound sorted (dodgy cable), they started and were brilliant from start to finish. Gideon wore a great Father Ted t shirt which won me over befor he started, and he proceeded to play a great set with his band. Amy turned up after the Gossip and really got into it, and she confessed to me after the festival was all over that she thought that this was her highlight of the weekend! Gideon Conn finished up in the crowd stretched out as far as his microphone would let him, before signing copies of their EP at the front of the stage. Brilliant.



The Fun Lovin' Criminals were up next over at the Jazz World, and they performed a really good set, full of all their hits and generally they were pretty good, though I have to say that by the end I was getting itchy feet to head elsewhere, though where I wanted to go I wasn't sure. It was probably the hunger because after their set we walked to the Buddhafield Cafe where I could get my free dinner and replenish my system before heading down towards the Dance Village. we hadn't made many plans really as to what we wanted to see at the end of the day, with nothing really catching my eye. The choice was between Fatboy Slim, who manages to play every year but I've never seen him, or goto Kings of Leon, who I knew Amy really wanted to see. After spending a bit of time down at the Dance Village, mainly at the G Stage, which is called the Origin Stage at Glade, dancing to some great tunes and then trudging round to the Pyramid Stage for the Kings of Leon, and after squeezing our through the crowds we found ourselves a nice spot half way the hill. I found their set a little unbalanced, the first half an hour was pretty mediocre, never really picking up any pace and I felt like they were a band a little out of their depth. However, they raised their game for the second half of their set and produced a worthwhile performance - 3 out of 5 stars.

The best parts about Glastonbury Festival for me usually happen after all the main stages have shut down and people head for other areas. We opted for Shangri La, and the Disco Diner, where we finally met up with James and our Bristol friends where we danced for a good few hours until aroudn 4am when Amy and I went to watch the sunrise before returning to our tents, with Amy moaning about having to get up for work, and me content with a lie in until 2pm.

In the past I've always found that Saurday's are my favourite days/nights at Glastonbury, you can usually find a good selection of bands that you want to catch right from the start. Howeer, having to work this year made things a little different. I was gutted that I was going to miss Shlomo and Music Through Unconventional Means on the Park Stage, but it wasn't the end of the world, and my shift good all the same. With the sunshine beating down I spent a great afternoon up at the Kings Meadow drinking cider whilst chatting to little kids that the Dragon has to chained down or he'll fly away! It was a great shift, and nice to sit down and relax for an afternoon before enjoying the night ahead. As soon as I finished my shift at 8pm I grabbed some food before heading down towards the Park Stage to catch MGMT. I really like the Park Stage, it's like an ampitheatre and it can create a really intimate setting. Last year's performance from Lou Rhodes was one of my highlights of the festival and I was really looking forward to wathcing psycadelic rockers MGMT. They seemed to have a slight sound level problem to begin with, as the vocal levels were completely screwed, but after the first couple of songs they found a compromise and the rest of the set completely rocked. Har Mar Superstar joined them on stage at once point, and by the time they played Time To Pretend everyone was loving them. It was a cracking set and I expect next year will see them performing on the Other Stage late friday evening. After MGMT I was getting considerably more excited as the one band I had come here to see were up - Massive Attack headlining the Other Stage.

I had even asked for time off especially to see these guys from Bristol, it was the one thing that I didn't want to miss, and I was not disappointed in one bit. THey played some storming tracks, some delicate ones, and just generally played a delectable selection of beats and visuals. There was a great performance of 'Teardrop', and they put in Unfinished Sympathy during the encore as well as geting in a fair political messages along the way. For me this was a brilliant set, definitely one of the best I've seen at Glastonbury ever and even watching it back on the BBC site online I get chills thinking about what it felt like to be in that crowd. Unbelievable.

By the time Massive Attack had finished sometime after midnight I was in a good mood to say the least, and we bimbled down to the Bimble Inn at the Park Stage for some dancing and laughter until the early hours, enjoy ourselves in a classic Glastonbury Saturday night way.



So the final day of the festival crept up inexorably upon us. It always comes around too soon, but it's not always bad as there's always some great music to make the tiring minds and bodies feel a little better. Sunday afternoon on the Pyramid is usually reserved for some 'classic' acts, but this year I headed down to the Jazz World for a Pieminister (the best pies ever) while relaxing in the sun. Probably the main highlight for me of the festival is being able to sit/lie down whenever you feel like it, keeping the pain of 'festival back' somewhat subdued. We spent most of Sunday relaxing, watching a very talented diabolo guy dancing away in the sun and listening to some Eddy Grant. Amy wasn't feeling too great after work and went for a snooze and a lie down whilst I went and watched Goldfrapp on the Pyramid stage. She put on a great set, perfect for early on a Sunday evening with her amazing vocals and fantastic music. She even had some pole dancers on stage at one point, ideal. Once recovered, Amy and I jollyed on down to the John Peel Stage to watch Spiritualized, a band I had last seen with Jeremy around six years ago. It seemed odd to me that I was watching them perform in what is essentially the New Bands Tent, but I guess they have their reasons. Their set was pretty good, Jason Pierce's vocal were excellent, and they are excellent at creating a wall of sound that is so forceful, yet you can still pick out each instrument. Again, it was odd watching them on this stage after seeing them last play on the Other Stage, they may have even headlined it, but I'm sure they'll be back higher up the bill once more.

So to the final big act of the weekend, and Groove Armada was the choice of the evening. They didn't dissappoint, playing a good selection of their greatest hits, all to a intricate laser show. They were great, but the best news came to me just before they started when I found out that Spain had won the Euro 2008 Championships, netting me 60 quid in the Galley sweepstake. This led me to try chant "Fernado! Fernado Torres!" to whoever would listen! Of course this made the Groove Armada set all the more better!

I only had a couple of hours until starting work for the 2am to 8am shift, so we went to the Bimble Inn where we met with some friends again, and I left them to it and went to work - which proved to be something of a blur! Amy and the guys all went to the Silent Disco for a bit, something that I was extremely jealous of, but Amy was good enough to come down to the Stone Circle for a couple of hours until the sun came up. After Amy left I spent the rest of my shift walking around chatting to people until 8am finally came and I could officially goto bed. By now the sun was pounding down and I went back to tent number two and slept among the pile of bodies that belonged to my friends.

Monday, inevitably, brings the hangover. It's been postponed for five days, but ultimately it catches up with you in the end. Amy had caught a cold, everyone looked pretty frazzled, and after saying our goodbyes our friends left for Bristol while Amy and myself relaxed for a bit before making our departure later in the evening. The worse part of my weekend? Getting sunburned eyelids. The best bit? Everything else.

Once again, regardless of weather, line ups, naysayers etc, it turned out to be a fantastic festival. It may be getting more and more corporate, but there is still something special about Glastonbury Festival. This isn't to say that other festivals don't have this, I'm sure they do, but Glastonbury still sets the bar.

I still believe that probably the best way to describe how you feel throughout the festival was summed up by one of my best mates years ago. He said

"The thing with Glastonbury is that you're always on the edge of something, you may never find it, and that makes the search all the more interesting, but every now and then you stumble around the right corner and everything becomes clear."

Until Cornbury, stay Classy