Mud, Bands and Boots

Never underestimate the luxuries of hot showers, flushing loos and fried breakfasts.

Glastonbury summed up in three words would probably be "rain, mud and longdrops". (You'll need to scroll down to see an example of the long drops - and imagine them with a lot more mud... I'm not sure if it should actually be "long drops" rather than "longdrops"- however that would make it four words - therefore for the sake of summing up in three - today it will be one word).

So it did rain endlessly and it was indeed ridiculously muddy - however it was, as expected, fanastic. Money they spent on avoiding flooding this year seems to have been successful - however people have potentially learnt from 2005, as we didn't see any tents parked quite so close to the "pond" area next to the John Peel Tent like in 2005. There were a few unfortunate tent pitchings - a few stranded on thier own, surrounded in mud, just waiting for someone to slip over and fall on them.

Speaking of which, knowing that the ability to sleep in a tent cannot be listed as one of my strong points, I took some sleeping tablets with me, which were so effective on Friday night, that I failed to wake up when someone fell onto my side of the tent. However was reliably informed the next morning that they had, and the mud smear down the side of the tent confirmed it!

This is possibly my rainiest Glastonbury - however also the year I was most prepared for it. Well, it has been raining non-stop all June pretty much. So I arrived armed with my waterproof jacket and trousers and my fancy pink Ralph Lauren wellies.

The problems with my waterproofness however showed themselves when at the end of Friday it came to removing said wellies and finding them stuck to my feet. Not even making the slightest effort at looking like they were going to budge. It seriously took me about 20-30 minutes to remove the damn things from my feet. The result of which was a very bad mood, very dirty hands and various empty threats about sleeping in the damn things. Possibly I also woke a number of my tent neighbours in the process. If so, I appologise.

Predictably, the next day they were equally impossible to get back on. I stood struggling to shove my feet in the damn things. Several childish tantrums and loud curses later, I had the brainwave of wrapping my feet in plastic bags and then putting the boots on. Thus allowing feet to slip easily into boots within five minutes. (Ok, so five minutes is still a long time to take over getting your feet into some boots - however it's all comparative). The bigger bonus being that removal time and tantrum potetnial were greatly reduced that evening.