The Glastonbury Festival

My friends and I went to Glastonbury this year: That is to The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts. It is apparently the largest festival of its kind in the world. It’s most famous for the music of course but there is also dance, comedy, theatre, circus and cabaret. It is a huge camp site with stages and tents everywhere. And the location is legendry for various reasons. New Age people believed it was marked by the convergence of ley lines. I am not sure what these are supposed to be, but apparently when the lines converge you get locations of mystical or psychic energy! The site is also over looked by a strange conical hill called Glastonbury Tor which is somehow connected to the King Arthur legend.
 

One thing for sure is there was lots of normal energy when we went there. There were no fewer than 137000 happy campers. All the tickets were sold the previous year within 90 minutes of being announced. You have to be well networked to even get a chance of a ticket.
 

I was a little bit apprehensive this year. Glastonbury festival always seems to get a lot of rain and the site becomes a sea of mud. Some people reckon this adds to the fun but after three days I think it becomes a nightmare. You are never dry, easily lose your shoes in the quagmire and are always falling over. This year there was rain but on the first day only. After that it was warm and dry and the festival was simply incredible.
 

The first night I heard so much music. There were big electric sets on the main stage and acoustic sets in a different pavilion. Lily Allen was amazing. Bjorn Again — a tribute band to ABBA — were such good fun. To see and watch such a huge crowd singing and dancing to the ABBA song “Dancing Queen” was unforgettable. On Saturday night we saw “The Boss” — Bruce Springsteen. And on Sunday the highlight was Blur — one of my favourite all time bands.
 

But the overall highlight was on the first night. Neil Young was on the big stage but I wanted to hear a guy called Ray Davies. Davies was front man of a massive 1960s band called The Kinks. He sang all the old Kinks songs — including a breezy version of “Sunny Afternoon” and an a-cappella, nursery rhyme version of “Days” . And just everybody sang along to the final encore of “Waterloo Sunset” .
 

But here is the most amazing thing and my best Glastonbury memory. We actually met Ray Davies in person, earlier that day, and he is one of the nicest blokes you could ever hope to meet. We also got friendly with people from some of the fringe day time acts. They were so talented and such good fun to be with — but meeting Ray was something I ’ll bore my grandchildren with. If I live that long, find a girl, get married and have children who in turn have children — they’ll call me the Glastonbury Granddad!

KEYS

A8: 3; A9: 3; A10: 1; A11: 3; A12: 1; A13: 1; A14: 2.