Friday 27th June

The rain stopped about 3am. I woke at 4am to an eerie quiet. The thudding of boots on the metal path a few metres away had quietened. It was like people were waiting.

After getting my head down for a few more hours I took a look at my trainers. They were splattered. Reluctantly, I reached into my rucksack and pulled out the green Dunlop wellies that had saved my arse for the previous two Glastonburys.

Grabbing some breakfast, I trundled down to the Other Stage where the sound-checking was taking place. The grass was still green. Spreading a copy of the Q Glastonbury Daily on the ground I sat looking at the sky trying to judge which direction the clouds were going.

I always try and make the first band on the Other Stage, it's tradition. We'd been promised the HILLTOP HOODS an Australian Hip Hop act, but they'd failed to show so instead we got...

IDA MARIA

Scandinavian indie rock with quite a powerful punch, Ida Maria kicked off the Other Stage in a great fashion. There was only one quite disconcerting point and that was the fact the band was fronted by Whose Line Is It Anyway improv queen Josie Lawrence.




IDA MARIA, INDIE BAND









JOSIE LAWRENCE, IMPROV QUEEN





While tunes like 'I Like You Better When You're Naked' were joyfully bounced out, our personal favourite was 'Stella' which we assume was about the nation's favourite fighting beer.

GET CAPE, WEAR CAPE, FLY

Great name! Mediocre band! A project from the doesn't-he-look-like-you-could-take-him-home-to-meet-your-mum-moppet Sam Duckworth (son of Vera), GCWCF's mix of smooth indie and pop ballad was so middle of the road, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a traffic island. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't bad, it wasn't passionate either, it was just a bit meh. Maybe Sam needs to take more drugs or go to South America or something, but overall this washed over me like the drizzle that continued to fall from the sky.






Horsing about in a drizzly corner of the Pyramid Field.









KT TUNSTALL

I don't think we expected to KT Tunstall to be so damn funny. Sexy, yes, ballsy, certainly, but she was just really amusing. She happily spent her time telling us stories about her friends with mental illnesses ("If you're a nutjob this one's for you!") and persuading the crowd to participate in some hip-hop stylee dance moves ("You may think you're cool for not doing it, but you're just a dick"). To be honest we were only there for the final track, 'Suddenly I See', which KT doesn't seem to have tired of yet and pulled off with aplomb. Great stuff.

Around this time, I managed for the second time in my life to appear on the BBC regional news show Points West (the first was circa 1993 when I was interviewed about the school opting out of Key Stage 3 exams). Clinton Rogers was reporting from the bottom left corner of the Pyramid Field, where a group of people had started a conga behind him. As I was wearing my Fifth Estate t-shirt I tried to get in shot and generate some publicity. Two minutes later my phone rang. "John, it's Dad, we've just seen you on TV!" RESULT!

After an interview with the 1623 Theatre Company, I headed over to the Park feeling that the Silent Disco would be just the thing to cure my rainy day blues.

DJ OD was still there! Had he stopped partying from the previous night? I chose to believe not, I figured the DJ booth must come complete with an intravenous supply of coffee and liquid festival burgers. Finding myself alone again, I decided a quick rave was needed. I was then recovered by my mates who stuck me in the Glade just in time to hear Primal Scream's 'Come Together' probably my favourite festival tune, that was a special moment.

But I kept getting dragged back to The Park. It was nearing the time for the special guests of the evening. The Park was getting into the swing of supplying outstanding special performances and tonight would be no exception. Imagine my surprise when they suddenly announced...

FRANZ FERDINAND

Not billed to play and yet there they were onstage! I got as close as I could and made friends with a bloke called Glenn. Glenn, if you're out there, it was nice to talk to you. The 'Nand ripped into 'Matinee', 'Michael', 'Do You Want To' and, strangely, mid-set 'Take Me Out' which is up there with one of my favourite singles ever. Proof that the music scene is ever-changing, lead singer Alex Kapranos mentioned that one girl had asked the band "Which part of Sheffield are you from?" The band finished with 'This Fire' and proved that for brevity, wit and pop-rock Franz Ferdinand are still among the best in the land.

And I decided to call it quits, I was shattered and the wellies weren't helping, so I got an early night in and prayed the rain would not return...

Thursday 26th June

I'm not entirely sure how I'd got to bed the night before, though was safe in the knowledge it had to do with entering the realm of 'ciderspace'. Deciding to waste no time, I got dressed and clambered out of my tent to a fair morning, though clouds hung ominously in the sky.

But some of that wasn't cloud, some of it was smoke. Walking down to the field next to the Glade, a green space dominated by the Orange Chill 'n' Charge Tent, I was greeted with the sight of a huge, billowing black plume of smoke off to the north east of the festival. Had one of the helicopters gone down? Was Shepton Mallet on fire? Had James Blunt's tour bus blown up? (no such luck) The fire turned out to be from a scrapyard, on the edge of the festival site. The smoke was so bad, people were evacuated from their homes and was attended to by sixteen different fire crews. For the festival it caused a big logistical problem. The nearest train station at Castle Cary was beginning to get rammed full of festival goers with nowhere to go, as the busses couldn't make it through the smoke. They were in turn attended to by the Red Cross. It's amazing what you miss when you're inside your tent, sleeping.

My loose plan for the day was to tour the site, meet Mark and go and visit the Leftfield, after they'd been ever so nice to me on Twitter. I achieved two of these three, which considering wasn't bad. The site was beginning to fill out nicely, and revellers were taking a very relaxed approach, as opposed to the frantic sprint of yesterday. In front of the Pyramid stage, a game of cricket had broken out, the grass as yet unspoilt by muddy boots and empty drinks cartons. A succession of three professional photographers took pictures as one lad demonstrated a not-bad cover drive. This really was England in the summertime. My meanderings took me down to the Leftfield where they'd had the audacity to start proceedings early with a band from London called

THE CRACK

about whom I recall very little, except they were from London and their name is probably meant ironically. Not as bad as DOES IT OFFEND YOU, YEAH? which we concluded sounded a lot like the sort of band Jeremy from Peep Show would belong to. I didn't stick around.

I arranged to meet my friends in front of the bandstand, famous for being the place the tragic, naked, masturbating woman was to be found in a series of pics that plagued the internet for several years after they were taken. Prior to my arrival I decided to undertake my first piece of journalism and interview a bookshop, you can read the sublime and ridiculous results here...

THE MIGHTY PEAS

First up on the Bandstand were a three-piece skiffle-jazz group who played covers of popular songs. The results were great, from 'Crazy in Love' by Beyonce to 'Lose Yourself' by Eminem, the band were cheeky, self-depricating and thoroughly likeable. Go on, book them for a wedding or something. They also cover The Littlest Hobo theme. Thinking about it, I wasn't that amazed I knew all the words.

THE GLITZY BAGHAGS

Bit biased here as I went to school with some of the Glitzys and had seen them before. Describing themselves as 'skiffle swing gypsy jazz' the Glitzys are like a tiny party in your pocket. Filling the smallest spaces they always seem to get people dancing with tunes such as 'Ebay', 'HassleHoff' and continuing the kids tv theme 'Dangermouse'. You certainly get your money's worth with each song seemingly lasting the best part of six or seven minutes. If I've got one minor gripe (and it's tiny) it's that the vocals are sometimes a bit on the quiet, mumbled side. Listening to Joe Jarlett, move between the sax and then rapping along with 'Super Sharp Shooter' occasionally something gets lost in the translation. Still I made sure I saw 'em twice over the weekend.

By this point it was time to gather more food in preparation for the evening's festivities. In the Glade, the festival's dedicated dance space under the trees, they were testing the sound setup with 'Insomnia' by Faithless. A small crowd gathered to party by the cordoned-off area and I experienced another one of those moments where I thought this festival was going to be truly amazing.

THE SILENT DISCO

I'd never been to the Silent Disco before and it quickly became one of my favourite things in the world. Ever. You get given a pair of headphones which are tuned to a frequency the DJ in the disco is playing on. Only, there's another DJ next to him who's broadcasting on a different channel. A quick flick of the switch you can go from rock to rave. Even better was that DJ OD was broadcasting live to the whole of Holland, a point he kept making between each song and getting us to cheer. Having the music pumped directly into your ears allows for a much more personal experience, though it never seems alienating. If there's one near you, go!

Our emergence from the Silent Disco was not promising. The rain had begun. We'd been promised light showers, but this was full-on deluge. We grumpily piled into the Bimble Inn, a small cider bar near the entrace to the Park. We watched with misery as the sand castle sculptures fell apart and the rain drummed on the canvas roof.

I can't remember whose dumb-ass idea it was, but we decided to upsticks to Shangri-La, the festival's replacement for Lost Vagueness who had fallen out with organiser Eavis. We trudged (rapidly becoming my most-used word in festival reviews) down the railway track. This wasn't supposed to happen, it was supposed to be a good year! Images of 2005 and 2007, swam into view, the mud would come and the festival would suffer. We found a neat looking cafe tent to shelter inside, only its roof wasn't holding up to the rain either. Water poured down onto my back and hooded top, I was soaked. It was time to go to bed and dry off.

I lay in my tent listening to the drumming on the roof, shivering inside my sleeping bag. What the hell was I doing? I was 29 years old, the average age of the audience here was about 18, it was pissing with rain and I was cold, muddy and alone in a field in Somerset. This was for losers surely? You wouldn't catch Daniel Craig doing this would you? I had to become adult at some point wouldn't I? I resoved to buy a copy of Arena when I left this mess, smarten up, act like a man, alright a tosspot, but still a man, at least go to bed in half-dignified manner... I grimaced as I considered how much a new suit would cost and promptly had nightmares.