Glastonbury - Wednesday 25th June

Things hadn't gone according to plan. I arrived excited and ready for the festival at my parents' house in Somerset. They live quite nearby and so dropping me on to the site would be no problem. All I had to do was wait for my brother arrive to give me my ticket.

Only, when he returned from the pub, he didn't have it. He said he'd SENT IT TO ME in London. I'd never received it. In fact I'd never even had a card from the Post Office telling me it was waiting for me. We got on the phone to See Tickets who were able to confirm that the ticket had indeed been sent and was sitting at the Sorting Office at the Upper Holloway Post Office, Archway, London. I was livid. I therefore had two choices, go back to the capital, or burn another £160 on getting in on Wednesday. I chose the latter. Less hassle, I thought... How wrong I was...

I hit the ground running about 11am, the refusal of any of the stewards on the roads to give me correct information about the whereabouts of the ticket office lead to me trekking with tent and two rucksacks for half an hour. In front of the coach park were two portacabins, one queue for International Tickets, one for National Ticket Collection. I joined the queue.

And we waited. And waited... And...

It started off amicably enough. People laughed at having to wait, they optimistically predicted the queue would start moving quicker once more tickets had been distributed. Drinks were shared, rollies made for friends you'd just met. "We're British, we love to queue!" We'll get through this. And the hours dragged on.

People began to sit down in their foldaway chairs or just collapse on the floor in heaps sometimes indistinguishable from their tents and sleeping bags. Some began to sing songs and tell rude jokes, the drinking spurring on the crudity. All the time, the coaches dropped off more people, more walked past us with tickets. Some queued with us until they realised their mistake and legged-it for the main gate. As the mid-afternoon sun beat down, the sense of bonhomie began to disappear. A football was repeatedly booted into the crowd, once on to the roof of the cabin, to be reclaimed by the erstwhile David Beckham who then got told-off by security. The football then found it's way to the ticket booth itself, hitting the window in protest for the wait. Abuse was hurled from our queue to the arrivees, "That your GAY-ZEEBO, mate? Don't put it up near me, I'll torch the f*cker." We kept a careful watch on those at the front of the queue, had they got theirs yet? The sighing and staring was occasionally pierced by cries of joy, "I'VE GOT IT! LET'S GO! LET'S DO SOME CRACK!".

Rumours filtered back down the queue. None of the tickets were in alphabetical order (this was true), one bloke was in charge of looking for them (this was also true), some tickets weren't there at all (yes, true as well) we inched closer to the magic window. After four and a half hours it was my turn. There was the one guy in charge, Flustered Bloke, his hair, what little of it there was, was white. Had it been dark when he started this morning? I handed over my booking reference, credit card and picture ID. He rifled through a collection of envelopes. No sign. He tried another. Nada. He passed me back my papers.

"There's nothing here for you, we'll have to send for a replacement from the Farm."

I was crushed. I'd failed to make it across the border. I was going into a holding-pen like a refugee. This wasn't a festival, this was Children of Men. Plonking my bags on the floor I propped my head up against a railing and tried not to cry. Next to me, a group of teenagers who'd been there for six hours were chatting, knocking back the cider and painting their fingernails with felt-tips. Worryingly, two of them were called Oscar. Kiwi Oscar, who'd blagged his way to the front of the queue, tried to engage me in conversation, but my replies were monosyllabic, he probably considered me to be some sort of party vampire and quickly moved on. By now the group by the ticket office had swelled as the staff inside the portacabin realised that more and more tickets weren't there. Every forty minutes or so, security would turn up in a van, six of them inside (hilariously) to deliver 15 or so tickets, freshly minted from Worthy Farm. Eagerly we'd all gather around like soldiers waiting for mail from home for our names to be called. I think it's fair to say the whole thing was suffering quite badly from piss poor organisation.

So now the crowd was getting angry. "I PREDICT A RIOT!" someone yelled from the back, theories about storming the ticket booth were formed, they couldn't hold us all... The staff began to panic. People were asked to stand back, walkie-talkies were chattered into. More security arrived. They were asked to create a pocket around the booth so that Flustered Bloke could issue replacement tickets to those of us that didn't have them. Apparently it had taken six hours of waiting before the Farm finally gave him permission to do this. We looked on anxiously. Flustered Bloke moved as quickly as he could, distributing tickets to the rowdier idiots who were hassling security (the twat from Belfast knows who he is). Eventually they got to me, cos I'd at least been patient (despite the pained expression). In the end I was issued a ticket with my name written on it in biro - £320's worth.

Clutching at it like Charlie on his way to the Chocolate Factory I heaved my kit into the festival. I'll freely admit, I was feeling fed-up, until I saw the Other Stage looming up before me, reminding me why I was there. The dust kicked up on the railway line as the sun filtered through the trees and then yes, once the tent was erected and helped myself to a cheeseburger AND a slice of pizza, I got to the Brother's Bar. It all got me back on track for why I did it. So day one... £320 and six hours down... Pass me the Pear Cider, this'll go down like a fat kid on a seesaw.