Me and my camera on the festival circuit, my adult playground, my glastonbury
Glastonbury with mud is hard. Its gruelling, knackering & 100% slog. Glastonbury without mud is easy. Its enjoyable, relaxing, 100% do-able. The difference is extraordinary. If the sun is out it is blissful. You can lie out, you can sunbathe, you can sit wherever you want. Your journey times are magnificently manageable. If it has been raining you cannot sit down..anywhere. Every step is arduous and it takes a debilitating amount of time to get from A to B. This year it barely rained. It was hot, both day and even at night. I have never been there when it has been warm at night. It was like being on holiday.
The only downside to hot weather at a festival is that you have to vacate your tent by about 8.30/9am as it is just too damn hot to tolerate. After that you have to be out and if you don’t want to cook yourself for 8 hours straight you begin the process of shade chasing. Glasto is pretty wide open. There is not a lot of shade anywhere, apart from the music tents and the bar tents, which means you start your festivities early. And as there is always somewhere to being having fun your party hours get longer and longer.
As the festival goes on you end up staying out later and later until by about day 3 (which was thursday in our case) you end up back at your tent after the point when you need to leave it. You end up taking naps in random places. One afternoon we had an impromptu kip in the middle of a gig and woke up to people taking pictures of us passed out as the music blared. Fortunately I am untaggable (for these kind of reasons) but if anyone has a pic of an unconscious couple on a bed in the bimble inn next to an empty pizza box please get in touch…