Mudfest 98 - Son of Mudfest

Picture the scene, it's Tuesday 23rd June, the last day before Glastonbury, 5:15pm, the shops are closing in 15 minutes and it's a life or death situation. I MUST HAVE AN INFLATABLE SOFA. And its got to be pink. Luckily, the shop I was most relying on is still open and as I enquire they say "I think we may have 1 left, I'm not sure of the colour". "Please tell me it's pink" I'm thinking. "Yes, we've got 1 left, but I'm afraid it's pink". "That's ok, I'll take it" I say, smiling. How did I get in this situation you may ask (what do you mean you don't care? Well, I'm going to tell you anyway).

It's all Zeb's fault. Whilst shopping around London for his birthday present I spotted a hideously loud pink inflatable sofa and started thinking "wouldn't that be a cool thing to have at Glastonbury?" Anyway, I bought it and gave it to him the next day so I could use it at festivals (what a kind, thoughtful guy I am). I meet up with him in Bournemouth just before Glastonbury only to find he left the sofa in Newcastle as he hitched down and it was "too heavy to carry". He had an entire rucksack full of clothes, food and other non-essential items when he could have brought the sofa instead. He just hasn't got the idea. I don't know why I bother sometimes.

The sofa was bought with 5 whole minutes to spare, and those nice traffic wardens hadn't even given me a ticket. The plan was to leave Bournemouth with Zeb about midday on Wednesday but due to having been born with an excessive quantity of crapness it was about 5:30 before we finally left (pm not am, I wasn't born with Kylie-quantity of crapness for anyone that knows her). Still, that's better than most years and the whole week has been scarily good as regards timings. At some point things have got to turn pear-shaped. We arrived at Glastonbury at 7pm and were in and parked by 7:30 with no fuss. Cool, we've arrived at our spiritual home. Although I had a ticket I decided to jump the fence for the buzz of it (its a hormone thing, if you don't understand then there's no point me explaining it to you). Its a Glastonbury tradition and the organisers thoughtfully make it that little bit harder each year just to keep us on our toes.

We planned our attack but were noticed by some security guards moving our makeshift ladder and were chased by a gang of big, scary bouncer types with shaven heads, big muscles and no brains (I'm sure they took a wrong turn on the way to the World Cup in France). "What are you doing on the festival site? Where's your ticket?". They didn't look too impressed with my smart-assed reply of "Here it is" and were examining it as if they didn't believe it was real. You'd think these guys would have stopped other people with tickets jumping the fence wouldn't you? No? Ok, maybe it was just me. I had an argument with one of them about which direction to head in to get to gate 3 as he didn't have a clue but wasn't going to back down especially as all his mates were backing him up. I don't think he liked my attitude so I decided not to ask him how many times he'd been to Glastonbury or how come he couldn't figure out that to get from gate 2 to gate 3 you have to go clockwise, even though he was looking at a site map. Where do they dig these guys up from? Its like Brighton Essential Music Festival all over again.

Met the guys we were supposed to be camping with and followed them to the campsite. An excellent spot, very central (not telling where it is as we'll camp in the same place next year and we don't want you rabble there). Got the tents up before it got completely dark (wow, that's a first) and wandered off to the stone circle. Got a reasonably early night for some inexplicable reason. Next day me and Zeb did the usual things, checked out the stalls, took an inflatable duck for a walk, inflated the sofa, tried to think of a sensible use for all the bubblewrap we'd brought.

Later on we assembled the giant pants flag and took the inflatable sofa to the hill in front of the Pyramid stage to hold the first official Pants Appreciation Society meeting. Nervous apprehensive moment thinking that noone would turn up or they'd all be complete weirdos but eventually there were Zeb, Pete Rabbit, Barbera, K/Cathy, Trev, Smurf, Selina, Karyn & blokie, Dougal and Ermintrude (Fiona and Cathy), Sarah and her Danish friend and a few others I've forgotten the names of. Fairly nervous and freaky stuff but that's what I expected. Zeb did some stuff with his glow-in-the-dark red diablo, we threw lots of pants around and then went walkabouts for a while with the giant y-fronts (or "pants on a stick" as they've now been named).

I spent most of Thursday night "borrowing" a campfire near our tents as none of us could be bothered to start our own fire. This was later considered a good idea as the firewood we had collected near gate 2 had a rather unusual property for firewood in that it didn't burn. Even after 3 days being stored in a dry tent and sat on a hot fire for 3 hours it refused to burn. Even the mud and water around the fire were starting to give in, but not the firewood, not a spark. It must have been well-ard firewood from Newcastle, or maybe it just needed a minor thermo-nuclear reaction to get it going.

I went for a walk to the stone circle with some nice young ladies at some point in the evening, after which the alcohol has caused a blur of my memory (that's my story, and I'm sticking to it).

I got to bed at about 4:30 (still disgracefully early for Glastonbury) and woke up hungover 4 hours later. It was now Friday and things were still going well. I went to meet Kylie and her cousin Pippa at the meeting point and spotted ex-girlfriend Jessica there so I went over to see her and say hello. It was really nice to see her again and she was as gorgeous as always (oh no, I'm getting carried away again aren't I? Baseball, Cold Showers, Cold Showers, Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day, Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day).

I showed Kylie and Pippa where I was camped and they attempted to show me both of their campsites, but couldn't find the places themselves. Eventaully they stumbled upon their tents (more by random guesswork than logic) but i was so confused by then I don't think I'd have been able to find them again except by their random guesswork method.

On the way back to my tent I bumped in Sabine ("Ribena"), a German girl I used to be "friendly" with when we were living in Bournemouth. She was working in the massage tent in the Healing field during the festival.

I headed off to the farm to use the "clean" flushing toilets (yes they were clean, with dry seats every time I used them, at least before I used them anyway he he :) well worth the walk). Bumped into Rob and Sarah on the way but couldn't stop for too long as the toilets were becoming more urgent.

Our timing finally took a nosedive on Friday as for 3 of the 4 bands we went to see, Zeb's navigating or reading took us to the wrong tent. By the time we got to the correct tent in each case the act had either almost finished or the tent was full. We eventually got to a band on time but they came on late and by then I was due to meet Kylie and Pippa to go and see Catatonia on The Other Stage. The sound was pretty bad from the lake I was standing in and it was no fun so I decided from this point on to forget about enjoying the music as standing still in muddy puddles whilst being rained upon rather diminishes your enjoyment of the music, particularly if you've waded through rivers for half an hour to get there. Might as well just enjoy the festival and drift around from then onwards, I can get into the music at V98 and Reading.

I wandered around to some attempts at campfires on Friday night but lots of people were sheltering in their tents so I gave up in the end and went to bed even though I wasn't tired (I must be getting old or something).

I went for a walk around on Saturday with Pete Rabbit, Barbera, K/Cathy, Trev and Zeb. Met Kylie and Barry who luckily managed to meet up at 1:30 in the morning (lucky for Barry, as he had no tent and was planning to sleep in Kylie's). I handed a message to the Select signing tent but they never printed it (maybe they censored messages containing the word "pants").

2pm arrived, time to run around in front of the main stage with my giant pants flag again, this time alone as Zeb was stuffing bin bags into his trainers and said he'd meet me with the pink sofa and assist in the pants waving in 5 minutes. I got some very strange looks as I was dancing round in the mud, with what seemed like gale force winds and torrential rain. Never mind, I was enjoying it and Zeb would be there soon to assist my aching arms with the flag, or so I naively thought anyway. When my arms felt like they were about to be ripped from their sockets and I had given up on finding Zeb I headed back to the tent to find Zeb sat there, sheltering from the rain. Git.

At some point during the day (things were starting to blur by this point in the festival, look up the time in the program) we took the pants on a stick to see Tori Amos.

Met up with Dougal and Ermintrude again and Esther from Wales and a friend with a Welsh flag. Zeb fell over in the mud on the way back due to the pants having a "trying to stand up whilst holding a kite in a hurricane" effect on both of us. He wasn't amused. I gave him my car keys so he could go and collect my wellie boots and waterproofs. He cheered up a lot once he was in some warm, dry things. He obviously hadn't learnt from last year as the only footwear he brought was canvas trainers.

Went to see Robbie Williams just so we could throw pants at him. He was ok, even if some of his "I'm a rebel me, I'm really cool, 'onest mate" banter was a little bit planned and cheesy. The most enjoyable bits were Angels which was (even though I hate to admit it) good, The Beatle's "Hey Jude" and the La's "There She Goes". Personally, I thought he was trying too hard to prove he was a cool rebel and I don't think he has enough good material of his own yet. He may be good in a few years time though. We couldn't get close enough to the front to throw our yfronts on stage so we just threw them into the crowd instead. The high point of Robbie Williams - he made the sun come out.

Took our giant yfront flag to see Blur. Its amazing how easily you can get to the front of the crowd when you say "make way for the pants", "pants coming through" etc. We got real close to the front on the right hand side of the stage. Blur were ok but didn't play much of the stuff I liked and got a bit carried away with a ten minute feedback and guitar effects session before disposing of Song 2 in what seemed like 30 seconds. At least they didn't play Country House. It was pretty tightly packed at the front and I was getting thrown around a lot (not helped by trying to hold on to the pants flag with my hands and therefore not being able to pull my Dad's baggy waterproof trousers up from around my knees. Its very hard to avoid falling in the mud with waterproof trousers around your knees but somehow I managed it). I was enjoying this but Zeb didn't like it much and wanted to go further back (spoilsport!) so we did to join all the boring people stood still in pools of water.

We took the pants flag back to the campsite and I removed the waterproof trousers after only wearing them for 1 band as being wet seemed preferable to falling in the mud. Zeb wandered off so I found some nice young girls to talk to.

On Sunday I was woken up by the bright sunshine shining into my tent, which was, for once, a welcome sight. Bumped into Lucy from Bournemouth on our morning orange juice and milk run but she managed to escape us (ve vill get you next time).

We decided we had to throw our remaining supply of pants (mainly big white yfronts sourced from charity shops the previous week but also including a prized pair of Dennis The Menace boxer shorts) at Space when they performed The Ballad Of Tom Jones. Me, Zeb, K/Cathy and Trev got about 3 rows back in the crowd and at the relevant point, threw our pants at the stage, prompting a big cheer from the crowd behind. Someone else threw what looked like a muddy pair of trousers onto the stage which the lead singer picked up and commented on.

Went to pay our respect to Bob Dylan just to see if he could make it onto the stage and back off again without dying, and he did, so we were most impressed. I'm not really into him but he was very good and I would have enjoyed it a lot if it was less muddy and I wasn't holding so many conversations, not to mention trying to hold up a rather large, very drunk guy called Pete every time he fell in my direction. Pete decided he was going to sing Phil Collins songs over the top of the quiet bits and shout "Burn the witch!" a lot. The mud was the only thing there to catch him at one point which was funny and after Bob had finished a group of us danced together to Bob Marley.

I was starting to feel a little strange by this time due to the same thing I suffered at last year's Glastonbury, Phoenix and Reading. Whether it was the dodgy cornish pasty I had eaten earlier or the E Coli mud (no, I wasn't eating that, well not intentionally anyway) I'll never know but its getting a bit annoying now it happens at every festival.

I Waded through the various lakes to see Spiritualised on The Other Stage but they were late starting and I was feeling seriously ill by this stage so I left the others and slowly trudged back to my tent (a journey that took almost an hour as my walking got slower and slower). Everyone was really cheerful back at the campsite sat on or crowded around my pink sofa, and its very hard to sleep with hordes of giggling girls outside your tent but somehow I managed it.

I woke up and it dawned on me that the festival was over. "But wait, I haven't finished yet, I want to party, to have fun". Last night when I was feeling terrible it looked like everyone else on the entire planet was having a great time. Now they were all packing up to go home.

It took me 4 trips to get all of my stuff and Zeb's to the car (maybe we didn't need the bubblewrap, inflatable toys, fireman's helmets, purple fake fur and other assorted costumes after all). I started the car at 1pm, got out of the field just after 2pm and was well clear of the festival site by 3pm. Not bad at all, possibly helped by my extensive knowledge of off road driving, hope my sister doesn't mind her car it's new shade of white with brown lumps on.

A great festival overall, similar to last year's, more water but less sticky mud, definitely better organisation, far worse crime, not such good famous bands but still loads of talent to check out. All it needed was some good weather to make it the best festival ever, maybe next year (anyone else remember saying that last year).

Thank you Mr Eavis, you're a marvellous man and I had a most splendid time, the best weekend of the year so far. Don't you dare think about ending the festival. See you all next year.