Nothing like Glastonbury! (Day 15)

I thought being as I'm pining to be at Glastonbury this week, and that we're about to crash into music festival season, I'd write a little about my first ever festival experience and yes you cheeky lot I can remember some of it!! How very dare you!!

I've always been well into the music scene with a bit of band management experience in my younger days and a partner in a music networking site a few years back too. My first ever concert was Oasis at Knebworth in 1996 and what a first gig to go to, especially at 15 years old! They were supported by The Manic Street Preachers, Ocean Colour Scene, Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers. Sounds more like a mini festival than a gig doesn't it? But we are talking about Oasis in their prime, so what do you expect! Anyway, before I digress and start talking about my love of 90's Indie music let's skip forward nine years to my first festival feat... Glastonbury 2005! 

Six of us managed to get tickets, with my Brother and three of our friends heading down to pitch up all of our tents on the Thursday I think? Myself and my soon to be husband (we married that year too) followed on the next day just in time for the music. Pretty handy, rocking up with a ready set up tent in the perfect place thanks to the rest of the gang going a day early! More or less a glamping experience you might think... well for those of you that also went to Glasto that year or have a very good memory you might recall that Glastonbury 2005 was one of the wettest events to date!! On the train on the way there it was absolutely chucking it down and we were hearing phone conversations throughout the carriage (which was full of fellow festival goers) about generators not working and things being hit by lightening! We spoke to our gang briefly who told us that a lot of the site was totally flooded but at that point our tents were still dry as they'd been fortuitous enough to pitch up on slightly higher ground. I have to admit I was getting cold feet about this whole experience whilst I was hearing all the stories and it did cross my mind that maybe we should just turn back and head home for a cosy weekend in the warm, but thankfully my adventurous psyche kicked in and the lure of an exciting one-off life experience (albeit a wet one) was the winner. So we made it and boy was I thankful for my wellies!! My husband not so happy with his choice of trainers but luckily made some make-shift waterproofs by tying bin bags around his feet so that we could wade (yes wade, I'm not even exaggerating!!) to meet the others by our tents! The scene we were presented with was crazy! Tents, bags and clothes were literally floating and kooky wasted festival people practically swimming between them! This was beyond muddy sludge, it was in parts like a lake! When we made it to meet the others I was very pleased to find that the water hadn't reached our tents and we had a neat little set up. The rain had actually stopped at this point too, so we settled in and then toured the very wet and sludgy site. What a sight it was as well!! 

For those of you that want a little peak at what I'm talking about either Google Image search Glastonbury 2005 or check out these pics on the BBC website! 

Despite the whole event looking to be a total washout, it was one of the most amazing weekends I've ever had, to date! It didn't end up raining much more and when it did it was just showers so with wellies we were fine squidging around the muddy hay (they put hay down to soak up some of the surface water I think?). From the most heavenly food stalls I'd ever witnessed (I will never forget those curry filled Naan breads!), to the variety of fields of fun across the site, of course the best live music and crowd atmosphere I'd ever witnessed and not to forget our first introduction to pear Cider, Brothers Festival Pear Cider at 7 or 8% I think! To us it was like nectar though and I dread to think how much of it we got through over the next three days! I vividly remember watching KT Tunstall and Athlete with large bottles of pear cider somehow stuffed into every available pocket to save having to keep going back to the bar! The weird thing about festivals is that you don't really sleep and I never seem to really get a hangover. Maybe I also just kept drinking. Very irresponsible of course and I'm not suggesting that anyone does the same but I owe it to you to give you a true recollection of my experience... I actually ordered a box of this Cider after Glastonbury for a party we had and I had the worse hangover for several days afterwards! Never again have I touched the stuff!! 

I'm not going to talk too much about the actual music as I'll be here all night, so instead I'll rattle through some of the highlights for me performance wise... Babyshambles, Bloc Party, Athlete, Kasabian, Razorlight, Ian Brown, Willy Mason, The White Stripes, Kaiser Chiefs, Cold Play and The Killers just to name a few! Wow, if only i could go back and revisit those shows!

Of course I can't finish writing about a festival without mentioning the toilets and washing facilities and for us we had quite a good thing going because where my lovely friends had pitched our tents was pretty close to a toilet block, however not close enough that we noticed any smells but definitely close enough to know when the cleaners had been in so we could quickly go and do our thing before anyone else realised without having to go to the loo with our eyes shut or bottoms lifted off of the seats and best of all there was heaps of toilet paper! This definitely beat the massive hole in the ground toilets near the Pyramid stage! Don't look down someone said, so what did I do!! Big mistake and i'm still haunted to this day about what I saw!! Anyway, quickly changing the subject we had a little solar shower going on as our tents were beside a fence so we hung it from it, which proved to be useful for keeping lovely and clean, well festival clean anyway! 

A couple of other things that stick out in my memory about Glastonbury would be that on the Friday night some cretin stole one of my wellies from outside my 

tent, yep just ONE welly! I mean, why?!!! I had to buy some crap dunlop wellies that were being cleverly shipped in (probably by the uncle of the welly thief!) for £20 the next day because basically without them you would not have survived Glastonbury 2005! Even my husband surrendered, after the failure of his trainer and bin bag combo! I'm pretty sure that one of my friends had her jeans (that were hanging on the fence to dry) ripped to pieces by some dimwit too but in true Glasto style she continued to wear them with something else underneath. I also have a recollection of seeing a couple of guys so wasted that they were walking along bent over from the waist. I had never seen anything like it and never have since. I'm pretty sure they were partaking in something a little stronger than the Pear Cider!! Celebrity wise, it was quite exciting to see Kate Moss and Kiera Knightly alongside us in their wellies, not together I hasten to add, I can't imagine they used to hang out! Aside from these memories, it was all singing, dancing, rocking and rolling and I'll leave the rest to your imagination! 

I've been to more festivals since this one, but I'll save writing about them for another day as time is ticking and I want to finish watching Orange Is The New Black this evening! 

I'd love to hear about your festival experiences though, so please comment below and tell me your stories...