memories of Glastonbury

With all the media exposure of Glastonbury this weekend I realised that I was last there in 1997: thirty years ago.  (Sir!) Van Morrison was highlighting and I was very pleased to find bootleg cassettes of his performance for sale about an hour after he finished: impressed by the efficiency of the production system  that could knock out,  I don't know how many, copies of his performance in a field at such short notice.  I still have the cassette, sadly not the means to play it :-(.

Monday morning leaving site I shredded the two back tyres on my beloved Bedford CA ambulance and had to nurse it into the nearest town to get two new ones fitted before driving back to London.


Why was that my last Glastonbury?  It was partly the feeling that it had grown too big, too commercial, but more so, a few weeks later, I moved 'up north': t'Alifax. After ten years as a southerner when I planned my summer activities around the festival circuit I now had access to the Pennines, the Peaks and the Lakes and, on longer weekends, the Highlands.   A new world of OB opened to me and the idea of spending my summer weekends on crowded camp sites queueing for overpriced beer and dirty toilets just its allure.  Or perhaps I was just moving on.  It's not that I never go to festivals any more, but the last I went to less than a thousand people, stunning views and no queues at the bar.  I knew all my camping neighbours by name by the time I left!