scaryblog

  Ah - the last proper day.  Which started way too early after a TERRIBLE night's sleep - fortunately my chaise longue was available up the hill and I spent 2 hours resting my eyes on it and felt almost human having done so!  In between the snoozes, I worked out my targets for the day - Beth Orton, Toyah Wilcox & Robert Fripp, Slowdive, Becky Hill, Caroline Polachek and some geezer called Elton. And I wasn't in the mood to move anywhere to find music, so I got what I was given in the form of... John Francis Flynn Ah OK.  Maybe it's time to move on then.  He was trying for the mysterious Celtic sound, but all he achieved was slightly dull. On my slow wander over to the West Holts stage, I caught the last 30 seconds of a Mother Sky song on the Other stage and really liked it, so decided I would stop and catch the rest of their set.  Yup, it was their last song - oh well, time to move along then to go and see... Beth Orton I saw Beth either last time or th...

After a slightly better night's sleep (it's all relative), I was still up and ready way before there was any music to listen to - yesterday's chaise longue was calling to me, but I knew I was going to start the day at Woodsies which would have involved a 40 minute round trip, so I just found a spot in the shade (it was gonna be a hot one) and planned out my musical targets for the day.  And from my personal preferences, I came up Rick Astley (both by himself and doing his Smiths thang with Blossoms), Sudan Archives, Erika de Casier, Rina Sawayama, Melanie C and Christine and the Queens - and I also had a couple of instructed visits from my daughters for Raye and Aitch (despite me telling them I wasn't going to like Aitch!).  I knew I was setting myself up for failure because Rina and Mel were playing at the same time on opposite sides of the park, but the weather was also going to play a part because by 11am when the music started it was hot, hot, HOT! The Last Dinner P...

  I always go hard on the Friday in terms of walking between the stages to catch the people I want to see - on later days, tiredness kicks in and I accept that sacrifices have to be made, but on the Friday I'm totally "I can do this!".  For those who haven't been, the distances involved can be significant - walking from the Acoustic stage to the Park stage is a good 30 minute hike under optimum conditions and optimum conditions does not involve the presence of other people, so you often need to easily double that.  So planning is required, people! My planning process is to pick the people I really want to see and then see who else makes sense to catch given the locations involved - I'm not saying spreadsheets are involved, but it probably wouldn't hurt things if they were.  Targets for this day were Maisie Peters (under instruction from my eldest), Flo (I reckoned they'd be perfect for the sunshine), Carly Rae Jepson (yeah, just for the one song), Pale Wav...

Glastonbury all really rushed up on me this year - I was excited about going, but there was always something else to occupy my time.  Including 4 hours of Politics flashcards on the night before I was due to go - apparently, my eldest considered her A Level mocks to be more important than me packing for Glasto.  Just rude! But I was ready to leave bright and early on the Thursday (which has to be Day 0 because it comes before the first official day, but I guess that just means a load of people turned up on Day -1).  And what a relatively stress-free journey it was!  Paddington station was, as always, very organised and only involved a ten minute wait for a train to appear -  but, for a very nice change, Castle Cary didn't feature any queues!  I was through the entire station and on a bus in five minutes -  and two minutes of that was spent explaining to the train staff that, yes, I didn't have a ticket for that exact train but they shouldn't be trying ...