I wanna be ignored by the stiff and the bored....

Earworms of the Week

"Mason on the Boundary" - The Duckworth Lewis Method

There's a bit of a Glastonbury theme to this week's earworms.... but let's get started with a bit of what my wife would call "crickety folk".  The oldest rivalry in cricket resumes at Trent Bridge in Nottingham on Wednesday morning with the first test of the 2013 Ashes.  I've seen England play Australia many times over the last few years, and given that I spent most of the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s watching us getting mercilessly humped by one of the greatest teams the game has seen, I can't say that I'm bored of the fact that I'm starting to see England win an awful lot more often.  Trent Bridge is a beautiful ground and I'm very much looking forward to watching the game - not least because I've managed to snag tickets for every day of the game.  I'm taking my father-in-law to the first two days of the match, and I think he's beside himself with excitement.  It's the Ashes!  As an added bonus, the night before the game sees the Duckworth Lewis Method launching their new album at the Nottingham Playhouse and I've got tickets to that too.  I know cricket-themed songs don't sound very promising, but this is a Neil Hannon side-project and their first album was properly splendid.  It's "Jiggery Pokery" that really sticks in the memory, but really the overall tone of the album is one of gentle, pastoral paeans to the greatest game.  Should be good.

"Tessellate" - Alt-J

I only got to see a little over half of Alt-J's set at the Other Stage in the end... I had a date with Billy Bragg at the Leftfield... but they're one of those bands that I really want to see properly in a smaller venue.  Over the years, I'm finally getting the hang of the idea that it's okay to only watch a handful of bands *properly* at Glastonbury.  The rest you can hear in passing, but a festival isn't really the best place to give someone a proper listen.  I did hear them play this song, mind, and it is my absolute favourite and it sounded magnificent.  They're perhaps a little bit quirky and arty for a big festival stage, but they made a pretty good fist of it, I think.

"I Want Your Love" - Chic

Chic were fantastic on the West Holts stage on Friday night.  It was one of those sets where you come in thinking you know one or two songs and that this might be fun, and you leave thinking that Nile Rodgers wrote, produced or performed on most of the biggest records of the 1970s and 1980s.  It was ridiculous.  "Like a Virgin", for goodness sake!  They played "Get Lucky" over the PA at the end of the set, and Rodgers lingered on the stage looking at the massive crowd singing it back to him, and he wouldn't be human if he didn't walk away thinking "Still got it!".  Fantastic.  I quite like the Arctic Monkeys and Portishead, but this was really no contest.

"Seen It All" - Jake Bugg

Jake Bugg is 19 years old and yet he seemed totally unfazed by playing to a huge crowd at the Pyramid Stage on Friday afternoon.  He hasn't really got much in the way of stage banter yet, but he certainly knows how to play and appears to be entirely nerveless.  I was a touch disappointed that he didn't play "Folsom Prison Blues" this time, but he did play "Hey, Hey, My, My" by Neil Young, so that was pretty good.  The uncle that lent him his record collection and bought him his first guitar must be a very proud man indeed.

"Manhattan" - Cat Power

I spent my Sunday night about as far away from Mumford & Sons as I possibly could - right up the top end of the site at the Park Stage.  It was totally worth it, too... I think this might have been my favourite set of the weekend.  I've been waiting to see Chan Marshall live now for some time and she certainly didn't disappoint.  What I'd forgotten was quite how shy she is: given that her songs are incredibly emotional and powerful and that she belts them out with real gusto, it's a real surprise that her nerves are so bad that she is basically unable to communicate with the crowd between songs.  She clearly desperately wants to, and she tries but really she just ends up waving at us shyly and gesturing from the back of the stage.  At the end of her set, she actually lingers, reluctant to leave the stage but unable to speak to the crowd.... it's incredibly endearing.  She's really bloody good too, and her songs are amazing.  It wasn't a big crowd, but it was respectable and it was certainly nice to spend some time away from the hullabaloo for a little while.  A fantastic way to end my festival.

"Shipbulding" - Elvis Costello

The last time I saw Elvis Costello at Glastonbury, he was a right miserable git.  This time around, on just before Primal Scream and the Stones, he was a pussycat and played all the hits.  Go figure.  Still, who's complaining?  I'm not sure his is the best version of this song, or even the second best... but it's a bloody good song.

"Fight Them Back" - Steve Mason

On just before Cat Power at the Park Stage.  His last album is really very good.  He finished his set with this, and introduced it by saying that it's a very misunderstood song and isn't really about violence at all.  Hmm.  Really?  The chorus says that we should fight them back with "a fist, a boot and a baseball bat".  How is that not violent, Steve?  Good song, mind.

"Jumpin' Jack Flash" - The Rolling Stones

When the Stones came onstage and started playing this song, Keith Richards looked like the coolest man alive, chopping out one of the most famous riffs ever recorded.  Outstanding.  They played a pretty long set, and I thought it inevitably sagged a little in the middle, but they are probably one of the best headliners I have ever seen on the Pyramid Stage.  How was I not going to watch the Rolling Stones, for goodness sake?

"Help Save the Youth of America" - Billy Bragg

Billy Bragg was famously inspired to become a musician when he saw the Clash at Rock Against Racism... and not surprisingly this sounds a lot like a Clash song.  In a good way, obviously.  Billy is a hero of mine.  His music remains pretty good, but increasingly I'm drawn to him for the humanity of his politics.  When I watched him sharing a sofa with the 88 year old Tony Benn, I saw another fine example of what we don't see often enough in politics - a genuine care for other human beings.  Today is the 65th birthday of the National Health Service, and it was founded by people like that, you know.

"Hate To Say I Told You So" - The Hives

Best set of the festival.  Full stop.  Beady Eye were on just before them as "Special Guests" to open the Other Stage on Friday morning.  Howlin' Pelle Almqvist really showed Liam Gallagher up for the arrogant gibbon he is: Gallagher thinks that swagger alone is enough (coupled with a rhyming dictionary of the bleedin' obvious), but Almqvist really knows how to work a crowd and, by the end of their set, they not only have a bigger crowd than Beady Eye, they also have a much more engaged crowd.  Almqvist has us eating out of the palm of his hand and jumping up and sitting down pretty much on command.  It helps that they have the tunes too, mind.  This is their most famous song, but it's far from being their only good song.... brilliant set.  Good festival.

Right.  That's it.  Have a great weekend, y'all.  Looks like sun, which is nice.

like it, like it, yes I do....

On Monday morning, I woke up in a tent in a field in Somerset at around 03:45 and began to get up.  Some people were still partying hard from the night before as we packed up the tent, gathered our stuff together and - a little before 6am - were in our cars, making our way off the site to drive back up the M5 to Nottingham.  We'd arrived in the same car parks just a few short days before - arriving at around 5am on the Wednesday morning, but a mere five days later and I was knackered.  You can cram a lot into five days if you really try.  I've had a full day in the office today and I'm exhausted.

Okay, so nobody made me go for a run when I got home... but my running club does this thing where you collect a stamp for each week where you attend at least one run.  As you accumulate stamps, you get different gifts: a free t-shirt, a nutrition pack... that kind of thing.  If you get up to fifty stamps within 365 days of your first run, then you win a GPS watch worth £250.  My year ran out today.  I had 49 stamps and needed to make it to a run on Monday if I wanted to earn my watch.  I made it.  I managed a quick disco nap on Monday afternoon, and I think I was mostly sweating red wine and cider as I flogged my way around the three mile course, but I made it and will get that watch.  I've never been as injured as I've been this year, but I still made it to 50 weeks out of a possible 53 at Running Club.  I don't know if that's heroic or just dumb, but that's what I did.

I don't actually WANT the watch, but that's not really the point.  That was NEVER the point.

Anyway.  Glastonbury, yeah?

It was really good.

I'm sure you're sick of the saturation coverage by now, so I'm not sure you really want to hear much from me on the subject.  Hell, I was there and I'm heartily tired of the coverage.  I've heard songs from the Mumford and Sons set on Sunday night three times already today, and I made a point of being at the stage furthest away from the site from where they were playing.  They're flipping unavoidable!

So what needs to be said?   That we got onto the site proper before gates were officially supposed to be opened?  That we were fully pitched up and dishing out the mojitos by about 08:30? (well, it is after the shipping forecast and that's the golden rule, isn't it?  NEVER drink before the shipping forecast....at 05:20.  After that, it's fair game.

My top 3 bands:

Friday: The Hives - partly because they showed that damn, dirty ape from Beady Eye how to really work a crowd, but also because they're a brilliant band (although props to Chic, who apparently wrote every famous song from the 1970s and most from the 1980s too....)
Saturday: The Rolling Stones
Sunday: Cat Power

I ummed and ahhed about it a bit, but in the end I just had to watch the Rolling Stones.  They opened up their set with a 1-2-3-4 punch of Jumping Jack Flash, It's Only Rock and Roll (but I like it), Paint It Black and Gimme Shelter.  It's pretty hard to argue with that, and Keef Richards looked like the coolest person on earth.  Come the end of the world, and he's still going to be around, chopping out mega riffs for the cockroaches.  The man is a marvel.  At some point during Honky Tonk Women, I was inspired to get out my very own rooster dance and display it in all of it's strutting glory to the people in the ground around me.  On Sunday night, I finished my festival with Cat Power up at the Park stage.  It was fantastic: her songs are so emotional and powerful, but she's clearly intensely shy and has real difficulty so much as speaking to her audience.  She's keen to communicate though, as best as she can, and she ends up waving shyly at us.  It's incredibly endearing.  She sounds great too.... well worth the trip up the hill... and I find myself spending half an hour or so by myself at the top of the site after she finishes, just to take the whole scene in for a while before heading to bed.

Billy Bragg was good too.  I saw him on Friday night in his natural habitat of the Leftfield tent, and I saw him again on the main stage at lunchtime on Saturday and he was great both times.  I was a little disappointed that the set - including ad libs - was mostly the same, but he's alright by me.  I also saw him again on Sunday lunchtime, in a Q&A session with a Labour MP and an 88 year old Tony Benn.  Benn is now 88 years old and has recently been in hospital, but the man is a shining example to us all and he dispensed his usual wisdom whilst puffing away on his pipe and swigging from a large mug of tea.  They really don't make them like that any more, more's the pity.... here's hoping we get another chance to see him.

The food was incredible, as always.  My top 3 meals?  Hmm.  Tough one.  I think the Keralan chicken curry I had up by the Park, the Jerk Chicken I had near the Leftfield, served fresh off the BBQ with rice and peas and a ginger beer... but best of all?  The four cheese ploughmans I had from the Greenpeace market, served with proper chutney, bread baked on the site, some pickled onions and an actual apple.  The cheese was local and it was EPIC.  I actually had a conversation with the guys sitting next to me about it.  They wanted me to settle a debate about which cheese ploughmans was the best on site: this one or the one near the West Holts stage.  Apparently that had only one cheese and one hunk of bread, not a selection, but was a couple of quid cheaper.  I nearly got up and went straight over to West Holts to make a direct comparison.  Mmm.  Cheese.

Yeah.  So that's probably it.  It was lovely.  I saw lots and still barely scratched the surface of the thing.  I made it to Arcadia, but never did see the Lords of Lightning.  I didn't get close to the cabaret, circus or theatre tents and I didn't watch a single band on the John Peel Stage this year (giving up Everything Everything and Johnny Marr on Saturday evening for a decent position with my friends for the Rolling Stones).  Maybe next year?  You can't see everything, and to try to do so at a festival this big is just madness.  Maybe next year will also be the year that I rent a tipi..... I really quite fancy that.

Looks pretty good, huh? Right at the top of the site between the Park and the Green Fields.  Fewer people kicking my guy ropes, for one thing.... never underestimate the virtues of that.

357 days to Glastonbury 2014!

magic bus....

Gone to Glastonbury....

See you at the Cider Bus.

you can fight the sleep but not the dream....

At about this time of year, a few thousand people begin paying very close attention to the weather forecast of a very specific place in Somerset.... Yup.  It's the Glastonbury Festival next weekend.  It is perhaps the most famous festival in the world and many amazing things have happened here over the years, but you know what most people think about when someone mentions the festival?

The mud.  Apparently even the Queen does it when someone mentions the festival in conversation.

There's a very good reason for this, of course: the festival takes place on a farm, and when it rains, it gets very wet.  With 150,000 people tramping about the place, it doesn't take very long for the site to turn into a quagmire.  It's not so bad really: it makes getting around the place a lot harder and slower, and it's next to impossible to find somewhere to sit down... but as long as you have a decent pair of boots and a sense of humour, it's perfectly manageable.  Well, unless perhaps you wake up to find your tent floating in the same lake as some portaloos, as happened to some poor souls in 2005 (pictured above).

The fact is that Glastonbury enjoys almost saturation (!) media coverage when it is on: it's all over the BBC, for starters.  Although I think people like the pictures of people basking in the sun at a festival, I think they really enjoy the pictures of people slogging through the mud much more.  There's a kind of perverse pleasure watching other people suffer in the swamp when you're at home in front of your telly, isn't there?  Perhaps it feels even better if you're one of the thousands of people who tried to get a ticket and failed.  I'm fairly sure it does. The Germans have a word for it: schadenfreude. The pleasure derived from watching other people suffer.  Everyone wants to come to Glastonbury after a sunny one; very few people fancy it when they see a muddy one.

Honestly, it's not that bad.  I look at the weather forecasts the same as everyone else, but I tend to take mostly the same stuff every year anyway.  What's the worst thing that can happen?  That you lug your boots in and you turn out never to need them?  It is what it is, right?  I already drive a small, diesel car in a one-car household, recycle all my paper and cardboard and have no children.  What more could I realistically do to try and slow down climate change?

2013 will be my eleventh Glastonbury in all, and my tenth in a row since 2002 (no festival was held in 2006 or in 2012).  In all that time, I think my weather tally is two really gorgeous, sunny festivals, 3 really wet and muddy ones, and all the rest have been somewhere in-between.  The only conclusion I can draw is that it is entirely typical of the English climate that the weather in Somerset at the end of June to be a little bit wet, a little bit sunny, a bit windy and perhaps a bit chilly at night.  Indeed, that's pretty much exactly what is forecast this time around.  It's the kind of weather where you catch a bit of sun on your nose whilst wearing your wellies and your raincoat all day.  People have been moaning about the sunshine and showers we've been having over the last few weeks and saying how it's unseasonable.... well, I'm not sure that it is, really.

Anyway.  When it's nice, it's one of the most splendid places in the world.... whatever the weather.  As long as you're with the people you love, right?

....and you have some cider.  I'll be there first thing on Wednesday morning, rain or shine, and I can't wait.