Around 300,000 people live there, having made a pilgrimage from their mundane lives, to experience life as it would be if hippies ruled.
I am of course talking about Glastonbury Festival, the only festival of its kind in the world. It’s not just a beer-sponsored concert with camping; it’s a city in a field. It takes an hour to walk from end to end; the centre has a Market that rivals any permanent city I’ve visited and there are so many bars, stages and events to behold, one cannot possibly see them all. And nor would you want to, indeed you don’t have to. It’s the kind of place you can find a nice spot, watch the world go by and be thoroughly enthralled for six days.

This year will be my 10th visit to Glastonbury and I’m very proud of that landmark but every year I find myself defending its integrity, even to people who have been before. “It’s gone too commercial” is one complaint; “The tickets are too expensive” is another. That at least is true, tickets will set you back almost £200 nowadays, it was £95 the first year I went but things have changed a lot since then. There’s the bullet proof fence of course, which although sounds laughable, is actually for our protection. I remember the muggings before it was in place, there were dickheads of all kinds able to just walk in with no ticket. It all got too much in 2000 when 150,000 too many people got in without a ticket, me and 30 of my friends included, you may have seen us on the news, my mum did. And to make matters worse, Glastonbury 2000 was a hot one. Half a million people camped in space meant for half that amount. We walked like cattle on the designated tracks, breathing in dust and aching to sit down, only to find that the extra camper’s tents had taken up all the grazing space, it was agony. Something had to be done and that’s why the fence is there, it does seem a little fascist and I hate defending it but oh my life, I never want to go through that again.

So gone are the Woodstock days of free entry if you’re rum enough and gone too are the thugs, touts and cheeky scousers. One year, I forget which; the atmosphere lacked a certain je ne c’est qua. There seemed to be no crazy people, no cyber punks on ketamine, no blokes with dogs on string; it was the year of no travellers. Famously the travellers make their way over to Glastonbury after the solstice at Stonehenge; this began in a refugee fashion after “the pigs” smashed them in at the battle of the Bean fields in the 80’s. Ever since, it was those nomads who gave Glastonbury its edge, its bizarre culture, it’s reason to return time and time again. It was them who provided the continuous drumming at Glastonbury’s own stone circle, the very heartbeat of the festival.

Thankfully the next year they returned, this time hired by Michael Eavis himself, to run the most popular part of the show, then Lost Vagueness, now Shangri-La and Trash City, where you can witness some of the most impressive works of art made entirely from salvaged rubbish. It’s all very Mad Max, which in middle England makes a nice change.

So, has it gone too commercial? Well it’s possible, when you consider the low-key of some of these uber-cool boutique festivals on offer, Glastonbury is like Tesco by comparison. But it isn’t Tesco; it’s the most successful on-going festival of contemporary performing arts in the world. It truly is the stuff of legend and despite the negative press it sometimes receives it really is the experience of a lifetime. Every year when it’s over, on my way home I’m already thinking of how I’m going to do it better next year. This year I’m playing, it doesn’t get much better than that.

And so, it looks as though this year’s festival is going to be a sunny one. Some of us have been glued to Metcheck’s long-range forecast since the tickets went on sale in April but it doesn’t do any good. My festival advice is this, take wellies, wear trainers and confidently slide flip-flops into the side pocket of your bag. You are going on a camping holiday in Britain; all types of weather are guaranteed. Muddy festivals are by all accounts hellish but doable, don’t camp in a trench or expect to sit down, nothing stays dry.
But wear your wellies and strut through the puddles like a six year old, it’s fab!