G2002

The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts 2002

 The best Glasto for me so far!

Weather : good, quite cold at times, some drizzle on Sunday.

Decision method : a penny coin that I found. Heads left, tails right, toss in the air and ignore.

Low spots : Saturday morning. Too heavy.

High spots : Sunday/Monday morning. Dancing to Xiringuito, Jolly's band, playing piano in the Groovy Movies café.

Best bands : Jools Holland, White Stripes, Roger Waters, Badly Drawn Boy, Charlatans, Nelly Furtado, Rashid Taha, Selecta, Sharon Shannon, Glastonbury Town Band, Avalonian Free State Choir, Xiringuito, Jolly's band. ( no particular order! )

Other Acts : Angela de Castro - a fine actress, reciting her life story "My Life Is Like A Yo-Yo"- enchanting. Ian Cognito and the naked Canadian MC - sorry didn't catch your name - excellent!

Food : Common Ground Café : "No Glastonbury is complete without pancakes at the Common Ground Café" - a Dutch couple as they tucked into their pancakes. I can also recommend the cous-cous, mocha latte and everything else they do. Fruit salad for Sunday brunch from a stall near the Dance tent - huge chunks of fresh pineapple, melon, with cherries, strawberries and pear - absolutely perfect, and served with a smile 8^). Muesli for breakfast at Henry's Beard - served with yet more smiles! I noticed that I ate no meat the whole weekend, except for a steak burger on the Monday morning to fortify me for the trek to the car ( there was little alternative ).

Weird moment 1 : getting chased by an 8 foot robot. I thought it was bolted to its electric wheelchair base. It wasn't, and there was a temporary but extreme gap between my conception of reality and the reality itself. As an added weirdness bonus, Brian and I had lost contact, due to mobile phones being switched off, but he witnessed this event without knowing that I was the victim of the manic, but very polite robot...

Weird moment 2 : lying in my tent ( well, Brian's technically ) at about 06:15 Saturday morning - being awake at that time is weird enough - too excited to sleep! I turned on my FM radio with headphones and tuned it to 87.7 - Radio Avalon. The DJ said something like : " wouldn't it be funny if there was just one person listening to this in their tent at Glastonbury... this one's for you..." ( This was the first thing I heard - such timing !). So I just had to get up and tell the DJ that I was in fact listening.... A good excuse to visit the home of wonderful Radio Avalon, and thank them for the fantastic music they play. I crept out of the tent, had a quick and extremely cold shower under the nearest tap, got dressed and marched the mile or so to the Welfare end of the site. Nobody about. Had breakfast at the 24 hour café tent, then noticed two people going into Radio Avalon. "Not us squire - we're just playing a chill out tape" I was told. My friend Anita told me some weeks later that she had heard the self same comment driving to work, and thought of me, ON RADIO 2 , just a dial nudge away...

Special Moment : Sitting at the top of the Sacred Stones field at about 04:30 Monday morning. The LED jewellery and light pipes had faded in the morning light - the scene could have been 3000 years old - camp fires, drumming and peaceful chatter. Unchanging.

Thanks to :

Kim and Liz for dancing to Jools Holland. I cannot just sit and listen to this music, and we three boogied along, together with the other half dozen or so like-minded people scattered amongst the 100,000 audience! Thanks to you both! And thanks to Jools and friends, especially Sam Brown, for a stomping performance!

Hilary the "wheelbarrow mum" for getting down to the Roger Waters "Pink Floyd" set. A special moment - big hugs!

Nancy for providing the piano in the Groovy Movies café, and for the copious hot chocolate! Also Dan for the piano duet, Mark for the piano solo and Colin Paxton for being my number one fan..

Andy for getting me dancing to :

Xiringuito : One of the best things about Glasto is the sense of the unexpected. Sunday afternoon, about 17:00 I had just watched Badly Drawn Boy ( a beautiful, simple set ) and was heading towards the Other Stage to meet up with Brian, Neil and Mark ( and maybe catch the end of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, then Elbow ) when I heard a band playing in the Left Field tent. The voice of the lead singer rang out clearly and I decided to investigate, and I found Xiringuito rocking the joint. James the singer/songwriter had composed some good songs, sung beautifully by Ayesha, with Justin on backing track MiniDisk. Xiringuito normally has five members, but only three had made the trip from Barcelona, I hope as a scouting party for a return visit next year. [GMW] I have to be careful to avoid superlatives at all times when describing the Glastonbury Festival, but never more so than now. There are times for me at every Glasto when I really wonder what I am doing there - is it really worth the pain. When Ayesha ended their set with "Allah Hu Akbar" I new that I was exactly where I was supposed to be and that God is indeed Great. Thank you for reminding me! An oasis of peace in all the noise.

Jolly and her band : Jake on accordion, Jolly singing, and others singing, on guitar, washboard, banjo and double bass. Only at Glastonbury do you get such quality music by the side of the road - the band had played in the bandstand earlier. Jake had the Doors' "Light My Fire" keyboard solo more or less note perfect, and the band were just so together. This is real music!