Fortunately I missed Michael Stipe whining on the pyramid stage on Friday night of Glastonbury festival, and talking about ‘Glasto moments’. Through the general fog, gibbering and trembling that cloud my memories of my time at the festival, these ‘moments’ stand out:
- Seeing a young scouser out of his tree. He tried to talk to me, but couldn’t actually form words. He managed to make a few gurgling sounds with a hint of punctuation and a bit of inflection, and then looked at me quizically for an answer, evidently unaware of his ability to talk.
- Being able to pick out odd voices in the crowds saying things like “Arthur Fowler!”, “Look, Arthur Fowler!”, “Aw-rite Arfur?!”
- Hearing a comedy drug vendor in the Stone Circle peddling his wares by hollering, “Cr*p acid, sh*t weed, w*anky happy dancing tablets!”
- Hearing a desperate plea in the Stone Circle of, “Has anyone got any Ketamine?” There were only responses saying, “Why not just take a trip and some smack?” so the desperate man returned later with a megaphone to spread his request over a greater distancee
- Saying, “It wasn’t until I thought the phrase ‘dry mouth’ that I really started to feel that my mouth was dry,” and watching my friend discover that his mouth was dry as if by magic at the exact same instance I said the words
- Seeing a totally naked woman pass us as we stumbled through the crowds. Waiting a discrete ten seconds before saying anything to my friends, and learning that they had all not noticed a totally naked woman walk five feet away from them. Repeating the experience with people dressed as superheroes. They were really there, I swear. Other people were taking photos of them
- Remembering that our group was carrying a laminated picture of Arthur Fowler on a 10 foot pole, and feeling relieved that there was a reason people were shouting out his name
- Burning things. In small fires all over the place. All the time. Scavenging for wood, and ferreting for cardboard boxes in bins, and everafter seeing bins full of rotting detritus in a whole new light
- Being very confused
- Stumbling about in the dark trying to find somewhere to sit in the cinema field, with a very loose sense of sight, and a heightened sense of touch. Then standing on a bunch of people who didn’t seem to complain much as I poked an exploratory foot onto a leg, and then walking over the person it was attached to
- Watching people fire fireworks out of their asses in Jackass the Movie
- Watching Radiohead, and not being able to recall anything at all about it
- Being told that I didn’t work any more, and then retorting that “I’m not broken though”
- Getting my hour and a half of sleep between Friday morning and Sunday night
- Being shown the way out of a tree that a friend and I had inadvertantly become entangled in while trying to leave the Glade
- Being told that the menu items ‘Vodka’ and ‘Sangria’ were probably supposed to be separate items, after buying a friend a ‘Vodka Sangria’