Late, as usual

It was never like that in my day.

I know I'm a bit on the drag with this, but we're busy people. We recorded all the BBC coverage of Glastonbury 2007 and have been catching up with it over the last few nights, to get us in the mood for our own festival hollybobs in a month's time. Now, much as I love the idea of Glastonbury, it's really not for me these days. I went back in 1995, and the ticket buying process was as complicated as wandering into Andy's Records, asking for a Glastonbury ticket and watching as the till-monkey carefully tore one out of the giant book of Glastonbury tickets kept behind the counter.

1995 was a top festival - the sun shone relentlessly (well, except for the cloudy Saturday but it didn't even manage to rain), I saw Page and Plant live, I fell out with my friends on the first day and spent the whole weekend wandering about on my own, stone cold sober and hungry owing to running out of giro spends on the Friday evening. I met a man from Islington with a macintosh and an AM/FM all-weather torch (with a siren) and heckled German men in leotards with him. We wandered around together all night, until about 5am when I had to run away owing to him coming up on his second lot of mushrooms in the Dog and Vomit bar and shouting at people who weren't there. I slept out on the hillside in the Green Fields campsite. I found the dragon. I watched the sun go down listening to the drummers in the Sacred Space. I painted some rainbow pants on the 25th anniversary mural. It was fucking aces.

I've never been back, and the older I get the less inclined I am to do so. It just looks a bit, well, sterile these days. I know from my own experience that a person can go to Glastonbury and spend four days there without seeing a single band with a record deal. But somehow, I'm afraid to sully my memories of my own golden weekend.

And besides, what the fuck is going on with all those giant flags in the Pyramid Stage crowd? Jesus. We saw the Killers' set last night and if you'd been at the back of the crowd it would have been impossible to see the band through the vast swathes of material flapping about on twenty-foot poles. And who is enjoying themselves waving the damn things?

It's a serious question. Do people really take those fucking great things with them*? Or is it all a ruse on the part of Mean Fiddler - do they supply them so people will wave them about and make the place look more festy-like?

I need to know.

* And yes, I have bought a fifteen foot pole and a Jolly Roger windsock to take on our holidays, but it's only to have in the campsite so we can find our tent. Honest. Shut up.