I’m pretty sure I can’t be the only person who thinks that the Glastonbury Festival
is overrated shite. Aside from all the obvious objections, like it being almost
criminally commercialised, bank-breakingly expensive, and basically just a web-based, identity-theft lottery
regarding who gets tickets, there is the more fundamental problem that the festival experience is a big pile of
1) That special subset of hippiefied stoners who obviously locate Glastonbury purely by the hash smell and for
some reason turn me into my Dad. (I keep having to fight back the urge to shout out “Get your bloody hair cut,
have a fucking wash and do a decent day’s work! And while we’re on the subject of work, the only reason you
can live your drop-out lifestyle is that the capital-based economy you keep moaning about will actually
support a welfare state!”)
2) Why do people still not get that Britain in June is not high summer? And this goes for you Wimbledon
organisers as well. It rains in June! A lot.
3) The food & drink stalls: too pricey, too long in the queue, too bad mate – you’ve got no choice.
4) The fiasco of trying to rendezvous with your mates via mobile: “yeah, I’m over by a stall selling jesters’
hats and incense ... no, on your left ... no, on your left as you’re looking at the stage ... yeah I’m stood
next to a guy dressed as a wizard ... no, not that wizard – the one who looks more like Gandalf ...”
5) The music. Okay, I know I’m on slightly shakier ground here, but be honest – if you’ve ever been to a Glastonbury Festival, how many bands do you see over the 3-day period where you come away thinking ‘wow those guys were great’? Two? Three? It’s not a good ratio when you think about it. And it seems incongruous with all the excited TV interviews we’re
subjected to about what a magical experience it is, but consider who you’re listening to: either (a) music
journalists, or (b) actual musicians themselves. Two groups of people who are, of course, way more into
music than any normal human. If you’ve ever spent more than 30 seconds listening to Jo Whiley
sycophantically soaking her gusset while trying to extract an interesting sentence from some
ill-educated northern white boy five-minute wonder you’ll know what I mean.
And I know it might seem weird that a devout alcoholist like myself would berate what is effectively an excuse for 72 hours of getting mashed – it’s just that there are ways of doing it that also allow you to sleep in a comfy bed.
So, last time I went to the festival I thought I’d take an opportunity to duck out of The Big Swamp and take
a look round the town itself, The Isle of Glastonbury. Which, by the way, I thought was purely a slang take
on the isolated hill of Glastonbury Tor but it turns out that, centuries ago, before good drainage systems
were put in place, this area was surrounded by water for large parts of the year. And the name stuck.
Thus, late one morning, this weary traveller found himself washing up on the shores of the Isle of
Glastonbury. In a Volkswagen Polo.
My, they know their audience in Glastonbury! Check this out for a selection of shop names: “Indigo Earth”, “Heartfelt Trading”, “No. 1 Gothic”, “The Goddess and The Green Man”, “Man, Myth & Magik”, a cafe called “Camelot Fare”, a bookshop called “The Speaking Tree” (actually, that is quite clever). I started to get the impression that some of the owners were blatantly
having a laugh at the expense of the New Age Brigade that frequent the town; it’s very hard otherwise to
explain “Another Lovely Crystal Shop” or (has to be my personal favourite) “The Psychic Piglet”.
And the crap you can buy here is spectacular. You need to get down to Glastonbury
quickly if the thing that’s missing from your home is a crystal ball, a sword, a talisman,
a dream catcher, a unicorn lava lamp or (and once again I do need to stress that I’m genuinely not making this
up) a book called Ten Spiritual Lessons You Can Learn From Your Cat. While I was still reeling from that last
one, my eyes happened upon a contender for my favourite item of the day: the “Calendar of Real-Life Fairies”.
You do not know how much I was hoping for that to be 12 photos of really camp guys mincing around in bars.
No such luck. Just elf-like women wearing wings and pointy ears in woody settings. Mind you, if we’re talking
inter-species sex (which we weren’t), you wouldn’t say no to a few of those fairies.
Oh, and you’re not short of ways in which you can be healed in Glastonbury either. There’s crystal healing, reiki and seichem healing (they sound like manga characters to me), Indian head massage, holistic facials, aromatherapy, reflexology, sacred sound healing with crystal bowls (fuck knows what that means, but dammit I want a go!), astrological consultations, tarot reading and Rowan Tree Healing (pretty sure they’re just arsing around at this point).
Truth be told, it seems like the only form of healing you’d be hard pressed to find is a packet of aspirin,
which is kind of ironic when you’re nursing the kind of hangover I had. I stopped off in a very pleasant
organic cafe (it would have to be, wouldn’t it?) called Heaphy’s for that other traditional hangover
remedy – a beer. And I was a little disappointed to find it was just a regular, run-of-the-mill brand name; I
was rather hoping for a bottle of something like Merlin’s Elixir Of Sacred Niceness.
Re-fuelled, I walked across to the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, which are interesting in a Time Team kind
of way, but perhaps most notable for the following story. The abbey that was previously on this site was
destroyed by fire in 1184, and the monk community was very much at a loss regarding how they could
possibly raise the money to build a replacement. But lo and behold, only a couple of years later, the
graves of King Arthur and Guinevere happened to be discovered within the grounds. What are the odds?
Needless to say, armies of people made the pilgrimage to the area, and the funds they then donated ultimately revived the fortunes of the abbey. God does indeed move in mysterious ways.
What? You think it was a con? Cynics, all of you! Just listen to the irrefutable evidence: It’s recorded that an
old engraved metal cross was discovered at the site, bearing the legend “Here lies buried the renowned
King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon”. So there you go. True, this cross seems to have got lost over the years,
but don’t you go thinking it was all just made up.
This almost reads like a Scooby-Doo kind of clue, doesn’t it? “Here lies buried the renowned King Arthur in the Isle of Avalon”. Only feels one step away from adding on the phrase, “It is! It really is him! Hooray for King Arthur!”
(By the way, can’t resist mentioning the comment I spotted in the Abbey visitors’ book as I left: someone had written into it the following beautiful piece of poetry: “Good sculpture out by the toilets”. Elegant.)
I returned to Glastonbury Festival with my aura cleansed, my blocked energy well and truly
unblocked, and ready to learn all those important lessons from my cat. As I descend once again into
beer-fuelled mud-bathing I’ll leave you with one last literary gem I’d discovered in The Speaking Tree
entitled How To Communicate With The Archangel Michael – I’d challenge anyone to not have a
quick flick through that one. The chapter headings were all along the lines of “Who Is Michael?” and
“Communicating With Michael”, but chapter ten boasts the best title I’ve ever heard anywhere: “How
To Find Your Inner Michael”. Oh yes! How can you not love that?
Peace, love and crystal bowls, everybody. See you next time....
