purple elephants corner

As you swap your ticket for a wristband and stand at the top of the hill looking down on the site, it sounds really trite but the only way I can think of it is that it is like coming home. After 51 weeks of wandering aimlessly you have finally made it home.
We usually head straight down to the Green Fields at the bottom of the site and camp somewhere down there. We slap the tent up and go exploring, grab ourselves some food and sit and watch the world go by because as soon as you pass through the gates real life does not exist anymore. This is the world. It is a world of peace, creativity, veggie food, rainbow colours and love. I was made redundant the day before Glastonbury 1998. Naturally I thought it would screw up my festival ever so slightly, but I didn’t think of it again, not until I walked back through my front door on the Monday afternoon. It is almost as if your brain knows that this only happens for five days a year, so you might as well make the most of it by blocking out everything else.
We spend our days in and out of the kids’ field, watching Littleone clamber over a climbing frame shaped like the Rainbow Warrior or hanging out in the craft tent making a rocket out of an old plastic drinks bottle. We drift from stage to stage satisfying our wide ranging music tastes, taking in anything from Paul McCartney to some messed up avant-garde weirdness on the Lost Vagueness stage. Mr PE spends a great chunk of his festival in the Leftfield stage listening to some inspiring left wing politics, reminding us that there could be a better world all of the time. Whereas I get over to the poetry and words tent when ever I can.
By night we try and watch the sun rise from the Sacred Space at least once during the festival. These days however I do find myself getting tired earlier than I used to (kids anyone?) and more often than not I do find myself retiring to the tent before sunrise. Yet if we are camped near enough to the Sacred Space I always stir with the sun to the sound of drumming and cheering, before turning over and falling back to sleep.
True, it can be depressing leaving the site on a Monday morning and it can take weeks adjusting to the real world again, but I am always filled with hope that if a festival can exist like that for a few days then surely there is no reason why this cannot transfer to the real world. What if fully grown adults really could walk around in fairy dresses? (male or female) What if you could take a stroll around your town centre and McDonalds was replaced by Queen Delilah’s veggie burger stall and Pizza Hut was replaced with Manic Organic? What if the homogenous, sweatshop produced clothes from Gap were replaced by fair trade rainbow jumpers and long floaty tie-dyed skirts decorated with embroidery and tiny little mirrors? What if that grubby kids playground with the broken swings and graffiti-ed up slide was replaced by something imaginative, bright and exciting where your Kids could feel safe? What if you could strike up a conversation with whoever was next to you in a queue without being made to feel like you were going to rob them?
What if we really did have the power to change this world for the better?
That’s what Glastonbury does, it take the weight off my shoulders, fills my bitter, cynical brain with hope and those two feet that spend 51 weeks of the year firmly rooted to the ground are finally allowed to fly.

All is not totally lost. Yesterday we treated ourselves to some tickets to Beautiful Days. I am also hoping that we can make it to the Big Green Gathering this year.
There is a side to Glastonbury that I don’t like, it starts at the main stage and each year creeps its way further over the site. I’m thinking that if the tickets sold out over a couple of hours then those who have broadband, several phone lines, multi hitting software (I have no idea what this is but I am told that it exists) WAP phones and numerous debit cards (with at least £130 in the account) had a greater chance of getting tickets. This certainly seems to be true if you read the comments here. I’m wondering how empty the Green Fields will be this year….
Oh I could write a whole post about that but I didn’t want to sound like I am stamping my feet and screaming,
‘Well I never wanted to go to your stupid festival anyway!’
Because I do.