and all the rest of the pics can be found in my scrapbook.
so, let's see, then. wednesday, we left ireland and arrived at the festival. a very smooth journey involving a lift to the airport, a flight, a taxi to the festival drop-off point and a bus to the festival. there was a huge queue for international ticket collection, which was remedied by the organizers just handing out blank tickets to everyone in the queue. possibly not the greatest thing ever because no one got a ticket with their name or picture on it, but we all got to get into the festival. but well. we found a good camping spot in the family camping area. and even though we were woken by the shouting of kids' playing at 8:30 every morning, it was worth it not to have drunken people falling on our tent.
wednesday evening involved shopping, eating and sampling somerset cider. strong stuff, that. so wednesday night was a really good laugh, once again we ended up in fits of laughter at the edge of the stone circle. and then we went into a little tent where a girl was singing "the mouse on the stairs" and we joined in somewhat rowdily. we calmed down quickly and in a blatant display of random drunken shifts of form, we went writing in our journals. funny!
thursday was spent in a sort of haze of tiredness and general hung-overness, but it got much better as the day went on. more shopping and eating and drinking smoothies and going for a mid-day snooze. we went to bed early and didn't get up to anything crazy.
friday saw rain, and the start of the music. the ting tings played in the john peel tent, that was the highlight of the day for me. we also saw camille o sullivan, kate nash, a bit of sinead o connor (she was terrible) and kings of leon. we had lovely warm showers too. the key to showers at galstonbury is to go at about 6pm, when everyone else is getting drunk and settling in for the headliners. especially easy to do when there is no one you've ever heard of on the line-up.
saturday saw the end of the rain and an eclectic day spent shopping and catching random acts in the circus area. there was nobody good on any of the main stages saturday night, so we saw a really spectacular fire show instead. it was amazing. plumes of fire rising 10 metres into the air. we were at the very front of the barricade and the heat was enough to warm the air by about 15degrees. the noise of gas burners shooting massive gouts of flame into the sky was somewhat deafening. on friday night we'd seen and heard it all the way at the pyramid stage... when that ended we strolled into the astrolabe theatre for black sky white doing "bertrand's toys". it was freaky. people dressed up as marionettes dancing to chilling, deeply threatening music. they danced like creatures who havn't quite grasped the grace of movement - like anti-elegance. but it was amazing to watch - captivating. so disturbing that you couldn't stop watching it.
sunday... ahh sunday. the day of leonard cohen.
he's the one person at the band who's music i really like (ting tings are good, but they are nothing but a fleeting drop of some happy chemical in the music world, like a party that you really enjoy while it's happening, but you don't pine for it when it ends, because you know there will be other excellent parties.) but leonard cohen; he is a legend. a singer / songwriter of epic status who has entered into the realms of the human unconscious. his set was amazing, even if he only sang five songs i know. i think his voice has deepened over the years, just listening to his essential this morning and it seemed way higher pitched. anyway... he was cool. he tilted his hat to the crowd after each song and smiled for the cheer he got. at every song the crowd went wild - the cheer was phenomenal - like the cheer that's usually reserved for the end of a gig. yea, so he was good :)
we had a second shower on sunday, and then caught the end of neil diamond's set, which consisted of sweet caroline and forever in blue jeans. the headline slot of the festival for us was my morning jacket on the park stage. they rocked out pretty well, but we were just too tired to fully enjoy them. i got chow mein on the way back to the tent and that was glastonbury 08.
awh. i didn't want it to be over. i wanted the music and the good food to go on for ever. but it did end and monday morning dawned bright and sunny and we packed up and got back to bristol airport with neil and suzanne (the same people we shared a taxi with on the way down) and flew back to ireland and eventually got home at 11pm.
and that's that really. i think, next year, if i dodn't know at least 7 bands on the line-up i won't go. because it's really not fun going to bands when you can't sing along. even though the fringe acts are what glastonbury is all about, nothing raises your spirits like singing and dancing with a crowd of people to your favourite songs.
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