Glastonbury 2013 - A Dream or a Reality? Day 3 - Friday

Day 3 - Friday - Just Noise, White Noise

I had a mini lay in this morning after last nights Shangra-La antics. Also the sun was hidden behind clouds so the black pearl didn't have chance to wake me up. Black Pearl was starting to smell a slight bit. Two 25 year old men in a small tent with lots of alcohol adds upto an interesting aroma. For some reason we thought it would be a good idea to have a team 'brush off' where 3 of us held another ones toothbrush and brushed each others teeth, this was a definite 'had to be there' moment.

We had a discussion around the extinguished fire and fire wood stack about where we were all heading. We split up into our groups. Me and Martin went to see Haim, a band of three sisters from America, who were the first on the Pyramid Stage. I was surprised at how good Haim were as I had only heard their most famous song 'Falling' but the most impressive song was 'Don't Save Me', see the clip below: 

They were an impressive band, with the lead singer having an air of Annie Lennox type presence and vocals, however, her sister who was on the bass was a classic annoying American, who claimed to nearly faint and then dragging out a sob story about Diabetes as if she was the only person who had the condition. Believe it or not she recovered to finish the set, how appropriate. WE LOVE YOU GLASTONBERRY, yes Berry, stupid Yanks.

After Haim we headed across to the John Peel stage, chilled out by a pylon, waiting to see one of the bands I was looking forward to seeing, Kodaline. An Irish Indie Band who have similar tones to Mumford in certain songs. We chilled out near the middle waiting for them to come on (whilst being constantly bombarded with more Charity videos). Kodaline came on, only for their first song to be pretty much silent as the speakers didn't work. I have personal experience of this, when the monitors work so the band thinks all is well yet the crowd can't hear anything and all the crowd is chanting 'UP,UP,UP'. A horrible experience. Just like Haim, I was impressed with the front mans vocals and stage presence. The most impressive song for me was 'Love Like This', see the clip below:

So far my first taste of the music side of Glasto was great and the weather was the same, it was boiling with no need for wellies. After Kodaline we went back to the campsite to get some snap, the mornings porridge didn't fill us up. We sat in the sunshine, had a few drinks and chatted to an Aussie woman about travelling. We met back up with the rest of the group and headed over to the Other Stage after walking round all the shops. We all sat at the campsite and we played drinking games. The best one was 'We went to the shop', which got out of hand as it usually did with the Kiwi's. For me, I loved the music but the festival was about chilling with people and having a laugh. It all ended up with face paint, drunken behaviour and good times.

Alt-J were on at 7, we were a long way out but we were having a laugh at the back. Alt-J were ok but I was drunk on some pure dirty vodka so I only remember my favourite song, Tessellate. They were good but I wasn't blown away. We now had a big decision to make. Go to Disclosure or wait at the Pyramid Stage for the Monkeys. I decided on disclosure as I had seen the Arctic Monkeys, even though I love their new single, see clip below:

On the way to disclosure, we picked up a few Brummies that we knew and called ourselves the Fluid Crew. As you can tell we were now drunk. Discolsure were by far the highlight of the day. Every song was energetic and it was just amazing. It was also rammed. Nani, a Brummie, kept feeding me red wine, while we fluidly dance to songs such as 'Latch' and 'White Noise'. My new favourite is in the clip below:

After Disclosure we bounced happily across to catch the end of the Monkeys. I pushed my way through the crowd, to near the front. I will be honest and say I can't remember what songs they played while I was there but they were tight and very impressive. I met a girl and we danced. I got back to the tent later on, alone at like 4. The fire had been put out. What a great day. I had an epiphany on my walk back, after I bought food for sure.

Glastonbury 2013 - A Dream or a Reality? Day 2 - Thursday

Day 2 - Thursday (Games and Shangra-La)

So after the first night of light drinking, I woke up in our aptly named tent 'the black pearl' fully clothed.   I was sweating more than an 80's radio dj whenever they heard the doorbell. As the tent was black, it was toasty to say the least and this was at 9am. Also, just to add a quick point, 2 man tents are not suitable for 2 men. A) They aren't long enough, B) they aren't wide enough. (Can you tell its nearly been a week so my post-Glasto stress has kicked in). Anyway, I digress, I crawled out of my pearl to see some sprightly Kiwi's and an Aussie, all sitting in chairs (that weren't yet broken). On Wednesday myself and Martin both broke a chair each, easily done when your nickname is G-Lo in my case and Martins is Clive as he is clumsy.

I went for the usual trip to the long drops. Not upto their usual day 1 standards, the poo was building up, like the shittest game of jenga ever. I came back to my homemade porridge on the stove, a nice cuppa and a discussion about the day ahead. We all decided to explore more as we had a lot to see. The sun was shining but a storm brewed in the distance. We took a bag so we could chill near the flags and sup cider. This ended badly as halfway down we lost 2 cans after Clive dropped the bag, I now smelt of stale Cider, a sign of things to come. We all bought some decorative flowers for our heads and walked round. We got Water Aid charity people bugging us but we aided them by fake signing a petition as Peter File. Amused ourselves with pringles lids. My favourite shop had an extremely creative name 'SOCKS', I wonder what it sold. We went to go and do some Yoga, wasted time by playing guess that tune. My rendition of 'Rule the World' by Take That wasn't too popular. We missed the Yoga but we saw other shit (including a group of stag do scousers, the most annoying type of stag do's, all in their Liverpool kits, pricks). It started to rain so we headed back to camp.

What do you do when it starts to rain at a festival? Get pissed, correct. So we all chilled in the big tent getting drunk. Me and Martin cleaned a whole crate out in a few hours. The piss was flowing (as was the tent with excess muddy water). We played 'On the Bus', 'Ring of Fire' and 'Red or Black'. It was a right laugh. Soon we all got cravings for food, some heroes braved the weather to get burgers for everyone. The rain eased about 8pm, after a new arrival in the group. After more drinking and less memory we decided to head out in the rain.

We went wandering round, look at a fire, got excited by some steps, then we stumbled into Shangra-La. This is when we were like, 'what the fuk is going on'. We headed to a stage where it looked like about 20 men and women were dressed in all sorts of fancy dress and face paints but they were 'singing' and the crowd was loving it. We were tipsy so we got involved. We found out it was 'Beans on Toast', him/they were quality. We bounced, danced, jumped, drummed through the set. Then we went into 'Anus Close', thats right 'Anus Close'. It was this weird shit with loads of sex related tunnels. We had a cinnamon and lemon tequila, danced and then got talking to a transsexual nurse. This nurse wanted us to 'go into a room and have medical things done to us'. No ta. We went outside to see a girl had fell for this. It was basically a gay guy, a tranny and a girl doing weird shit to each other. 

We went and danced at a bar called 'Red something'. It was like an open air theatre dance room. It was quality. After that we walked to the 'stones' and to see the other side of the park. This was a long walk but it was good to see the other parts. We thought twice about going into the 'Rabbit Hole' and walked back. I can't really remember but I am sure I got some food, maybe a Greek Chicken which I disliked so I then bought a Hog Roast. We went back had a big fire, chilled, got drunk. Day 2 was a good day, could it get better?

Glastonbury 2013 - A Dream or a Reality? Day 1 - Wednesday

Wednesday - Travelling Day

We woke up at 6.30am, like excited kids waking up early for Christmas Day or their first day at Disneyland. Glasto was like an adults Disneyland, apart from it includes far more weirdos and a lot more drunken/drugged up people. We went to the bus depot with an excess of baggage which mainly included food and booze as we had someone else put our tents up. Massive bonus as this is by far the worst bit of any festival (thanks Yak). After about 5 hours of dazing on a National Express bus we arrived and loaded ourselves up with numerous mis-shapen bags.

After about a short 30 minute walk we found our campsite, loaded with a Yorkshire flag for recognition purposes. After doing the old 'awkward meeting' of new people we soon found out that it took our group 2 hours to get to our well placed site. Lucky us. Plus our tents were up. The view was amazing across all the campsites and festival venues plus it was sunny. I could feel the start of a great festival, different to any other. We cracked open a Carling and got on it, one of 50 cans we had, not to mention the 3 litres of dark rum and 2 litres of vodka, it was fair to say that if we drank all this booze it would be a hazy festival. It could be our g-LAST-o festival, I love a good pun, that was shit though.

About 7 we went for a walk to get our bearings. First stop, the long drops. First day long drops are like heaven in toilet, at least festival toilet, land. We walked past a sea of tents to see the impressive Pyramid stage. This looks bigger on the TV but it is a Pharoah-ld size still (they will get better I promise!) You walk down the roads and see all the stalls an you can sense the excitement in people's behaviour. We saw our first drunk girl, stumbling out of a loo trying to do up her dungarees, she failed miserably. We saw some amazing things. Greenpeace area was great, Shangra-la was, lets say, different. We wandered round exploring everything until we came upon a Motown bar. We danced, drank tequila, I won a bet that there was a baby in a pram in the bar not some alcohol as everyone else said. 

We walked back to our tent at 1am, happy, knowing we had only seen 10% of what was a massive, truly extraordinary place. A different world all together. We had a small camp fire, then hit the hay as they say.