Glastonbury 2009 Sunday.
.. ..
Good morning Mr Spider! I say as I rise
from a reasonably good sleep in my tent. But the spider leaves quickly without
further conversation.
Plus the greeting has
awoken my arachnophobic girlfriend.
It doesn’t take her
long to get dressed and within a couple of minutes she’s scrambling out of the
tent followed, not so hurriedly, by myself.
This is the first morning on our second
day at Glastonbury. Having arrived on Saturday afternoon with the Jamie Cullum
band. Lovely chaps they were too.
We are very lucky in that the festival
is still blessed with an absence of constant rain.
Walking around the site it is hard not
to be taken aback by the size of the place, having not been here since Dodgy
mark 2 played back in 1999. And it is still hard for me, even though I’ve come
here 5 times before, to get my head around how much effort has been put in. To
put it in terms that you could digest, I would say it’s about the size of my
home neighbourhood Hackney, the whole borough of Hackney east London. How I
ever found my way around in my bleary eyed – out of it most of the time-
younger self as a wonder too!
As we are always advised while present
at the festival, give yourself plenty of time to get where you want to go,
because there’s so much going on it’s easy to take a wrong turn. But keeping
any sort of plan or time table here for is not such an important issue. Leave
the organizing and stressing with your normal life back home and let go.
Glastonbury will come to you.
Ok, so what if I only got to see the
last song of the Easy All Stars set on the Pyramid stage? It was my loss, where
elsewhere I had gained. More like I took a wrong turn and gained 20 minutes to
our journey.
.. ..
Now sometime between the Easy All Stars
and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs , I took part in a robbery within the Shangri La area.
A group of people, about 8, all dress in white overalls, some in masks, came
over to me and asked if I would help them rob an electrical goods shop. I felt
like a little mischief could not be poo pooed so I said yes, gladly. I tried to
have the missus join me but she was quite happy to just sit and watch. The gang
and I then started to plan our moves. When a few minutes later, having
positioned ourselves around a corner further back along the shop parade, the
call came in to start our assault. We all ran in shouting and yelling arrrgghh!
The shop owner, pretending to act all surprised, just stepped aside!.
Storming to the back of the shop
alongside a female, and fellow robber, we began trying to take some bedroom
alarm clocks that were placed on the selves. Even though they were still
plugged into something way down behind the rack of shelves, my fellow comrade
continued to yank and pull away at the clock with quite an impressive amount of
determination and strength. I couldn’t stop laughing to myself when I turned
around and someone gave me an old video recorder and told me to run!! My missus
then saw me running out of the shop, head low, scurrying away with the video
recorder and the rest of the looters, whom had fled with a couple of tv’s, a
toaster, a pc monitor with keyboard, clocks and other bits of junk that they
struggled to hold on to. Until we found a door at the other end of the parade.
Bursting in we find that it’s a small
beer garden full of shocked people staring at us while we drop all our items on
the floor in the corner. And immediately up comes the barman and says, ”Well
well, what have you lot been up to? Would you like a drink? Cocktail or
something, maybe? You all look like you need one…” It’s then that we realise we
are a couple of men down. So one of them pulls his handkerchief down from his
nose and mouth and says he’ll go out, in disguise, to find out what has
happened. But he doesn’t look any different apart from the handkerchief that’s
now around his neck.
I decide to return to my partner, but
with a want to do it again, some other pretend crime with the gang.
.. ..
No two experiences at Glastonbury have
been the same. And same goes for our show later this day but with exception for
the audience. They were magnificent as always, gushing with love and smiling
faces. From the band and me we would like to say a massive think you to those
that came to see us. We really hope you enjoyed yourselves.
On the way back home I couldn’t help
feeling like I was awakening from a crazy dream. Watching the half moon hover
above the Pyramid stage, seeing a man looking for a hole in a hole that he’s
digging, a mass wedding at Greenpeace and meeting Amy Greenhouse along with the
pretend felony made me want to pull the covers back over my head.
Thank you Glastonbury and thank you Mr
Eavis and family… And your neighbours!
.. ..
Andy Miller, Dodgy.