Oh look, there’s Charlotte Church singing We Shall Overcome beautifully. And there’s Billy Bragg leading a chant-along of A New England with an eager crowd. And there’s Bow Anderson performing a song about eating disorders and how we can damage our body due to our fears of having the right shape. And that is all within 10 minutes. It is the time of year for people to say, “Glastonbury! What’s all the fuss about?”
Let me tell you. There is no other festival like it.
Watching on TV you might just think it is a bunch of well-known bands, but it is so much more than that. First of all, it is a wonderland of stone circles, sculptures, towers and art on every boulevard.
There are the most beautiful and eccentric costumes and vehicles. Tents with death-defying circus acts, tents with poets, tents with mathematicians explaining the secrets of winning Monopoly every time. There is a band on stage which includes woad covered warriors, cattle skull faced prophets, and pounding percussion from every corner (Heilung).
My weekend starts by giving a talk in the LabOratory science tent and explaining why ghosts really do exist, before going to perform with a bunch of poets in a tipi for the brilliantly named Tongue Fu. The light is getting low, so I have to read my poems like an ancient man trying to search for the vegetarian option on a menu.
Friday begins by recording a show about alien life possibilities in the cabaret tent. A very low number of our audience believe that our alien overlords walk among us, which suggests that the Glastonbury demographic has changed in the last three decades.