The Tale of A Rose

When I learned we were due to have a Flower Communion at my church (a traditional Unitarian Ceremony), one thing I immediately thought was “I must take a rose in”.

I have a rather lovely rose bush growing in my back garden. It’s a “Forever Friends” rose, which is apt, since it was given to me as a moving-in gift by one of my best friends, J.

J and I have been friends since we were 14. We went to the same secondary school, and found ourselves sitting next to each other in GCSE Biology class. This was lucky, because the teacher was not especially concerned about arriving on time to his classes, and we soon got to talking to each other. It’s one of my few friendships – well, actually the only one – where one of the first bonding moments occurred over a shared refusal to dissect a lamb heart. (Her due to lifelong vegetarianism, me due to a lifelong unfortunate tendency to faint at the sight of blood.)

Following our shared dissection refusal, our lives took similar paths, as we moved to a different school to do our A-levels, went to the same university (Durham), and ended up living not far from each other. Our friendship has held steady through life’s rocky moments, and there have been some very rocky moments, but I am now the godson to her two adorable boys, who like to come around and rearrange my house for me every now and then. I particularly wanted the flower I would take to the Flower Communion to be a rose from the rose bush she had given me.

I did, however, face a problem. Since I had deadheaded it (you know you are at a certain point in life when the word “deadhead” enters your vocabulary), the rose bush, for reasons best known to itself, had decided to grow all ten of its flowers on a single stalk, as you can see. I really didn’t want to cut all of the roses off, but they had very short stalks.

I left deciding about it late, until the morning of the Flower Communion, itself, then went out with the secateurs to take a look. I took a closer look at the bush, and smiled.

As if it had read my mind, there, tucked away behind the flower stalk, the rose bush had grown a single perfect pink rose.

I clipped the rose carefully, tucked it into a bag, and carried it to church.

Unexpected Bon Jovi

Funny how life works out. I was sitting at my desk at 5.15pm last Thursday vaguely thinking about doing another hour’s work, then going home and making a chicken curry, when my phone beeped and displayed the message “Sorry about the short notice. I’ve got some spare free tickets for Bon Jovi at the Stadium of Light tonight, do you want to come? Need to be there for seven.”

I’m not great at sudden changes to plans, so I gave myself a minute to figure out what I wanted to do. The answer turned out to be “go and see Bon Jovi with JK and C”, rather than “go home and do some work on the management course assignment”. That decided, another choice presented itself. My best friend, J, is a HUGE Jon Bon Jovi fan, to the extent that she used to draw pictures of him for assignments in Art class when we were at secondary school. (We’ve now both got mortgages and she’s got two kids; Bon Jovi have been going for a while.)

It occurred to me that J would possibly want to kill me if she couldn’t go. I then decided that she would definitely want to kill me if I didn’t offer her the chance to go, so called her to ask. I then called her husband’s phone, just to be on the safe side.

15 minutes later, I got a very excited phone call, and the plans were made. I was struck by the sudden fear that JK might have had other offers for the tickets, and called him to find out, whilst simultaneously taking a quick inventory of whether I had any clothes with me that were suitable for a rock gig, trying to figure out how to get there, wondering what to do about food, and hoping that the office bike shed would be sufficiently secure to leave my bike there overnight*.

As it was now quarter to six, I fled the office hoping that there would be enough tickets, taking with me my emergency coat from the coat rack and the trainers I’d cycled to work in, and sprinting to Boots in search of a sandwich. As I dithered between a tuna & sweetcorn and a chicken wrap, the phone beeped again. JK solved one of my problems by confirming he’d got enough tickets, and then introduced the other by asking which Metro station we were going to meet at. Confusingly, it turns out “St. Peter’s” is nearer the Stadium of Light than “Stadium of Light”; go figure. I didn’t know this at the time, so agreed we’d meet at the Stadium of Light Metro station around 7pm.

Next stop, Primark, for a cheap pair of jeans, then Haymarket to grab a train ticket. On the other side of the river, J’s husband arrived home on time. Had he not done so, I suspect J would have thrown the baby, the pram and the dog into the car, and dropped them off at his office with the words “Darling, these are yours for the evening. Mwah, see you later!”.

I got the ticket and scurried down the escalator and onto the platform to find a train already waiting with “South Hylton” on the front, which meant naff-all to me as I don’t get the Metro very often. I scurried further down the platform until I found a Metro map, confirmed that this train would land me in Sunderland not South Shields, then did what all the posters tell you not to do and hurled myself bodily onto the train as the doors went “BEEEEP” and started closing. Half a minute later I was glad I’d got on at Haymarket not Monument, as the coach half-emptied and I managed to sneak myself onto a seat in the corner and make a start on the sandwich.

Half an hour later, I was really glad I’d got on at Haymarket not Monument, as the train was heaving. The announcer kept reminding people that there was a train directly behind us calling at the same places. I doubt anyone trying to get on actually heard him, and if they did, I doubt they took any notice. It reminded me of an email about real-life Tube announcements that did the rounds a while back, one of which was: “Please let the passengers off the train first. Please let the passengers off the train FIRST ::pause:: Oh go on then, stuff yourselves in like sardines, see if I care. I’m going home”.

As we nearer Sunderland, I found myself trying to coordinate a meeting by phone between four people, one of whom had never met two of the others, and two of whom had never been to the Stadium of Light before and had not a clue where they were going. We’d agreed to meet at Stadium of Light metro station. Just before we got there, JK & C texted to say they were waiting at St. Peters. I decided to get off at Stadium of Light to meet J. Just as I reached the top of the station steps, my phone rang. It was J, and she was at St Peter’s. I had no idea where this was, other “further down the Metro line”.

At which point, inspiration struck, in the form of me remembering the earlier train announcement. I hurtled down the steps against the flow of people, then jumped back onto the train which was running behind my train (and which was, noticeably, a lot more empty). Five minutes later, I was at St Peter’s and had located everyone else. J was nearly jumping up and down with excitement. It’s nice when you can do good things for your friends, particularly since neither of us could have afforded the tickets due to the afore-mentioned mortgages. When we were inside the stadium I took a look at how much we’d have paid to get in (JK got them at the last minute through his employer), gulped, and realised that it was probably a good thing none of the people standing around us knew we hadn’t had to pay - £65 is a fair chunk of cash.

The gig itself was great. Whilst J LOOVES Bon Jovi, for me, they’re more in the “some quite good songs” bracket. I can, however, appreciate a really good show, and this was a really good show. We were lucky with the weather, which helped, and the “giant car” stage set was great, but what made the gig was the band’s showmanship. It is no mean feat to perform the same gig to a different location every night and still make the audience think you really care about them having a good time, but Bon Jovi had worked out that if the audience wants very loud American rock with a giant car, and flashing lights, with a short pause to wave your cameraphones in the air so that the stadium looks like it’s filled with little twinkly lights and a speech from the frontman about people capturing little pieces of history at that moment**, that’s what you give ‘em. They did, and we did. (The only thing they couldn’t give us was a pint of Foster’s that didn’t cost more than £4, although I think the “2-pints of beer in a glass” should catch on at more stadiums.)  Jon Bovi is a great showman, and they did a nice mix of classics and new ones.

Funny how many Bon Jovi songs you know. I realised that quite a few would have to make my “grew up listening to this” list: “Always”, “Bad Medicine”, “You Give Love a Bad Name”. Quite a few more would make my “left home to this” soundtrack; when I lived in Wiltshire I spent a lot of time in my car, and had “Crush” on the cassette player a lot. I was especially happy when “Captain Crash and the Beauty Queen From Mars” came over the speakers, though I was a little disappointed at no “Janie, Don’t Take Your Love To Town”. We danced, we sang, my camera battery miraculously didn’t run out, and we left the stadium happy.

I was even more happy when, having seen the length of the queue for the Metro home, J offered to give me a lift.

One amusing postscript: having dragged myself into work the next day feeling exactly how you would expect to feel if you’d spent four hours on your feet jumping up and down and singing, my boss approached our desks and announced to the office that he would be hiding in his room for the rest of the day, because he’d been to see Bon Jovi the night before, and had lost his voice.

* It was.

** Cheesy, but if that’s not your thing you’re at the wrong gig.

Glastonbury 2010, Day 6 and Day 7, Part the First: "Where's The Coach?"

Monday, Day 7, 10.15am – WBC campsite, Canteen Tent:

“Thank god, no more peculiar scrambled eggs.”



Sunday, Day 6, 10.15am – WBC campsite, Canteen Tent:

“Um, guess what?”

We were sitting around the table eating breakfast. Which, in my opinion, was far better than some of the breakfasts we’ve previously been served in the WBC village, although the others were not entirely keen on the scrambled egg.

The speaker was C. “Me and my missus are engaged.”

Loud cheers filled the tent. We congratulated C on his engagement, whilst he sat there looking as pleased as punch.



Monday, Day 7, 11am – WBC campsite:

“Think the coach to Leeds will be here soon?”

“They said it would be 12noon.”

“It’s far too late.”

“I know, I’m really sorry for misleading you. Every year other than this, it’s left at 7am on the Monday. They shouldn’t have made that change without asking us first. I’m going to complain afterwards. Are we all packed?”

“Yeah. Can’t wait to get home and see the missus-to-be. What time do you reckon?”

“Maybe 8pm, 9pm?”



Sunday, Day 6, 11am – WBC campsite:

Overheard in the WBC Village campsite:

C: “My feet keep overheating.”

Me: “You shouldn’t wear trainers, they’re no good in this weather. You need sandals. See, I have them. It’s like a shoe with built-in air conditioning. These sandals is made for walking.”

L: (deadpan) “And that is what they’ll do.”

Me: (deadpan) “One of these days these sandals is gonna walk all over you.”



Monday, Day 7, 11.45am – WBC campsite:

“This is a piss-take.”

“It should be here soon.”

“It’s baking hot, and we’re stuck in the sun. And I’m not going to go clean up the campsite. Other people get paid to do that.”

“I’m going to go help. Might as well. It’ll keep us busy. You will let us know when it gets here?”

“Should be any minute. Yeah.”



Sunday, Day 6, 11.45am – on the path out of the WBC campsite:

T: “Are you going to see England play? They’ve put the big screens up in the field so that people can watch.”

Me: “Hmm. No. The way I see it, if England win, I’ll get to see them play again, so it won’t matter that I’ve missed them this time. But if they lose and I go watch them, I’ll have wasted an afternoon at the Glastonbury festival which I can’t get back.”

N: “Fair enough.”

We strolled on down the path alongside the cow barns.

C: “I’ve got that many patches of sunburn, I look like a cow anyway.”

Me: “You want to be careful, L will get confused and start trying to milk you.”

C: “Wahey!”

T: “Give it a rest, you’re going to be a married man”.



Monday, Day 7, 12.15 – WBC campsite

“Hope this bus hurries up. I am roasting. People will get sunstroke.”

“We’ve got some money left from the tips. Shall wehave ice lollies?”

“Yeah!”

“I’ll go get them. Anyone want a festival review magazine?”



Sunday, Day 6, 12.15 – Inside the Festival

We’d all split off to do our own thing. I’d gone to see a couple of bands I fancied: Temper Trap and the Hold Steady. The Hold Steady are fronted by a cheerful plump man in glasses and a blue shirts who looks like the manager of the local Dixons, but bloody hell can they rock. They were on at the Other Stage, and I settled in with a cold cider to watch them, and jump up and down a bit.



Monday, Day 7, 1pm – WBC Campsite

“This is seriously a piss-take. I am not a happy bunny.”

We watched as several people moved a gazebo to cover someone in the waiting queue for the buses who was suffering badly with the effects of the heat. The bus was now an hour late. Or, from the perspective of those of us who until the previous day had expected it to be departing at 7am, six hours late. We’d been stuck in the sun since 11.30am, and we were not at all happy. Repeated enquiries to the WBC cabin elicited very little response other than “there’s nothing we can do about it”.


Sunday, Day 6, 1pm – The Other Stage

After the Temper Trap finished, I moseyed around a bit, ate a sandwich in the shade of a tent, checked to see if the King Blues were playing at any time when I was likely to be able to see them (they weren’t), then returned to the Other Stage to watch the Temper Trap’s melodies filling the air and mused on the fact that this year’s Festival Look was “patches of sunburn, with a straw hat on the top”. Better than the Mud Monster of previous years, I suppose.



Monday, Day 7, 2pm – WBC Campsite

“I don’t believe this.”

“It’s reaching new heights of incompetence.”

We were still waiting for the coach, although in a new location. There were rumours that it was stuck in the car park at the top of the festival. I’d finally suggested to the WBC management that we waited in the canteen tent. People were desperate not to miss their coaches, and only repeated reassurances that they would be fetched when the coach finally arrived got them inside. It was not noticeably cooler, but being there did at least get everyone out of the direct rays of the sun.

I popped back and forth between the canteen tent and the staffing cabin to keep an eye out for the coach, noticing on the way that I had added an interesting new patch of livid red sunburn to my increasingly patchwork appearance of pale skin, tanned skin, pink skin, dusty skin, and scratches.



Sunday, Day 6, 2pm – The Railway Track

I texted the others to say I wished England good luck, and refrained from adding on the end “they’ll need it”. It was time to make my steady way along the Railway Track to the Avalon Tent, where Keane were due to play at 4.20pm. The Railway Track is the main pathway through the festival, and is never quiet due to this fact.

Wander along it, and the festival divides in two before you; celebrities, drink, and the Pyramid stage on the left, peace, cider and hippies on the right. The right hand side holds the Green Fields, Healing Fields, people selling candle-powered boats, and just about everyone in the festival who likes to stare into their herbal tea and mutter sadly “It’s not what it used to be”.

It also holds the Alternative Worlds area, where people put up displays showcasing other ways to live without dependence on fossil fuels. These tend to work best in sunny weather, just like the weather we were getting, so I strayed off the beaten track.

The Alternative Worlds area is in a part of the festival with a lot of trees, so you wander around the path between the trees, stopping to look at people with biocomposting toilets and herbal gardens. I turned a corner and encountered a man cooking a pizza inside a cat, or at least inside a cat-shaped clay oven. He seemed busy, so I didn’t stop to chat. I had cider to drink and “Somewhere Only We Know” to sing along to.



Monday, Day 7, 3pm, on the coach

“About fucking time.”

The coach rolled slowly forwards, bumping over the ruts. The people inside it were too tired and fed up to do anything much but stare out of the window.

At 2.10pm, the news had arrived that the coach was stuck in the coach park at the top of the site. A lack of the correct pass to enter the site and come down to the village to pick us up had held it up there.

Some time earlier, we might have been able to pick up our weary selves and camping gear, and walk up the hill to meet it. In cooler weather, this might still have been an option. As it was, the decision was taken to wait until the coach could make its way down and pick up the bunch of weary, overheated, dehydrated and deeply grumpy volunteers.

Rarely have I ever been so glad to see a mechanical object. The only comparable instance was the 2007 mudbath when we were on the National Express coach, leaving from the coach park. It had rained pretty much solidly throughout the entire festival. Despite this, my team still managed to find moments of fun amidst the mud, but on a Monday morning with no beer, no music, nothing to look forward to, and a solid wall of rain beating down on you, we had but one thought in our heads: “get us the fuck out of here”.

We arrived to find a scene which I’ve read described elsewhere as “being like the end of the world”; masses of cold, confused, tired people wandering around beneath the grey skies, in the wind and rain and mud, being yelled at by people with megaphones. The coach park fills two fields and has about 26 different queues. We had no idea which one was for our coach, and nor did the hapless stewards.

Displaying that unique form of teamwork which only desperation can fuel, my team divided into pairs and combed the coach park until we found the National Express queues. I have never been so glad to see a grumpy coach driver wielding a roll of bin liners in my life. As the coach left the festival coach park, and I stared out of the window at the mass of forlorn humanity, some of whom had been TURNED AWAY from the coaches they had tickets for, due to being covered in mud (I am not making this up), I reflected that I might at that moment be wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of shorts (these being my only clothes not covered in mud), I might be going to spend the next three days removing mud from my belongings, but, thank God, I was going home to my warm, centrally heated house with its cosy bed and hot shower.

I hadn’t thought I’d be that glad to leave Glastonbury again, but it turned out I was wrong.

Leeds Day 1, Part the First: Thanks A Bunch, Ricky Wilson

And here I am again, writing up my trip to one of the UK’s many music festivals – in this instance, Leeds, where once again I was leading a team of intrepid volunteers to serve pints behind a bar for six hours a day to raise funds for our trade union. As myself and the other two members of my team, A and C, dozed gently on the National Express coach to Bramham Park, I found myself reflecting on the last time I was at Leeds Festival.

It was back in 2006, the last year there was no Glastonbury Festival. (There will be none next year either, due to a) their needing to give the site a rest, b) it being impossible to get Portaloos for love nor money next summer due to the London Olympics.) I was jointly leading a team of ten intrepid volunteers to raise funds for our union’s regional Young Members network. This was also the year that marked the beginning of my education in why it is unwise to trust people you haven’t met to turn up and volunteer.

Two of my potential twelve volunteers dropped out the night before due to illness and childcare problems, which was fair enough. Another asked to travel separately to the rest of the group, turned up, collected her pass, and didn’t work the festival; we never saw her again. There were other members I hadn’t met before they turned up at the coach station; looking back, it’s amazing that things worked out at all. (Since then I insist on character references for people from their line managers, and that the team meets for a briefing and travels together. I also hit people from the start with the “you have to commit to it months in advance, you’ll be on your feet for seven hours a day, and if you serve alcohol to under-18s, you’ll be paying an £80 fine” approach. It may be tough but it well works.)

Apart from that, I remember good things of Leeds 2006, funnily enough. Except for one of the bar managers, who was universally hated by everyone in the bar. He opened his account with us by being found in the bar we did our late-night shift on the Thursday in, lying in the bar’s rest area claiming to be too drunk to stand up. He then bossed everyone around for the rest of the week, to the extent that even I wanted to dot him with a trayful of twelve pints of stale lager.

Oh yeah, apart from that… I remember seeing Franz Ferdinand in my 20-minute rest break (I snuck out of the back of the tent and into the arena to get a better view), who were great. I also remember trying to force my way into the NME tent to see the Kooks. The crush was so bad that we made no progress, until eventually someone yelled “Sod the bloody Kooks, let’s get out of here.” I took their advice and shoved my way back out of the tent and back towards air. It was at this point I realised I had lost all my team, no-one was responding to my text messages, and I was facing the prospect of spending the entire Friday night on my own… until suddenly one of them appeared in front of me. Our catching sight of each other must have been a thousand-to-one chance, but it happened. The rest of the night was fun.

This was also where the famous “I Predict a Riot” event occurred. We were on the main stage bar. It could just be that at the time I was less experienced a bar worker and thought the crowd was worse than it actually was… but I remember queues ten deep at the bar and servers tripping over each other running around the bar. The MDUs pour twelve pints at a bar, and the trays literally would not touch the table before people snatched the pints out of them and dashed off. At the time, we had cup holders that would hold six pints at a time, and people would order two or three of them at a time to save having to come back to the bar. I was trying to fill one, waiting at the table for the machine to pour, when the harassed person on it yelled “It’s only doing three pints at a time! Sorry!”.

I turned round and caught sight of the queue for the first time. I could not see daylight between their heads, they were so closely packed together.

And then, with perfect timing, the Kaiser Chiefs struck up with “I Predict a Riot”. Thanks a bundle, Ricky Wilson.

Funnily enough, I discovered at Leeds 2011 that my memories are wrong. I’ve actually seen Muse not three times, but four; I saw them at Leeds 2006. This was before I really became a Muse-head though.

This time around, things were different. I deliberately gave up my place at Glastonbury 2011 to go to Leeds, which was not an easy choice. (I’m entitled to one place at one festival each year as a reward for doing the organising.) But when the festival headliners are Muse, My Chemical Romance and Pulp, supported by Elbow… well, when your four favourite bands are headlining, there can be only one choice, even when you love Glastonbury as much as I do.

The coach bumped its way into the coach park, and we hopped off into blazing sunshine.

Back Very Soon

I've been writing stuff, believe me, and it will be posted here at the weekend. Until then, in the words of someone much wiser than me...

I Thought There Was A Light At The End of the Tunnel

And it turned out to be some bugger with a torch and some more work, hence the absence of blogging fun. Believe me, I know this blog is littered with half-finished tales, but I shall not give up. With the patience of my friends and enough caffeine I can do anything, so just watch this space until I'm back from holiday in a couple of weeks, and there shall be completed tales, fun and photos. Promise!

Back Under The Water At Beadnell and Eyemouth (Republican Dive)

Done a lot of diving recently: shore dives at Beadnell, and boat dives at Eyemouth. I wonder if other divers go through their dives thinking "I could have done that dive differently..." Probably. Then again, I've only just done 60 dives, so I'm still serving my apprenticeship. I'm also still in the process of getting all my gear set up, since I now have quite a lot of it. Fortunately, I have good diving buddies to help me on the way!

Highlight of the dives at Eyemouth were some rather pretty corkwing wrasse, and some amazing diving seabirds. We were 10m down, and they were swimming around us like penguins! Sadly, the camera battery had flattened itself by then, so you'll have to take my word for it. Here's a picture of a plumrose anemone to make up for it.

Visibility at Beadnell on 29th April 2011 was not great, but it was a sunny day and carried with it the inestimable happiness of not being stuck indoors watching the Royal Wedding. I have no particular dislike for Wills'n'Kate, but I don't know them, either. The vis was awful, but the dive was redeemed by my dive buddy K's sharp-eyed spotting of a scorpionfish. I've never had a chance to take a photo of one before, so here it is!

Overheard in a Coffee Shop in Newcastle

"So I was having this dream last night. We were out riding."
"Was it fun?"
"Yes. I was on the Patient Horse, you were on the Little Red Pony, your beloved was on the Giant Horse. Then I fell off."
"Ouch!"
"It was okay, I was just surprised. I got back on again."
"Excellent, that's what you're supposed to do."
"Then the zombies attacked."
pause
"Did you order the hot chocolate?"
"I'll go and do that."

Cakepalooza

Yesterday turned out to be a cakepalooza. A friend at work had a birthday and brought in two giant cakes:

Then the charity cake trolley came round to raise money for a local hospice:

I suppose I should feel guilty about eating that much cake. I just don't. Went to the pub in the evening for a friend's birthday as well, so overall it was a great day. Here's a photo of the sunset from the beer garden:

Sunny, With A Chance of Panic Attacks - Glastonbury Festival Day 1

Warning: This is a long post. You might want to go and get yourself a cup of tea first.

June 23rd

It was 10am as I arrived at Newcastle Central Station on the No. 1 bus on a warm sunny Wednesday morning in Newcastle (itself a rarity). Deep breath. Calm.

In the interests of this blogpost making sense, I should maybe mention at this point that I’m prone to anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, for which I’m on the magic happy pills [Citalopram – an SSRI for those with an interest in such things] that make it largely go away. I’m not particularly embarrassed about this, nor is it – any more – a serious handicap for me, since a combination of pills and therapy mean that these days I can usually leave the house without having to check three times that the oven is turned off. (It usually is.)

Unfortunately for me, anything involved large amounts of organising and going away from home tends to trigger the OCD. This is a perfect description of my role organising volunteers for the bars at the Glastonbury Festival, so it took me a few minutes of sternly talking-to myself before I peeled myself away from checking for the fifth time that the front door was locked (it was), took some deep breaths, and marched off to get the bus. Funnily enough, once I’m actually on the bus / train / plane / whatever, the anxiety goes away, in a sort of “The die is cast” kind of a way, so I was fine once I got the bus. I checked again that I had all the necessities (phonepursekeysdebitcardmoneytrainticketsdetailsofpeopleI’mmeetingupwithatLeedsyesit’sall
there), took a deep breath, admired the lovely sunny day, and applied myself to reading the Metro.

10am, beseated myself beneath the big clock at Central Station, and waited for my fellow volunteer, N, from Newcastle to arrive. I wasn’t too worried. I was calm. He’d be here soon. We were due to get the train at 10.44am.

10.15am. This was the time we’d agreed to meet.

10.20am. He’d be here soon, right?

10.25am: Began minor panic attack in which I began to seriously worry that something had happened to him or I’d given him the wrong date – but we’d exchanged emails for the past week or so in which we’d discussed our arrangements for meeting up and he’d replied to all of them. What could have happened? Started making phone calls to his office / my office to see if there were any messages for me – there weren’t. Called his phone – no reply.

10.30am: Still no news and no reply to my calls. Started having visions of going to the Glastonbury Festival on my own, or at least turning up to meet the volunteers from the union’s Young Members group at Leeds station (whom we’d agreed to meet at Leeds station, since we were all travelling down from the North together) on my own with no explanation for why my fellow volunteer wasn’t with me.

10.35am: To get the train or not to get the train? I decided not to. There was another train after it which still allowed us to get to Leeds in time, and I’d factored this in to us getting the 10.44am train. I texted my contact from the volunteers we were meeting at Leeds to let them know the score.

10.40am: I reflected gloomily on every single thing that had gone wrong in organising volunteers for the Glastonbury Festival this year, such as the form that went missing (meaning that we got two places, not four) to the difficulty I’d had filling the volunteer places with only two people going, and thought that having me alone go to Glastonbury would be the perfect cap on the crappiest year of organising festival volunteers I’d ever had.

10.44am: Train left.

10:46am: Birdsong could not compare to the sweetest sound in the world, nor could choirs of angels; my mobile phone rang with a number I didn’t recognise, but which I knew had to be N’s. It was. (It turned out I had the wrong number for him stored in my phone for some reason.) N had had car trouble on the way here, but was now at Central Station.

I took a deep breath, calmed down, told N that the contingency plan was to get the next train, and we met at the clock. He was fine, albeit flustered. A large cup of tea (for N) and coffee (for me), a phone call to N’s brother to arrange for him to collect and fix the broken-down car, and at 11.10am we were brandishing our open-return tickets at the conductor on the train to Leeds. The journey passed pleasantly, since it turned out we had a similar interest in care for older and vulnerable people (N is a social worker and I do research on this topic). By the time the train arrived at Leeds it was obvious we would get on just fine for the next seven days which we’d be spending in each other’s company.

The next step was to meet the volunteers from the union’s Regional Young Members team, who had caught the 10.44am train from Durham and agreed to meet us in the pub at Leeds station. C, my contact for them, had informed me that they’d be in the White Rose pub at Leeds station, and that he looked like Shrek. I was on the lookout for someone with green skin and funny ears, but N and I decided that it was more probably the young man and woman in the corner who were surrounded by mounds of camping equipment.

They turned out to be C and T from the Young Members group, who were happily ensconced in the corner of the pub eating a burger and sipping a pint whilst they waited for the third member of their team, L, to arrive. L apparently had had difficulty with her manager, despite having booked her leave for the festival, and it had taken until this morning for her to have it confirmed that she was going to be able to go, so she was on the later train. We all agreed this was deeply unfair, and had a drink. N and I ate sandwiches, and we swapped tales of ourselves and our day jobs: Me = researcher, N = social worker, T = works with children in Durham, C = works for Npower, as does L. C warned us: “The thing about L – she’s absolutely lovely – but she can be a bit bonkers. You’ll see when you meet her.”

As it approached 2pm with L not having arrived, I tried to suppress my “Mexican jumping bean” impression which I get when I think I’m going to miss a coach or a train or something. The WBC coach from Leeds to Glastonbury left at 3pm from Leeds Bus Station, and missing it meant missing the festival. Everyone else was more laid back. I went out to research where taxis left from.

At 2.11pm, a young woman with shorts, glasses, a t-shirt, a huge backpack, giant black Goth boots and a large cowboy hat with a cowhide pattern hurried up yelling “Hellllooooo!” This was L, and the gang was complete. We deliberated over whether to walk or get a taxi. I said “Taxi”, and taxi it was. It’s a funny thing about life that often all that matters is whether someone makes the decision, not how it was made nor even whether it was a particularly good decision. We got a taxi, ignored the slightly disgusted look of the taxi driver that we were only going as far as Leeds Bus Station (never mind the fact that we all had huge backpacks) and were sitting in the sunshine on the grass outside Mecca Bingo with our fellow volunteers by half two.

As we awaited the arrival of the coach, the team bonded some more. We learned that L and C were the best of friends, despite the fact that they argue nineteen to the dozen. Also that L was absolutely adorable, had a passion for cows (not like that!), and talked nineteen to the dozen with a huge grin on her face about everything from cows, the Download festival she’d been to recently, the managers who had led to her having to get the late train and nearly missing the festival, and her new boyfriend, who she was clearly head-over-heels for.

At 2.40pm, the coach rolled up. Unlike last year, there actually was a member of the WBC management staff with a register of people who were meant to be on the coach. We got ourselves ticked off, got our gear loaded up, got on the coach and basked in the air-conditioning. I reflected on the fact that this might be the first Glastonbury festival I’d been to where I actually didn’t need wellies. The coach rolled forward at 3.05pm. and we were off! Finally, we were on our way, and I could relax. From here, we were definitely going to the festival and whilst I wasn’t officially responsible for the Young Members team, I was the only one of the five of us who’d ever been to Glastonbury before, let alone worked behind a bar there. I allowed a grin to spread over my face. Despite everything, we were on our way to Glastonbury, and it looked like the five of us would get on like a house on fire, which was great. You really need a group of at least four of you to go to Glastonbury, it’s more fun that way, and it looked like this was gonna be a good ‘un.

As coach journeys go, it was an interesting one. Mainly because the WBC guy who’d had the register sat at the front and talked non-stop at a loud volume about everything from motorbikes at the Redbeck Motel - interesting to me, since it’s near my home town and I’ve eaten there a few times - to chicken husbandry, which he clearly had a deep interest in. He also swore so much whilst doing so that C commented to me as we munched on burgers at the service station “You know, I swear a fair bit myself, but that guy…” The stop at the service station was also enlivened by a suicidal caravan-owner who pulled out right in front of our coach, despite the GIVE WAY markings in front of him. Catastrophe, and having to pick bits of caravan out of the front of the coach, was only just averted.

The coach set off again, with me mentally crossing my fingers that this was not going to be a repeat of the god-awful journey we’d had last time, when the coach sat in traffic for six hours waiting to get in the Festival and we arrived there at half two in the morning to be told that the WBC canteen had just closed, and no, we couldn’t get our passes until the morning, so going out into the festival site to buy food wasn’t going to happen either. About the only good thing about that year’s journey had been the hero coach driver, who kept up a cheerful and encouraging commentary, despite the fact he must have been knackered, and brought along his entire Coen brothers DVD collection to play on the coach. We all tipped him at least £3 each – he’d earned it.

Happily, this year was infinitely better. The coach pulled up in the festival car park at 8.30pm, as the sun was dropping low on the horizon. As we stood around looking at our luggage and waiting for someone to tell us where to go next, I took the chance to try explain the concept of “festival time” to everyone.

“Festival time” essentially means “Stuff will happen when it is ready to happen”, or manana. At the festival, there is no point rushing about or getting impatient because things aren’t happening right now, or on schedule. Stuff will happen when it is ready to happen. Sit down in the shade. Stand in the queue. Chill out, have a drink and a chat.

It also means that the normal rules of life and time don’t apply. Why work to a 9-5 timetable when there is no 9-5? If you don’t have to get enough sleep and be up to work at 9am, it’s perfectly sensible to stay up until four in the morning, then kip until 8am - kipping in the tents for later than this was well-nigh impossible, for reasons that will shortly be described - stagger up, shower, dress, eat, then find a convenient shady spot and kip in it for a few hours, or go watch a band, have an afternoon nap under a tree, then stay up all night. Medieval peasants used to do this sort of thing, and I’m told it’s found elsewhere in the world; instead of one long period of sleep, two short ones over 24 hours.

This all, alas, had one very important exception for us: WBC volunteers do not get the luxury of applying this philosophy to our shifts, for which we must always be ten minutes early else risk getting our organisations in trouble (i.e. fewer or no places for the following year).

At that particular moment, however, everyone was really more interested in getting onsite and getting their tents up before the sunset. This wasn’t going to happen too fast, since the coach had dropped us in the wrong place. It was supposed to take us inside the festival site and drop us off outside our campsite. Instead, either the stewards had misunderstood or the driver had misunderstood the stewards (or he hadn’t been provided with the correct pass to enter the site, which would cause us some major problems in five days’ time), and dropped us at the coach park, outside the fence. If you’ve ever been to Glastonbury, you’ll know that getting inside the security fence is no easy matter, so we were somewhat stuck.

We hung about on the grass outside the fence waiting for a steward to show up and let us in, and had a natter. I took some photos of the sunset. Finally, the stewards arrived with our wristbands, we were let in, and we walked, or in some cases staggered, down to the WBC village, our home for the next five days. The sun was setting, but we had enough light to pick a nice camping spot, near but not too near to the toilets and marquee. I had my trusty £15 tent from the Famous Army Stores, first bought for a People and Planet festival I attended as a student way back in 2003. It and I have survived the 2005 and 2007 Glastonbury festivals. It may not be the fanciest tent in the world, but by golly it’s good for festivals.

Tents were pitched, airbeds were blown up, L’s giant Goth boots were pressed into service as an improvised tent peg mallet, and we descended upon the bar in the marquee. After a long day, no-one really wanted to stay up too late, and we had a briefing at an unfeasibly early hour the following morning. We drank, we chilled, we crawled into our tents, did a round of “Night Johnboy”s, and kipped. I fell asleep with a smile on my face. The omens were good.

The Best Mug In The World

A friend got this for me for my birthday.

















It is the best mug in the world, ever.