By now I'm sure you've heard the tales of death and leg-breaking mud, the horror stories of unimaginable proportions and are extremely glad that you didn't manage to get your grubby little hands on those much-coveted bio-metric tickets. Well then you sir, are a fool. For despite the mud and the constant rain (oh the rain!) it's STILL a fantastic out of this world event that really makes you feel special.
For this is the Festival of Mud. Even in years when it's sunny, everyone still remembers the mud. People are breaking their legs in the stuff, it's so sticky. It becomes normal to be covered in it, dripping and shivering waiting for a sun that will never shine to come out and dry you off a little.
For the last few years I have been earning my ticket at the festival by being a fire steward in the Dance and Fire corner. Fire Stewarding there is not like in most tents where you have to watch for people setting each other on fire with joints, we actually do have lots of fire around! We check the walkabout performers in and out during the day as well, so a lot of those crazy costumed people you see around have usually gone through our backstage. This year's fire show was more scarey and dangerous than usual, of which more later.
Wednesday
I have skived off work early, rushed through my minutes and had a frantic visit to Tescos to stock up on Pringles and chocolate. All my clothes, tent etc have been kindly taken to the festival already, I mock the hippies and their bags filled with rocks. We are lucky to find no-one at Bristol Temple Meads at all, just a half-filled lone coach waiting for us. For a bargain £15 we are given a slip of fragile blue paper that says RETURN on it and we pray that we manage to actually keep the thing dry enough to be recognised on the coach home.
The festival is practically full already. Of course, they must be here for the solstice, but really I think that people just want to get more for their pre-registration £150 lottery tickets. Normally on a Wednesday there is barely anything happening, just a few warm-up gigs in the crew bars, but this time there seem to be lots of tents with full line-ups already.
After finding out where my tent has been pitched (what luxury!) and admiring our amazing new stage we wander about, checking out what is new for this year and have a bit of a sit-down in the Groovy Movies tent that is showing some great old music videos. We leave when the DJ starts to impose arty wank on his captive audience, instead of the old jazz performances.
Somehow we wind up in the Jazz lounge where a trumpet player from Bristol is playing. It's great stuff, sort of trad vs acid jazz standards, impressive musicianship for the first thing we see. We pass by the Glitzy Baghags too, tearing it up in the Banyan Tree, an open mic tent that features a lot of great talent over the weekend. Hopefully we'll have time to come back here and hang out later on.
Later on in the evening, after putting up a bit of fencing to completely hide our backstage camping from public view, we visit the stone circle - which is rammed - for the only time during the festival. I suppose this is the place to be tonight, because everyone is planning to be here until dawn and the fire poi is well under way.
We leave at about 2am, just before the rain starts.
Thursday
We see an girl (Lianne Hall) playing electric guitar through a looper in a solar powered tent in the Healing fields. She is calming and does lovely songs. There is a bloke in the tent next door singing emo acoustic numbers and someone mournfully twanging a jaws harp by a tree.
By now the festival is rammed and it really has started. This year, Wednesday is Thursday and Thursday is Friday. What will tomorrow bring? We pass through the hippy fields and I shake off the philosophical thinking. We bump into some seriously deranged flower people doing some sort of Indian ritual in the tipi camp, digeridoos and drums. I bet they're all vegans but they're wearing leather. They are blessing the fields and celebrating love and nature and stuff. It's all a bit creepy.
Thursday's rain is intermittent and not too heavy. We cover most of the site, even venturing up to the new area - The Park - where I entirely fail to get up the big tower due to the queue being a mile long and me being short on patience. This year's version of the piss police are pretty entertaining, cheering men who emerge from the urinals as saviours of fish.
We try to look at all the art, because tomorrow is when the music starts and all of this miracle and wonder will become normal, the huge sandpit with amazing sculptures of naked people and lizards. The giant wicker dancers, not-so-Lost-any-more Vagueness, the anti nuclear wall of art, the Mutoid Waste crew building this years bizarre, grotesque creations.
In the evening we have our first taste of the fire show, as there is nothing really happening tonight they decide to do the dress rehearsal properly. We are assigned our roles, there are a lot of gas cylinders everywhere and we are supposed to watch them during the performance and switch them off if something goes wrong. We are shown how to do this, there is some discussion about who gets to sit by the biggest, hottest ones. We don't really know how to tell if something IS going wrong but Oh, you'll know! the mad German in charge assures us.
Some discussion later it is decided that this is actually too dangerous for us to do, we're trained fire stewards, not firemen and our job is to look after the crowd not the performers. If I jump over the fence and run, just follow me, I tell the punters nervously. I counted all the eyebrows on the crew though and there wasn't one missing - although those backstage might have painted theirs on.
There is an 'Incident' with Stuart Security, who are here because we're expecting large crowds for the fire show. Most of the crowd are sitting down, except where I am because there are a few big cameras around and you know what the paparazzi are like. So people start moaning at the back and ask the security man to tell people to sit down so everyone can see (Strictly speaking I should have been doing this, but give that we were at the edge I didn't think it mattered).
So this security guy gets to this particularly drunk bloke by me and asks him to sit down. The guy says he's quite happy standing thankyouverymuch, so the security guy (thick neck, huge arms, slightly mad look about him) says people have been complaining that they can't see. The drunk guy says, whatever and moves a bit closer to the man with the huge film camera next to him.
Security Troll starts screaming.
He uses a lot of colourful words to explain to the drunk guy (who can barely stand anyway) what he'd like to do to him and his mum. When the drunk guy, who probably thinks he's dreaming all this anyway, ignores him, the Troll grabs him and tries to force him to the ground. Hilariously, given his size, he fails and then the bloke sits down. THERE! I'm sitting down now, you happy? He shouts bravely.
Security Troll screams a lot more. I tell him to leave the guy alone and he swings round, eyes blazing. DON'T YOU FSCKING TOUCH ME! I'LL FSKING KILL YOU YOU LITTLE STEWARD CNUT! He yells. I flinch, a little but am saved trying to intervene further by the rest of the security trolls turning up and shouting at the poor drunk guy who is still sitting on the floor. They all stick up for their mate, who obviously must have been getting lip from 'this mouthy cnut', five huge trolls towering over a drunk - now terrified - man in a hat, who is cowering in the mud.
He is saved from all this by the security supervisor who whispers something in his ear and manhandles the Troll away. I assure him that if he wants to complain about it I'd be happy to get the guy sacked but he's too drunk to care. No wonder Stuart security have such a bad reputation if they treat festival goers like army privates. Don't they have any training in dealing with drunk people? Or is it all about screaming until you win and violence if you don't? A bit shaken and quite angry, I turn back to the show.
It is phenomenal, frightening and majestic, a bizarre story of mad scientists featuring 60 foot flames and a lot of water. The greatest pleasure from working this show is when the sirens die down at the beginning and they fire off the biggest flames. The noise is tremendous, the crowd cowers, even the nearby firemen jump and throw up their hands. The heat on us poor stewards down the front is incredible, albeit brief. Quite a nerve-racking experience all told, but the kinky outfits and big fire more than makes up for it.
Hot and bothered, we finish work at about 2am and sit around the campfire backstage for a bit. Everyone is a little bit shaken up but now we know what to expect it doesn't seem so bad, I'm sure tomorrow's performance will be fine.
