How do you know if someone's been to Glastonbury?

Don't worry, they'll tell you.

Unless you’ve been in a self-imposed media blackout for the past month you’ve probably noticed that it’s Glastonbury time again. Cue Jo Whiley in a sequinned minidress interviewing Chris Martin from a TV set artfully constructed from straw bales and excitable radio DJs referring to it as ‘the cultural event of the year’. This may be true if your idea of culture involves getting hammered and standing outside in the rain. It’s some years since I’ve been to Glastonbury but if I start to feel like I’m missing out there’s a simple cure: I just have to reminisce.

1994

Young, excitable and extraordinarily naïve, I spent the last of my student grant at Our Price Records on a ticket that I paid for by cheque, which is an impressive number of redundant concepts for one sentence. My friends and I thought carefully about what provisions we could keep in a tent for three days in the sun: a dozen currant teacakes, a family sized pack of cheddar, two bottles of supermarket sherry, 24 cans of Fosters, and nowhere near enough Marlboro Lights. We were very anxious about our stuff getting nicked, perhaps because we imagined unrefrigerated cheddar would be in demand, so we’d brought a padlock to secure the tent, presumably not realising that potential thieves might be capable of wielding a knife. Unfortunately we hadn’t thought about how you go about finding an anonymous green tent in a massive field in the dark when you’ve had too much sherry and it’s now surrounded by about 50,000 other anonymous green tents. At least 40% of the Glastonbury experience involves trying to make your way between the stages, queuing for the toilets, and trying to find your tent.

Despite attracting world-famous bands, Glastonbury in the ‘90s had quite a DIY feel to it and the famous vibe was slightly febrile. The site wasn’t secure, there were no ID checks, and the place was full of crusties with mean-looking dogs on bits of string and skinny Mancunian dealers. The Pyramid Stage had burned down a few weeks before so it was touch and go whether the festival would even go ahead. There was a shooting incident that year but this was before the era of ubiquitous mobile phones so our parents had to wait three days for us to get home to prove that we weren’t dead.

At least it was a good year for music: Blur, Pulp, Björk, Orbital, all the Britpop, Rage Against the Machine. We wanted the full Glastonbury spiritual experience so we got up at 4am to watch the sun rise over the stone circle, which we later learned was constructed in 1992 AD. This disappointment aside, all was going well until Sunday when the clouds came over, the Cheddar had long since oozed into a puddle of grease, we’d run out of money and booze, and I had an allergic reaction to my cheap aftersun which left me with a face like an extra from Dr Who. The man in the medical tent looked alarmed and advised me to see the GP as soon as I got home. After the 8-hour coach journey back to Leeds and a course of steroids I figured that now I’d experienced Glastonbury once I probably didn’t need to do it again.

2004

A devotee friend convinced me to have another go and she was right, Glastonbury had changed. By now the Guardian had replaced the NME as media sponsor and the whole thing had professionalised with a massive perimeter fence, photo ID checks and beefy security guards in place. The capacity had more than doubled, as had the ticket price. The crusties had vanished, presumably because they lacked the high speed internet connection necessary to secure a ticket, and there weren’t even many dealers in evidence, though perhaps they had all just congregated outside Pete Doherty’s tent. Instead the festival was full of shiny-haired girls called Jemima who seemed to spend the whole time on their boyfriends’ shoulders waving their kale smoothies at the TV cameras. For weeks beforehand the papers were full of Kate Moss-inspired articles on ‘festival chic’ which seemed to involve expensive highlights, dry clean only slip dresses and £250 welly boots.

Unfortunately for Jemima, her crocheted bikini and cowboy hat were destined to get wrecked because this was one of the wettest Glastonburies on record. I’d spent a tenner on my wellies at B&Q and have never been more grateful for vulcanised rubber than when I poked my head out of the tent on day two to witness a capsized chemical toilet floating rapidly downhill on a tide of sewage and mud. Conditions worsened after that. If I have any festival hygiene tips, it would be these: 1) take double the amount of wet wipes you think you’ll need, and 2) avoid the shewee at all costs.

Strong local cider came to the rescue, which is possibly why I can’t remember any of the bands. Oasis played the main stage on Friday but the men’s England football team had been knocked out of the Euros that afternoon and the air was so thick with rancid testosterone and aggression that I didn’t dare go anywhere near. Google tells me that Paul McCartney headlined Saturday night but I’ve no idea where I was during this memorable event. Probably face down in the mud.

2005

Glastonbury Festival, 2005

I didn’t think it was possible for the weather to get any worse but 2005 had a quick look at the year before and said ‘hold my cider’. Within a couple of hours of arriving the site looked like a refugee camp, albeit one where you could queue for two hours behind Jemima to spend £20 on a lukewarm chai latte and a vegan burger made of grit. It was as if the hipsters had arrived to gentrify the apocalypse. The queue for the medical tent was longer than the queue for the surviving portaloos as people came down with dysentery and trench foot at the same time as Will Young was getting interviewed on Radio 2 about how much he loved the magical atmosphere and the amazing halloumi wraps. Thankfully, by luck or accident some friends had managed to camp on higher ground, near a cocktail stand and a toilet that hadn’t been condemned, so we spent a glorious afternoon when the sun finally made an appearance watching Brian Wilson and Van Morrison while gradually getting slammed.

Glastonbury is quintessentially British: it is guaranteed to rain; there is warm beer and overpriced terrible food; the queues are epic; and rapacious neoliberal capitalism hides behind a brittle veneer of birdsong and eco-conscious tie dye. I guess that’s why they keep booking Coldplay. But there are also moments of magic, most likely when you’ve stopped looking for them, like dancing to musical legends just as the sun comes out after three days of relentless rain, and finding dry pants at the bottom of your rucksack, and making friends that you’re still in touch with 20 years later even though you live on different continents and you’ve never actually seen them again.

I'll never say never, but this year I’ll be watching on the BBC from the comfort of my sofa with clean clothes and a decent Shiraz. Cheers.