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Middle-aged nostalgia for the follies of youth can be both embarrassing and heart wrenching. I have been reading that Glastonbury Festival is happening once again, and one of my good friends has a job building a set there. As I type he is getting drunk, high or rained on - probably all three.
I went to Glastonbury twice, and each time I truly had the time of my life, and got higher than a helium balloon let go by a small child. I remember having a friendly conversation with a police officer whilst smoking a joint, and bumping into people I’d not seen for years; lying in the grass, watching Joan Armatrading whilst catching up with my friend Jeremy was a magical couple of hours.
Staggering around a camping field at about four in the morning, alone and off my face, I encountered a Scouser standing sentry-like in a shell suit outside a large tent. He offered me an application of deodorant for twenty pence. I was doing my thing, and he his.
Back in the days when the dance parties were frowned upon, I was raving away with a few hundred people in one of the far fields, and just as day broke we saw about fifty security personnel, all armed with clubs and bats, marching down the hill to smash up the party. We all ran away like drugged up monkeys.
Later that morning I found another party around a wooden structure that contained the DJ and his crew. The tunes were the smoothest daybreak house tunes I’d ever heard, and everyone was grooving and smiling - blissfully loving life. After an hour or so, the music scratched to a stop and a voice came on the mike, “Hey, I thought we were having a good one here, but someone just climbed up here and punched me in the face… and I’m not up for it any more.” It was the DJ, and he sounded really upset. The music stopped and several hundred people stood in ear-ringing disappointment as we realized it wasn’t going to start up again.
Another time I was sitting with my girlfriend on the Sunday when someone started shouting, “Free Hash Cake!” We weren’t shy as we joined a line of people grabbing slices of cake. We ended up with about fifteen pieces between us and started off to find our friends to share the bounty. About an hour later we found everyone, but had eaten most of the cake. Thus began a seventeen hour Sunday night odyssey that I’ll never forget.
The second time I went, I found my Irish friend on the Monday morning and asked if we were ready to hit the road. “I’ve lost my bag,” he told me, distraught. It contained his wallet, car keys, everything. I told him to stay where he was, and marched off. Drug fuelled mania took me all over the place until, against all the odds, I not only found his bag in a lost property tent, but persuaded them to let me have it. When I found my friend again, he simply could not believe that I had found his bag and nothing in it had been touched.
There is no embarrassment in looking back on Glastonbury. Writing this I feel old and sad, but I am so very glad that I went. For a short window of time, all those years ago, the dream was surely being lived!
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