"With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
He pulls the spitting high tension wires down"
Welcome to the big fat "I've been the Glastonbury" blog post. Afore I get on with description after description of sun and dust and bands and cider I'll just shove two images from the last fortnight all up in your face. For that is how I do.
This is Axe Cop versus Thor
of course and has since been called 'awesome' by Axe Cop's co- creator Ethan Nicolle. Which is an attestation that I will naturally have inscribed on my back. The excellent Axe Cop (for those not in the know tis a comic written by a kickarse 6-year-old and drawn by his 29-year-old kickarse artist brother)
can be witnessed here - and the story of why Thor has an axe and why he's involved
can be read (as well as the full image) here.
This (as you can just about work out) is the second page of the second part of my majestical
Crabcake saga. Here I start to introduce the sexiest thing known to man:
continuity possibly related to time-travel or some other similar hijink. Did you feel that? It was you orgasming at the thought. I'm sorry. Also to throw some
actual plot progression into the mix the commander general Alan Vitriox announces their arrival at some gaudily-coloured whale-tailed destination.
"WHERE'S THAT THEN?"
That there is a sign. A sign that says "Glastonbury 40". Why it says that I have no idea - although it may be slightly related to Glastonbury festival's 40th anniversary. I don't know - I'm not a doctor.
The hardest part is Wednesday. The stress of getting onsite and dodging queues of people WHO YOU JUST KNOW WANT TO CAMP IN EXACTLY THE SAME SPOT AS YOU. It was made more hectic this year by the shit-ton of new people. Of which there were a shit-ton. They had been camping in wait like crouched tigers in cars. Once settled though - Wednesday falls into exhaustion and belated exploration - those shit-ton cease to be competitors and start to become fellow festival-goers. Relaxed, positive and often up for grinning smalltalk. I've lost count of the amount of smiling strangers I've talked to at past years - this was no exception. The lovely buggers were everywhere. I avoided the football and climbed the tallest point at the festival - a hill behind the Park field - it's here I heard the England goal - bellowing at me from a hundred thousand joyful whoops across the panorama. A far more spectacular way to experience it than sweltering in front of the main-stage screens.
Possibly my favourite new structure at the site (next to the new jazz n' blues bar; Bourbon Street) is the Ridge & Furrow ale house. A two story half-pub constructed by chainsaw carvers last year - staffed by people in medieval dress serving local ale and often with folk music. Shitting lovely. It was here I met a curious woman who claimed to be called Stella Fairy and dreamt of a franchise of two-story fairy shops with an adult section at the top linked by a fireman's pole. What fairies would want with adult paraphernalia I shudder to think - but I admired her ambition. And wings.
Here we are - my first celebrity sighting. Bodger and fucking Badger. Majestic aren't they? Badger is wearing a Never Mind the Bollocks shirt. As I snapped this two girls wandered by Girl #1: Oh my god is that Bodger and Badger?!
Girl #2 (very nonplussed): Everybody knows Badger loves mashed potatoes
and they kept on walking. I somehow found this interaction ridiculously funny. The rest of Wednesday I do not recall. The exhaustion drove us early to our beds and so we missed our first TENTROBBERY - a torch blared through my flap around two and I told the offensive light to bugger off. Nowt was taken from me but those around had money nabbed, and in one incident - the iPod nicked from their very ears. Spooky.
Various sights from a wander around the former 'Lost Vagueness' area which has all manner of funky art and curious arenas designed to intricately capture that elusive 'Glastonbury moment' in the form of bizarre anecdotes. It is a shame that the area becomes a swarming mass of indecipherable movement at night which the time of its awakening.
This is the only image from the best night - Saturday. The new West Holts stage was headlined by the RIDICULOUSLY RIDICULOUSLY RIDICULOUSLY GOOD George Clinton Funkadelic/Parliament band who effectively had a massive onstage party. Possibly the greatest performance I've seen at the festival - it's the best stage by miles. Seventy-four fucking miles. The atmos was not ruined by a dancin' punchin' leary Elvis baby man who needed several security guards to restrain him. We then moved back to our haunt of Bourbon Street for some absurdly groovy blues from the absurdly groovy Oli Brown band to whom me and Mr Jab Rimmer danced the bloody night away.
Sunday was as hot and as sweaty as EVERY OTHER BLOODY day this year. I didnae mention the days so much because there was much sweating and sitting down and going "god it's hot" to strangers and friends. It's good to have a hot Glastonbury - because at least in the night things occur then - people rocket from their sweltered shells and BEGIN TO DANCE. John Otway (pictured above) is probably one of my
new favourite people - he, along with Dr John, Adrian Edmonson and the Bad Shepherds and a
mass singalong to waterloo sunset made my sweaty Sunday afternoon one to remember.
Then brief Stevie Wonder and home - but I would like to briefly mention one of my favourite Glastonbury thing wot I stumbled upon moons ago in old Lost Vagueness.
THE DUKES BOX what a fucking thing - the band sit in there and you request songs of them in the manner of a traditional duke box. It. Is. GLORIOUS. I encourage you to seek the elusive box out.
What is Glastonbury?
A farm. Sometimes playing host to an enormously famous and vastly sprawling eclectic arts festival based around the core values of green futures and eco-based equality companies Water Aid, Oxfam and Greenpeace. Mostly it is known for being host to hordes of corporate-approved superbands and flash-in-the-pans that attract thousands upon thousands of musical retards who think Scouting for Girls are the best thing that happened since MOZART FUCKING DIED - which make it appear to unknowers as just a fatter corporate shindig like Reading or Leeds. Which it clearly isn't. It never was and it never will be a music festival. Those who dollop their betrilby'd forms in front of the three pop stages are depriving themselves utterly of what makes me love Glastonbury festival. I love it so utterly that were I to cop it at this moment I could think of no better place to summarise the happiest days of my existence than that sprawling valley - the dust and the mud and the moments and the people. I'm always happy there. The retards swarm - the terrible bands play - and I grin on, knowing that for a week out of the year I am home.
See you with more art and less melodrama on the 12th of bloody July
O - x
Bespin. That city wot occasionally clouds it. Possibly one of the most evocative designs in the Star Wars universe. Along with the unseen cavern cities of Alderaan. Sweet.
Sketches for Digital Dr WTF buyers Lanie, Dgym & Matt - cheers you sexy bunch. First is a leprechaun under pursuit (doesn't look much like a leprechaun whoops) second is the Doctor asride his TARDIS lassooing a dragon (doesn't look much like that whoops) and the final is Matt as a sort of loveable Twindie Doctor ;)
