I don’t do anything by halves, and I try to live life to the full because life can be too short. I will try to make most things happen, though sometimes I am thwarted by things way beyond my control.

My trip to Glastonbury- and who I went with – is a story in itself and it all revolves going to the US in April. The real adventurer in the family is Janet, my first cousin once removed. She is a country counter and we were supposed to go to a country that, had I gone with her, the US immigration service in Dublin would have barred me from getting on a flight to America. In my problem-solving mode in January, I applied for a US tourist visa – but the wait time for an appointment was 6 months. Too late for the planned trip in March and US trip in April. Spoiler alert if you haven’t already read the NYC blog – The US won and the country counter went alone on the tour and made other mad friends and amazingly, I got a full refund.

Many times in life, the opportunities come from those who you know. In China they call it guanxi (networks and relationships in place to facilitate business), I would never abuse my friendships, but on this occasion, I asked my friend if I could volunteer at Glastonbury. It was not a foregone conclusion and I had to wait for others to say yes or no. I was told it would be better in a pair, and getting 6 days leave from work for some friends proved to be impossible because of family and work commitments. Volunteers typically come to the Festival early and for the role that I plus one had been assigned to, we needed to be there from the Sunday before the Festival becomes the Festival and when it is still a building site.

Being currently between jobs, Glastonbury volunteering was perfect for me, and so I asked Janet, who has retired but works part time to fund the travelling. If she said yes, she would need to provide our camping gear. The only thing I had thrown into my suitcase in December that would come in remotely useful at Glastonbury was my sleeping bag liner. Camping in a field for 10 days is not everyone’s cup of tea. Camping at Glastonbury could have its own issues – toilets, potential mud, no showers, etc etc etc. but Janet up for an adventure in England said yes.

Eleanor wasn’t coming with me. Under the age of 12, she would have had a free ticket, but Janet and I wouldn’t have been on shift together. Grandparents weren’t an option either, so … a plea to friends in Hampshire made sure that Eleanor was with friends her own age and looked after by our friends. Perfect solution.

Training included Health and Safety training, training on terrorist attacks and what to look out for as well as hand signals if a fire or violence broke out and webinars on crowd management were all included. But really nothing can prepare you for what Glastonbury Festival of Performing Arts becomes.

Our job was wristbanding the team of stewards for GFEL.

Stewards ranged from people working for bag for life, WaterAid and Greenpeace. We were to put on their festival wristband, give them shower tokens, explain a tag for their bag to have their name and number on it just in case their bag went astray while they were on duty and to give them a lanyard with staff ID, map and handbook. A team of 15 of us completed 4 or so 6 hour shifts. Some did 3 shifts of 8 hours, but from Sunday 18th – Thursday 22nd June the team connected with 2000 people. We went from a field on Saturday with about 50 tents to a field that was festival like. Jam packed. After our first shift on the Sunday, we came out of the Stewards tent to find the landscape completely changed and it kept changing every day. Spaces where we didn’t think tents could go, defied us in squeezing in.

Janet’s last minute purchase had been a camping table. Putting that outside our tent alongside two camping chairs gave us prime real estate and eventually our tent entrance was beside the main thoroughfare of people going to the loo or have a shower. It was great spot for people watching, and because we were beside the path, we never got lost. I am sure there are people at Glastonbury, that pitch their tent and then never find it again.

We were spoiled as volunteers, we had tea and coffee, hot running showers and electricity points to charge phones etc. In China, we had a brick. It is actually a power bank that lasts for a long time so it meant that we didn’t utilise the charging points as much as other people did. For the most part it charged two iPhones and my watch as well as another more portable power bank. The downside of the brick apart from the weight is that you can’t fly with it and when it does run out of charge, it takes days to get back up to full capacity. For Glastonbury it was perfect.

Janet had brought Berghaus self inflating mattresses (bought for another trip). These mattresses were luxurious and probably if we hadn’t had them we may have struggled with bad backs and the like (you can just see the mattress in picture 4 above). But if you thought those where luxurious, they looked basic as we saw people with blow up mattresses that were at least 3 foot off the ground, but the pièce de résistance was the bed. Janet and I saw the bed arriving in bits. I recognised it as an Old Creamery bed from Yeovil. We saw the headboard go by. No photos – but the BBC picked up on it!

On Wednesday morning at 8am we were rudely woken up by a helicopter hovering over one of the entrances close to our camping ground. It was the day that the hordes arrived. It was odd having had Glastonbury to ourselves to having to share it with a lot of people! Our photo opportunities of having no one else in shot were over.

Our Glastonbury photo that Janet and I appear in 3 times at the top of this blog came about because when we made it up there on Sunday 18th, there was a group of 4 already there trying to do the panoramic. One guy was holding the phone and then there was a handover of the phone mid shot so he could get in. It was fun watching them, after about 5 minutes they gave up trying to do it themselves and we were asked to help. I agreed to do it, on the basis that they return the favour. It took two attempts for us and we were pleased with the result. If they hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t have thought about the shot, nor indeed been able to carry it through.

Since we had arrived at Glastonbury when nothing really was open, we had stopped at the Asda in Frome to stock up. We couldn’t go overboard since we had no fridge but we bought enough to sustain us for three meals a day for three – four days. On one of the days, when the Co-Op finally opened I got in at 9:30pm and bought some bacon. We had bacon sandwiches on the Friday morning to sustain us and another morning breakfast had been French toast and spaghetti hoops. A delicious delicacy not to be scoffed at! Once the vendors opened, we were spoilt for choice. It wasn’t cheap, but there were a number of eateries that did smaller portions for £6. Over the course of the festival I had duck, pulled pork, burgers, a pie (don’t have a pie, mash and gravy and try to eat it on the ground while being surrounded by crowds for The Pretenders), Mexican, Thai and Indian food. There was plenty of water on tap. Either at a WaterAid booth, queuing for ice water at Chilly’s (a water bottle seller), on tap at our campsite, or other water dispensers dotted around the site. And of course countless bars. As staff, there are Crew Bars that you can get into, they aren’t accessible to the general public so are generally quieter, have seating, some food vendors and are at least 50p cheaper for cider. That is all I drank (aside from water) so I can’t comment on the other prices. The cups at the Crew Bars were reusable and for a £1 I could get my cup and keep it. More sustainable that the paper cups that were used at the main bars.

The reusable cups measured a pint but the cups being used elsewhere were more than a pint – and while this wasn’t a problem for the big vendors who could pre programme machines to deliver a lot of pints at one time, it seemed to be a problem for the Greenpeace bar who couldn’t keep up with demand on the day that I met some friends. Midge and I queued maybe for about 20-30 minutes and watched the staff painstakingly pour a pint into a jug, and then pour the contents into the cup. (Side note – a pint of cider at Glastonbury was £6.50, crew bar £6 and at Belsonic in Belfast it was the same price as Glastonbury which I did not expect – I had expected Belfast to be cheaper!!!). We hadn’t bought a ton of alcohol with us – one box of wine as seen in the cooking photo above. A lot of the people that we saw coming in, had more alcohol than luggage, but when you are in the middle of the crowd it is a lot easier and cheaper to get a (warm?) can out of a day bag than to trek to the bar and trek back with pints in hand. I saw one guy try to get a pint in a cup into his pocket while he had 4 other pints in his 2 hands. I am sure the person having that pint won’t have been left much. Another guy, was sent to the bar straight after Texas on the Friday and he arrived back just after the Foo Fighters started (he had an hour) with pints in hand… but the measures definitely weren’t pints anymore! I realised very quickly after one night of 3 pints that drinking and camping don’t really mix – I got to the tent ok but I woke up early the next morning needing the loo and while I didn’t have to contend with queues or picking my way over tents I did cut my liquid intake the following evenings. I also realised that you couldn’t nip quickly to the loo either during the various sets, so loo breaks had to be strategically planned… and planned to go in the crew bars where toilets were generally better and without large queues.

You could easily go to Glastonbury and wander around and not see any of the musical acts. You would hear the cacophony of music as you passed by, but you could happily wander the fields and soak up the atmosphere. Janet loomed and made bunting, and I made earrings.

On the Friday, I went to see The Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics; Fellow of New College – Marcus du Sautoy. I had seen his name when perusing the App and the acts in alphabetical order, and as a wife of a mathematician his name was recognisable. I knew that I would score a lot of brownie points with Martin if I went to Glastonbury and saw a mathematician! I even answered 2 of the questions … albeit they weren’t mathematical – one was recognising the numerical music (I’m Gonna Be or 500 Miles by The Proclaimers) and the other was “If Charlie and Victor went to India, where would they stay?” Hotel was the answer because it was based on the NATO phonetic alphabet.

He was appearing at The Astrolabe Theatre in the Theatre/Circus fields. After Marcus I had arranged to meet a guider who I had met at Young Women’s World Forum that I co-organised in 2010 with Girlguiding and WAGGGS. She also volunteers at Glastonbury but sees a very different side – the medical side! The time spent waiting for her and then wandering around with her was well spent and we saw all kinds of non-musical acts.

I saw another act in the Astrolabe – George Egg “Set Menu”. A madcap cook/comedian I watched him make mini pancakes that he mixed in a teapot and then cooked on an iron held in place by 2 Gideon bibles. Theoretically you could do this in a hotel room. I also watched him do an egg/kipper salad cooking the egg and kipper in ziplock bags and steaming them with a wallpaper stripper. Surreal to say the least.

On the Thursday, Janet and I had gone our separate ways about 10:30am. I had jokingly said “I will see you tomorrow”. So vast is the place, and as both of us had catching up to do with various people, we really didn’t see each other until the next day (after midnight)! On the Friday, we went our separate ways in the morning but met back up in time for Texas at the Pyramid Stage. We had a pretty good viewing spot, and apart from one other act the next day, it would be the closest I would get to the stage all weekend.

For the Glastonbury newbies, the slot after Texas was the Churn Ups – an unknown band had been booked and are mysteriously known as The Churn Ups. However, it had been the worst kept secret – rumours were that it was the Foo Fighters. An American rock band formed by Dave Grohl who was Nirvana’s drummer. Grohl is now the group’s lead vocalist and guitarist. It wasn’t the last time we would see Grohl as he popped up and played with The Pretenders on the Saturday night.

Arctic Monkeys on the Friday night were good. I arrived late and went back to the tent early and so the bits that I did see – some of the music I knew, some I didn’t, but I saw the person I most wanted to see, and that was the lady that had got me to Glastonbury in the first place. And that for me was my headliner for Friday night. Leaving early, also meant a walk through the woods, a late night burger with no queue and a treetop trail by Woodsies . Very atmospheric.

Sleep happened with the music beat from the far away stages. It was no longer the quiet field we had known from the Saturday before but what struck me each and every morning was the bird song. At first we had thought it was piped in (they do this in places in China!) but it was really real. Only on one night had we been disturbed by neighbours who had decided to have a full blown conversation outside the tents at 3:30am. The next morning it was the talk of the morning with our other neighbours. But the young men came to apologise to everyone offering sweets or cappuccino sachets. I went into Head of Boarding mode – “what have you learnt”… “not to be noisy in a stewards campsite”. I took the sweets and after that they were good as gold. Stewards on the campsites often had at least one overnight shift so everyone just needed to be respectful of that and in the main – everyone was.

Saturday was a day of clashes, as was Sunday. We knew we couldn’t see everything, some stages where far apart and with the crowds, a 20 minute walk was more likely to be 40 minutes. I started the day with Rick Astley and got close to the stage! Highlights where of course…

He also played the drums to an AC/DC hit, Highway to Hell. It was a bit of Glasto magic and history in the making!

I met up with some of the stewarding crew to see Fisherman’s Friends, a Cornish group that sing sea shanties. That was a good singalong and then I moved onto Manic Street Preachers – they were ok but one piece of advice was if it isn’t doing it for you, move on. So we moved on to get a spot for Chrissie Hynde’s The Pretenders – where I ate my pie.

We also followed the advice in moving away from Guns N’ Roses. I think you either like them or you don’t. We had arrived late because of The Pretenders and we stopped for a pint and a loo break. We stayed a bit, but then ducked off to The Other Stage. Janet had been given recommendations from her son to go and see some bands – but from Eleanor I had been given a mandate to see three acts. One – Arctic Monkeys : Two -Måneskin : Three – Lana Del Ray. Måneskin overlapped with The Pretenders who I wanted to see so I missed out on them. So I needed to go to Lana. Lana clashed with Guns. So we ditched Guns and headed for The Other Stage. Lana was on at 10:30pm. We arrived at 10:45pm to a stage in darkness. I asked a guy beside me, had she been on and gone off again – but no she hadn’t turned up.

She eventually arrived at 23:00, during her second song, she sat down and her hair dresser came on and did her hair and because her songs are pretty melancholic, we ditched her early too. Reading the review the next morning it seems that she didn’t even finish her set as the midnight curfew cut her off. Her most famous song she didn’t even get to perform. Now I did video in Eleanor to a couple of her songs and that made it worthwhile… but when Lana announced a gig in Dublin I said no. I was annoyed at her. No one else was late for their set. She isn’t that big a name that she can be arrogant enough to be late and then expect to finish her set. She had ALL day to get ready. It is just rude.

Sunday, the last day of the festival. The last billed UK performance of Elton John. Janet and I team tagged. We got to the field about 11:50 as I wanted to see Sophie Ellis-Bextor. So we got a spot in the field, close enough to the path, directly below a viewing platform with hopefully what would be a good enough view. We were under no illusion that we wouldn’t actually see Elton, but being there was enough.

Flags are an integral part of Glastonbury, and while they blocked the view of the stage, we realised just how necessary they were when it was time to go and return to the exact same spot. On the Sunday, Janet had come with me, then left and returned to me with friends. The landscape was slowly changing. I then left, had lunch and returned. I had a particular flag I knew we were to the left of, and I knew the hat I was looking out for. I was successful in returning. Janet left a further time to go and get a fleece for the evening and food. She had been gone for the whole of Cat / Yusef Stevens afternoon legends slot and when she returned the landscape had changed again. The crowds where piling in. We both stayed for Blondie who was great and then I left to go to the loo and to get two pints. Thankfully it wasn’t the last time I saw her… but on returning the stewards were trying to direct everyone up to the higher field. I got back and we sat on our chairs keeping the space. Others had sat behind us, and it was just before Elton started that everyone was told it was standing only. I had had no intention of sitting anyhow, but as soon as our chairs were packed up people swarmed in.

We got chatting to a guy now known to us as Matty. I can’t remember how the conversation progressed but it ended with me saying that Janet wanted to get onto his shoulders. Arranged that during Rocketman it would happen Janet didn’t let him forget and it produced a moment that she wouldn’t forget either!!!

Elton did not disappoint. The crowd loved him and sang along to every hit he played. For my first Glastonbury it was superb. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the experience.

It did rain, there was mud, but the sun was out and I didn’t need the borrowed wellies.

We made a quick exit on the Monday morning. We had gone to the car on Sunday with everything but our Monday clothes, sleeping bags, tent and mattresses. Traffic wasn’t too bad and we made it to Basingstoke for a shower and sleep before going onto Gatwick and flying to Belfast.

Lots of memories, lots of friends and new friends made – including meeting the daughter of my dad’s cousin. While we didn’t do everything we had a go and there wasn’t anything that I missed out on – except maybe the secret piano bar that opens at midnight.

And final thoughts – it is a small world – I bought a top for Eleanor and the vendor and I got talking… the guy is moving to Shenzhen in August with his primary school teaching wife (not to our school though!)

Janet is an excellent travel buddy and comes recommended if you ever want to travel to a country that might not be on everyone’s list. If you are interested and know where Socotra is, then get in touch!