Glastonbury Festival 2025: Five Somerset summer days of music, controversy and beautiful mayhem

MONDAY 30^th JUNE 2025

“I think you’d better drive,” says Finetime, his face sallow, skull-sockets underscored by dark brown rings. He looks peaky.

“Why?” I enquire. Sweat nodules down my face, my body, everywhere. So saline-intense it leaves powdery white steaks.

“My eyes,” he replies, “They’re wobbling about.”

We pull over in Cannards Grave, a Somerset hamlet named for a thieving 17^th century publican hanged here. Every third car passing contains battered detritus from the annual Worthy Farm pilgrimage.

“You don’t look too good yourself,” says Finetime.

“I’ll be fine.”

But will I? Inside of my head’s been chiselled away. A vacuum where my mind resided. I stuff my mouth with the remains of a bag of nuts’n’raisins, masticating dryly. Where’s my saliva gone? Swig sun-warmed water. My chest gurgles. My stomach spasms. Finetime retrieves a pillow from the back of his bulging red Nissan Qashqai, clambers into the passenger seat, puts on a really boring episode of Desert Island Discs, and falls fast asleep.

I am alone with three hours of road ahead.

My eyes are wobbling too.

Oh, man, how I wish it was last week…

WEDNESDAY 25^th June 2025

We’re driving along the lanes towards Pilton. Bramble-flowered hedges. Fields. Anticipatory glee. Switch the radio dial to 87.7 FM to catch Glastonbury Festival’s own station, Worthy FM. Finetime is driving. Photographer and mission companion. We’re too far away still. The signal is fuzzed, snippets of song seeping through white noise, like The KLF’s Chill Out album. Eventually, clarity arrives. Wafty, hippy-tronica with birdsong and vocalising. Seems apt. We open small chilled tinnies of 4.6% IPA. The first of too many.

I’m not sure how to last Glastonbury through from a Wednesday. Last time I tried it, in 2007, I was so destroyed by Sunday I spent most of the day shivering in my tent, weeping, my life at an end, appearing only to watch a rain-lashed snippet of The Who. And I was old even then. So Wednesday’s about pacing myself. Right. OK. By way of compromise, I’ll not go to the Burrow Hill Cider Bus until tomorrow. Just IPA. Didn’t Bukowski say that beer doesn’t count? Or was that apocryphal?

We truck our bungee’d, piled-high gear onsite in a sturdy steel Costco trolley, set up camp, eat chilli sour cream Pringles, meet our lovely neighbour Lou, a Shepton Mallet local who’s here Wednesday to set up her tent before going home later. Finetime starts sneezing. Hay fever. This will debilitate him until he starts a course of Ryno's Hay Fever and Catarrh Remedy tomorrow.

Only a few stages open today. Sound restrictions across the site. So let’s keep this short. We wander. We drink IPA tinnies. Join a throng around DADO, a Canadian clown (real name Daniel Warr) in the Circus Field. He does gags with party balloons in front of a punch’n’Judy-style booth. Pleasant way to spend time. Village fete vibes. Warm summer evening in the country. I like the bit where he burps up endless blue eggs, chicken-squawking each time (there's a photo of him doing it somewhere above). Wednesday is good for performers on the tiny stages. They can be overshadowed once the festival proper starts.

Grab a mouth-watering crumbed hake finger butty with tartare sauce at Fish Finger Heaven (Glastonbury Festival Sustainable Trader Award 2019). Then it’s the grand opening, a vast circus spectacle in the Pyramid Field. 30 years since French troupe Circus Archaos rode motorbikes up the side of the Pyramid and juggled chainsaws, great cranes bear clusters of acrobats dangling high in the sky. Glistening bicycles float through the air. Fire hoop action on the ground. Behind, the Pyramid’s filled with a choir and drummers. Despite all the action, the lack of amplification renders the experience oddly unfocused. The drums and choir are barely audible. Screens directing us to hum and sing along with a stickman on a bicycle are only partially effective. Voices around soon start to insult these directives. Suddenly it’s easy to see why circuses need a ringmaster. Nonetheless, culminating in fireworks, it’s an eye-boggling display.

I then spend £8 on the tiniest cone of haloumi fries that ever existed. Suitable to fill the bellies of, say, three ants and a cricket. The most outrageously priced food I eat all weekend. Digesting on my new self-inflating mattress long after dark, I listen to nearby tent chat. Young posho’s Joe, Harry and Giles are playing a drinking game. Giles suggests a pound of cooked mince for a late supper. “What, just plain mince, unseasoned?” “Yes, what’s wrong with that?” Nope, they’re not having it. He’s firmly rebuffed. The drinking game continues. “Apart from long-term girlfriends, who have you slept with, tell us or take three swigs”. Oh dear. Silicone earplugs in.

THURSDAY 26^th JUNE 2025

Awake sprightly to the sound of early-Sixties post-bebop jazz blaring from the nearby Cuban Sandwich bar. I’m in what’s currently the 27^th largest urban area in England. A young person nearby describes to a newly made American friend who John Peel was: “I think he was, like, this really good broadcaster who played, like, really deep cuts in the 1960s”. Hmmm…

Today my pal Alejandro Sosa arrives with his wife Carlita. They’ve flown straight in from their Bolivian estate, arriving 7.00 AM to Heathrow, hiring a car, driving straight here. Planning ahead like The A-Team, I sent their Hospitality Parking Pass to an acquaintance in Frome so they can pick it up on their way. Track 24 Signed. But Royal Mail mislay it (eventually arrives the Tuesday after the festival – yay!). So Sosa’s going to wing it.

After a Mini Veggie breakfast (+ extra egg) from the GET YOUR OATS HERE stall (cheesy oat cake, hash brown, mushrooms, veggie sausage), I head out with trusty Costco trolley to meet them. Sosa has charmed his way into Hospitality (or possibly threatened to hang any stewards he meets from his helicopter). Soon they’re signed into Hotel Bell Tent, where I grab a branded purple sleep mask.

Talking of Hospitality glamping brings me to this year’s Glasto media outrages (we’ll come to the biggest one later). This year, prior to the festival, there were two main ones (discounting an irrelevant Daily Telegraph piece by some right-wing fool). One was around the glamping company Yurtel going bust. Customers who’d paid tens of thousands of pounds so they could have a chauffeur ferry them to and from the site were left without tickets. The point is – and the clue’s in the chauffeuring – this was an OFF-SITE organization unconnected to Glastonbury Festival. This salient fact was not in the headlines.

A more serious accusation came from a 2000+ word Independent piece by “DJ and music journalist” Oliver Keens, entitled “The uncomfortable truth about Glastonbury”. Its drive, via careful curation of cherry-picked facts, was that Glastonbury was ripping off artists, forcing them to play for free, or for feeble fees that leave them out of pocket. It made valid points, especially around migrant workers, but its conclusions lacked rounded comprehension of what Glastonbury is and how most approach it.

Glastonbury has 94 officially listed stages along with a bunch of other smaller ones. It curates five. The rest are farmed out to all manner of arts collectives, all given budgets. The 2024 festival raised £5.9 million for causes including Somerset NHS, Greenpeace, Oxfam, War Child and WaterAid. Glastonbury does not do corporate sponsorship. In essence, it’s a big party thrown to raise money for good causes. A showcase for a particular vision, derived from its hippy-meets-Wesleyan-community-Methodism origins at the end of the countercultural 1960s. Most understand this and are happy to play along.

For instance, there are tons of hobbyist bands that simply use connections to blag tickets and play miniscule stages in far-flung fields to three people, have done for years, and have a ball doing it. Should they be paid? There’s then a middle stratum of artists whose living is music, some of whom who can’t afford take the hit. Not so good. Then there’s the bigger bands who can. With BBC TV coverage thrown in too, it’s a complicated tangle to unpick. Oliver Keens doesn’t. He goes, instead, for a couple of quick jabs to the jaw and a misleading conclusion. But I’m rambling off-track into the undergrowth. Back to Thursday afternoon.

Despite the long flight, Sosa and Carlita are too excited to sleep. Sosa appears in an eye-watering pink fluoro shorts suit, Carlita looking glam. We circuit the site all balmy afternoon and I finally fill my 1.5 litre Evian bottle at the Burrow Hill Cider bus. Change my usual formula this year to two pints flat medium to one dry. Also knock off a five-year-old cider brandy while I’m at it.

We pass an ebullient character called Mama Tokus leading a sing-along in Crooners’ Corner by Bella’s Bridge (honouring late Glastonbury royalty Arabella Churchill). She’s cheeking the crowd. A female clarinettist with a cloud-like hat meanders around nearby, adding colour (both pictured right). We’re again in the Theatre and Circus Fields where something called Primary School Bangers has packed the whole place. On the Summer House stage a teacher called James Partridge is playing a small keyboard. Hundreds of festival-goers sing numbers such as “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands”, “Wheels on the Bus” and S Club 7’s “Reach”. Thankfully it soon ceases.

Cornish folk singers The Oggymen are doing sea shanties or something similar on the Gateway Stage at the top of the hill. Finetime is sometimes fond of bellowing along to these (when he’s had enough ales in a pub) but today is feigning a lack of interest. I developed an allergy young to that whole “Oggy oggy oggy” chant so their very name brings me out in a rash. This increases when a Chic-themed exercise class starts up and we move on. Giant human seagulls stare disapprovingly.

After a sludgy vegan hot dog covered in flakes of dried onion, it’s a yomp back to base, beneath warm cloudy skies. Change into evening finery. Snuffle into a table of Wong-Wong-Snark at the tent, with Finetime and Sosa adding buttonettes of Happyville Legalese. Sosa becomes keen to expound on reggae singer Tarrus Riley (not playing here) whose music language cannot quite pin down.

Glastonbury virgins Sosa and Carlita then head out to explore. Glastonbury old slappers Caspar and Finetime trek up to Shangri-La in the notorious South-East Corner. Weird to see the place in daylight but we want to catch Frankfurt DJ-producer Shantel and his Bucovina Club, playing Balkan dance grooves. There he is, in a multi-coloured shirt and pale jeans, backed by a gaggle of female backing singers. We’ve missed most of it but catch the end, a final hoedown, then find a bar.

The vibe here has changed. Instead of a 100% sarky slogan attack on consumer capitalism it’s riven with green hopefulness. Plants everywhere. Shangri-La creatives Kaye Dunnings and Robin Collings are calling it The Wilding. “Trees” of recycled metal piping are adorned with what looks like acres of plastic sheeting and ribbon which glows to life as the sun sets. There’s a solar-powered jukebox and a bar that’s a greenhouse. I pull out a batteried menthol intoxicant device and order a beer.

Next at Shangri-La, now in its 18^th year, is Zambian psyche-rock band W.I.T.C.H. (pictured below), now in their 53^rd year. Singer Jagari Chanda wears a green and yellow outfit and skull-cap. The keys player looks like George Clinton in wild, expansive floppy yellow trappings, while the drummer is channelling archetypal hippy in a hat that fuses JRR Tolkien with Ladies Day at Ascot. The music is Afro-tinted blues-rock, slower than expected, but full of earthy feeling. For this particular set their acronym name - We Intend To Cause Havoc – is not applicable, but it’s a solid early evening groove.

We run into Sosa and Carlita. He’s bought me a Purple knitted macramé bottle holder for what he calls my “container of piss” (admittedly, it looks that way… albeit diabetic piss). I’m delighted and adopt it at once. Macramé, by the way, is pronounced “mac-RAH-may” not “MAC-ramay”. So please read it the right way in your head

With the arrival of night, we take a third and final trip to Circus and Theatre where we’re accosted by two gents dressed head-to-toe as the bowler-hatted cloud man from Rene Magritte’s La Décalcomanie. Running from them, we bump into the deeply sinister “Runaway Christmas Tree Fairy” so back into the Astrolabe Theatre which is going bonkers, steam pouring from it as neon-lit Flash Bang Brass hammer out a gabber-tastic version of brass band music. The place is packed. Rain is starting. Finetime and I find a small shelter and put the world to rights beneath the gently falling droplets, Swiss Army screwdrivering Pipkin’s Truth-Snuff.

We think we’re beside the stage where Oh My God! It’s The Church soon play but we’re not. When a giant psychedelic, glow-lit turtle the size of a lorry appears playing Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”, it snaps us to the present. By the time we get to Sensation Seekers Stage, down the hill Oh My God! It’s The Church are well into their tight gospel funkin’ show. The crowd is way too large to get anywhere near. And the rain falls harder. We make our way to a nachos stall where I eat far, far too much. My stomach becomes uncomfortably stretched. I am pregnant with an angry baby made of scrumpy and Mexican food. It’s Thursday so an early night is acceptable. Just. Bed at 1.00 AM with only a small dip into melatonin and promethazine to blur me out. The rain patters on the canvas. I drift away.

FRIDAY 27^th JUNE 2025

Awake a deal less sprightly than yesterday to the sound of early-Sixties post-bebop jazz blaring from the nearby Cuban Sandwich bar. The tent is a sauna. My skin is a slick. Outside it’s blazing like the Algarve in August. Stare out of the tent into eyes tattooed each side of a man’s navel. Why has he done this? Why is he standing here? I exchange a look (with his actual eyes in his actual head). He moves on.

Shave. Wet wipes to pits and bits. No shower ever. Queues too long. Time is the essence. Spray Riemann P20 sun block over my face, neck and chest. Smells like methylated bootleg gin but is like wrapping in cellophane, as far as the sun’s concerned. Carry the orange bucket used for night ablutions shoulder high to the toilet block to avoid the shame of passers-by peering in. Catch a glimpse of my face in a mirror. A side of puffy pink ham. And the festival’s only really starting today.

After a Mini Veggie breakfast, wander through Hospitality. Buy a pint of lager top. Come slowly to life. Head for Other Stage. Pass enormous lorry backstage branded Peter Green Chilled. He certainly did. Eventually. Once the acid wore off. Also played a mean guitar.

Run into the DJ Carl Cox who I used to know back when club culture was club culture. Exchange a few words. Lovely fella. On his way back from seeing Fabio & Grooverider and the Outlook Orchestra. Riemann P20 starts to sweat into my eye. Stings like nettles rubbed onto the cornea. Eye-juice drools down my cheek.

Other Stage, here we go. Rizzle Kicks rush on, older, wiser, sober. “Joy is an act of resistance,” says Jordan Stephens, clad in a Gary Linker England top (Lineker appears at The Information chat stage tomorrow but I don’t see him). They kick off with reggae-fuelled 2013 single “Lost Generation”. And we’re off. Place is bouncing. Sea of flags, emblematic of this place. “GUILTY - I SUPPORT READING”.  Three hamsters falling into a psychedelic black hole. “MAGA FLAGS GOO GOO GAA GAA”.

Onstage, Rizzle Kicks have purple flowers as a backdrop and stage props. They also have an Olympics-style triple podium with each level marked, “LOSER”, as on their new album, Competition is for Losers. They leap onto it from time to time. Above them, the Other Stage insignia is a butterfly in the sun and two stag beetles. A lady with green hair who I think is one of Rizzle Kicks’ mums rushes around with a Palestine flag (as per photo above). It’s not the last of these I’ll see this weekend. One of their dads is on bass,

They bang out the hits. The EMF-tastic “Skip to the Good Bit”. The Fatboy Slim-tastic “Mama Do the Hump”. They bring on TikTok pop star Rachel Chinouriri for new tune “Follow Excitement”. They conclude with the bright youthful elation of “Down With the Trumpets”. A man nearby let’s loose a blue smoke flare. Its fog swirls around dancing bodies. The gunpowder smell hits my nostrils. I’m revived. Home. My eyes are leaking and it’s not just the Riemann P20.

Rizzle Kicks weren’t big in Bolivia but Sosa is a convert. He and Carlita leave before the end to see IAMDDB, the first of many female club-centric artists they’ll attend this weekend, many of whom turn out to be doing DJ sets rather than full vocal performances. But we catch up at the cider bus where I’m refilling. I order “two five-year-olds”, referring to the apple brandy. Sosa jokes this could sound dubious.

Over at the Pyramid it’s time for Seventies roots reggae star Burning Spear. I scribble notes in my A6 notepad. A man in a pork-pie hat shouts, “I’ll have sweet’n’sour pork and an egg roll,” at me. Beside us a group of women in their sixties, or even seventies, gaggle together. They look to have seen lots of life. They project wisdom and mischief.

One has a lanyard saying, “ANGIE MUTOID”, meaning she has something to do with the Mutoid Waste Company, creators of post-apocalyptic sculptures, New Age Travellers when they were John Major’s folk demons. She has a pointy, interested face, long grey hair, a tartan waistcoat, a long white skirt, arms coated in wristbands for every onsite area, pink socks in sandals, and yellow-painted fingernails. As Burning Spear hits the stage, she begins to gently skank beside a man in an Ard Mhacha bucket hat with a badge on it saying, “FUCK FUCK FUCKETY FUCK”.

Burning Spear kicks off with “Door Peep Shall Not Enter” from his 1973 debut album. That was long ago and he’s now 80, but still jigs about, mustering sprightly footwork. He relishes rolling his Rs in many chants of “Rastafari” as he proceeds to “Jamaica”, a number from his most recent album. His set is an easy time in the sun but lacks the dynamism to retain our full attention.

Alejandro Sosa goes off with Carlita. She looks glam in white cowboy suit with diamante stars on her arms. They’re in search of soup. I’m in search of Wet Leg. Today is a dash back’n’forth between Pyramid, Other and West Holts. I skidaddle to Other. Finetime takes one of his many rest breaks.

“Have you had anything to eat?” one woman I pass asks another.

“I had an egg, like, 12 hours ago,” comes the reply.

Last time I saw Wet Leg was at Glastonbury two years ago. They were dressed in white full-body Amish-looking Victorian dresses, and shyly made mumbled stoner-style comments between songs. It was underwhelming. Not so this time. My, how they’ve grown! Guitarist Hester Chambers retains a self-effacing stage persona but singer Rhian Teasdale has blossomed into full rock chick. Tatted, in a hot crop top, exposing underboobs, she has pink hair, Daisy Duke shorts, winged trainers à la Hermes (the Greek god not the brand), and touts a lurid lime green guitar. She pulls a bullish muscleman pose as they open with recent single “Catch These Fists” (as per photo above).

Two women next to me in acryllic road cone hats lose the plot, yelping and waving. A nearby flag states, “SAVE THE PLANET, EAT THE RICH”, and features hideous old Jeremy Clarkson riding a killer whale. No, he’s not OK now just because of that bloody farm programme. Charli XCX BRAT flags everywhere. Oh, and there’s Inspector gadget. He was here last year.

“Who’s that guy?” a ginger-haired man asks his friend, pointing at one of Wet Leg’s male members, “Is that Leg?” He doesn’t smile. I ponder him awhile and swill down pints of sun-warmed scrumpy.

The band mingle cuts from their snippy, new wavey first album with rockier numbers from their forthcoming new one. It works well. The new ones have an American heft. At one point the stageside screens focus on a sad-faced doll propped in front of the monitors wearing Palestinian colours. Best is when we all shriek during the screamy bit in “Ur Mum”. They roar, we roar, they roar some more, screeching in the heat. It is, Teasdale tells us, the longest “Ur Mum” screamy bit they’ve ever done.

“KEVIN WHO’S WENDY?” asks a flag.

Four girls of about 20, in front of me, are having the best time. They have tattoos of a seal on their elbows. A gang. They’ll wistfully talk about this occasion when I’m long in the ground. Their eyes twinkle at each other as they jump around, supremely happy, here at this place with this band. They mouth every lyric. One has a tiny dropper with which she drips a liquid of darkest brown onto each of their tongues. That probably helps.

There’s a mystery band on at the Pyramid at 4.55 PM. I must check it. Could it be Lady Gaga? Robbie Williams? A Dave Grohl supergroup? A trustworthy source in a behind-the-scenes Facebook group posts a video saying that it’s “going to be something special, something Glastonbury has never done before”. Sounds exciting. I leave the Other Stage as Rhian Teasdale sings, “Every time I fuck my pillow, I was wish I was fucking you.”

The Pyramid field is chocka. I squeeze my way in. Wedge beside a man carrying a human-sized tennis racket that Javis Cocker will point out in the crowd tomorrow night. I wait. The crowd roars. It’s Lewis Capaldi. Oh, God, no. Everyone around me starts roaring along to “Before You Go”. It’s an arms-in-the-air, sing-a-long horror. I know the back story. I know he’s come to settle his demons after an onstage meltdown two years ago. I wish him no ill and all the best. But, dear Lord, I must escape this skinless anti-rock, all hurt, healing and whine.

I clamber my way out, the physical effect of Capaldi’s music on my body making me blunder, perspiring, into bodies. Irritated glances hit me. I stumble past face after face, uplifted in me-and-my-mental-health anthems. I have to get out of earshot. I’m desperate. Eventually I reach the cider bus. Refill. Bliss.

Over at West Holts I join Finetime. He has sunburn all over his arms and is covered with a large white sheet-like scarf. It’s a look. Someone nearby says, “There’s all this music; I’d prefer just sitting and talking.” One has to wonder…

En Vogue are due on soon but the field is half-empty, especially compared to when their direct 1990s rivals TLC played here in 2022. It’s ‘cause of Capaldi. Diva-glamourous they appear, three of them sheathed in black, plus Rhona Bennett in a spangly silver bodysuit. They play it bold, kicking off with their most famous song “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get it)”.

My concern that they’ll play lots of schmaltzy R&B ballads is soon dispensed with. They play a few, of course, including a version of Macca’s “Yesterday”, but then settle to a covers-filled disco-funk party set that includes Parliament’s “Flash Light”, their “Whatta Man” collaboration with Salt’n’Pepa, and a lengthy medley of hen party classics, including two of disco’s most lyrically pointed odes to female sexual pleasure, The Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited” and Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell”.

It's clearly turning on a nearby chap in a maroon bucket hat and shorts. He has piercing blue eyes, sticks his tongue in’n’out, and takes his top off slow, sexy, sleazy. Then he swigs a great gulp of Buckfast Tonic Wine, rather ruining the effect. I spot the most disturbing flag I see all weekend. “BIG TITTY MOTH GF”, it says, with an obscene big breasted photoshopped insect. A man dressed as an archbishop right behind me lets off a smoke bomb. Ah, the gunpowder.

En Vogue’s band are tight and their harmonies even tighter. The multi-million-selling Nineties quartet were always famed for their vocals. They still have it, as they demonstrate with aplomb, closing with epic smoocher “Don’t Let Go (Love)” and the trip hoppy “Hold On”, their breakthrough hit. The field is much fuller now. En Vogue delivered.

People look at the Glastonbury programme at home and think, “I’d see that, that and that,” but, in real life, it’s not like that. The site is huge and, at certain times, jammed with milling crowds. Plotting geography is part of the game. Finetime and I now have exactly two hours before Busta Rhymes to get back to camp, change, eat, ingest evening rev-up, and find a worthwhile place at the Other Stage. It sounds a lot of time but it’s not much.

Food first. There’s seriously tasty fare onsite. This year Bayou Bar’s New Orleans Cajun surf’n’turf in West Holts receives plaudits but has a queue as long as three buses. Instead, back at camp I grab a Cuban sandwich from, guess where, Cuban Sandwich. It’s a toasted affair consisting of cheese, pickles, mustard, pulled pork and other meats. I haven’t eaten meat since January but this is the time. It has a flavour akin to New York pastrami bagels. And no queue.

Open a bottle of Makers Mark bourbon. Lug on that while banging the Quiver Fizz. Swift, sweaty clothes change. Finetime in a peaked cap with a badge stating “SAVE THE RAVE”. Myself in Merchant Navy jacket and spangly red glitter-sequinned officer’s hat, Day of the Dead skull on the front. We’re ready to go.

Sosa and Carlita have made their way to the very front for Busta Rhymes. For some, this is the preference and does give a huge adrenal kick. I prefer a little way back, more room to dance, no need to arrive early, easier to escape. They love his set but Finetime and I aren’t as won over.

Perma-grinning Rhymes adopts a staunchly old school hip hop persona, in black tee and giant chain, as does his hype man Spliff, clad in a pyjama-esque suit. Around them prance dancing girls, initially in dark maroon bomber jackets and leggings. There are moments that light up, such as 1997 UK hit “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See”, when Rhymes tells the camera man, “Put ya hands up,” then, “Police put yer hands up; the only time we can say that!” And it’s a buzz to hear a snippet of “Woo Haa! Got You All in Check”, as well as his deranged speed-rapping - “Break Ya Neck” is a highlight.

But the show has a crude American showbiz gorgonzola that jars here: the constant stopping-starting so there’s no flow, the endless ego massage, the clunky, over-obvious festival-bait insertion of “Seven Nation Army” and “We Are the Champions” for chanting, the over-egged crowd participation, the naff “Doncha Wish Your Girlfriend Was a Freak Like Me”, and, oddest of all, strange A.I.-looking clips of Maria Carey and Janet Jackson joining in, giving Glastonbury a shout (as per photo above). “We did not come to fuck around,” says Busta. They didn’t. It’s a show alright. Just not one for me.

For the first time in years, none of the main stages have a headliner I want to see. Can’t stand The 1975 (Pyramid), who sound like the worst bits of the 1980s polished up; Loyle Carner’s snoozy mellow-rap follows Busta here; Maribou State (West Holts) offer their hybrid of house, emotional indie and pop which we’ll walk past later; Woodsies is Four Tet and The Park is Anohni and the Johnsons, neither Friday night explosive.

So, through to Cider Bus where a giant pink man in a Sidmouth Rugby Club top pushes to the front of the queue. No-one argues with him. Another man, with teeth like a water vole, stands next to a rainbow CND sign. His tee-shirt says, “BAD CHOICES MAKE GOOD STORIES.” True.

Walking back through Hospitality we pass Doctor Who actor Ncuti Gatwa, who will introduce Jade Thirlwell tomorrow afternoon. Not a bonanza year for celeb-spotting (for us). Finetime also saw Damian Lewis and an actor from Downton Abbey (but didn’t know his name). And, of course, no Alan Yentob (R.I.P.). Thankfully we didn’t see Nick “Grimmy” Grimshaw, another Glastonbury bingo card favourite.

Over in the South-East Corner we run smack-bang into Sosa and Carlita who lead us to the Nomad Stage, an enclosed wooden corral with hardly anyone in attendance, but a great ragga-jungly-dubsteppin’ sound bubblin’. The crew on the decks are Bumpah, a London bass rave collective focused on the Queer/Trans/Intersex/People of Colour community. A gaggle of brightly dressed DJs (Thempress, Cheza Lucina & Princess XIXI) are fronted by MCs such as hood-capped Reptile B, 1990s junglist MC Chickaboo and Jolie P.

“We’re the happiness crew,” they announce. And they are. We stay a long time dancing. Sosa and Carlita move on. Before they go I ask Carlita what she thinks of Glastonbury so far; “It’s fucking mental!” Finetime searches for a bar and suddenly I’m a frothing mad old dude alone in a half-empty space, stomping like a loon. But slowly it fills. A woman in an acid orange pleather skirt starts bogling. A beautiful dreadlocked queen sticks her head in the speaker and shakes her arse.

Finetime returns and we dance and dance. Then take a break in the Dragon’s Tail quiet space, a new, much-needed time-out zone in the Naughty Corner’s wildlands. A bloke tells us, “I’m gonna have a tea leaf reading in the morning,” but, judging from the state of him, I don’t think he will. On the old train track that bisects the top of the site we run into John Robb, author and singer with The Membranes, smart-suited, sober-seeming. Stop for a lengthy chat. What a top fella. Then it’s onto the wilds of the Green Fields, speeding up and up on Nee-Nee-Nah-Nah-Noo-Noo and ending with the frolicking gypsy band dance antics of Rusty Compass in the Small World tent.

Finetime presents me with a miniature pink cowboy hat with an elasticated strap. I place it atop my other hat. It’s a look.

“Ultimately,” says a man in a white tee, “that piss is going to catch up with us.”

And that’s the last thing I remember.

SATURDAY 28^th JUNE 2025

Awake at an appropriately late hour, feeling wonky, worn, blurry, to the sound of early-Sixties post-bebop jazz blaring from the nearby Cuban Sandwich bar. Mini Veggie breakfast goes down OK. Mild nausea follows. The warm piss bottle doesn’t look so tempting. Summer heat hits my Riemann P20-sprayed body in waves. Is cold lager top the way?

Ah, the eternal quandary. Since 50, too long ago, every year shrivels physical abilities. Since 50 there’s a degree of self-management. More than I like. The bull-at-a-gate days are gone. Long-haul hedonism requires logistics. Tedious. As Danny the Dealer sighs towards the end of Withnail, “If you’re hanging onto a rising balloon, you’re presented with a difficult decision; let go before it’s too late or hang on and keep getting higher. Posing the question - how long can you keep a grip on the rope?”

Two extremes of response. At the darkest, saddest end is Hunter S Thompson blowing his head off and leaving his “Football season is over” note (“No More Games. No More bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring.”). At the other end, well, my social media feed is full of it: marathons and more marathons; people talking about coffee as if it were shots; gyms; more gyms; more marathons; golf; cars; new kitchens; selfies at Center Parcs; hot yoga; embracing a sport you gladly gave up 30 years ago; more marathons. My retinas are burned with photos of rictus-faced sweaties holding up beribboned baubles representing the miles they’ve run.

I want my medal. In gold. Let’s take the middle path, then. Can we call it that? Well, yes. Shhhh at the back. Finetime is still recovering so I set off for the Cider Bus passing Brandi Carlisle, second act of the day on the Pyramid. She’s telling a reasonably sized crowd, “Look, Ma, I made it to Glastonbury”

At the cider bus I place my hands on the bar. Unwise. The accumulated spillage of three days has dehydrated down to a glue-honey. It takes me a long time to lose the last vestiges of stickiness. Cider bottle filled, I head past Car Henge where Mangrove Steel Band are playing in a large tractor-drawn trailer beside a house-sized dog made of rusted car bodies, bumper cars for feet. Gorgeous half-naked women dressed as carnival birds of paradise dance about.

I head up to the Healing Fields. Prep myself for the next onslaught in its contemplative airy space. I stop at the Earth Circle Music Space, a tiny stage with four rudimentary log-wood benches in front. Two women and two men, with bodhran, tin whistle, accordion, and flute, are playing a jig, minimally amplified (two mics placed a distance in front). There’s confusion as to what they’re called. The chalk board says Green Síbín Machine but, when I ask, the flautist tells me Síbín Street Machine. Both those will get you nowhere on Google (whatever they're called, they're pictured below).

Audience comes and goes. At one point there’s only two of us. Slowly pull myself together. They play on beneath Tibetan prayer flags and flower wrapped wooden poles. My eyes close. Listen carefully and their revolving patterns hold hypnotic minimalism akin to Philip Glass. Music suddenly seems very personal. Up so close. Almost like a conversation. When I’ve supped my fill of Green Síbín Machine/Síbín Street Machine I wander this gentle grove with its flower bowers and mermaid sculptures.

In the Buddhafield Meditation tent a man in his sixties sits cross-legged, the soles of his feet facing upwards. He has two grey plaits of hair hanging down each side of his head onto his bare chest. A small crowd are cross-legged before him. “I have to have two practices before I attempt just sitting,” he tells them. Onwards, past Jaqui & Tara’s Breathwork Sessions, past Life Readings with Timaeon, author of The Dance of the Seven Veils. “Past – Present – Future Questions Answered”. He’s there, a grey-bearded topless fellow in a tiny tent, answering such questions.

Lisa Bolitho has two strands to her bow. On the one hand, there’s The Box of Curiosities, an “Oracle Session”, which I see three girls taking part in, pulling strange antique-ish trinkets from a case labelled “Box of Curiosities” in black marker. But beside the tent there’s evidence she’s also Loopy Lisa, Puppets and Play, her puppets sleeping in a nearby trolley.

Giles Cleghorn, cranial and structural osteopath, sits in a red Marvel tee-shirt looking a bit bored. On the brown side of a cardboard box in front of him is a schedule with times and names scrawled in. I see that he should currently be attending to one Isabel S.

“Has she not turned up?” I ask.

“No,” he says.

“Do they pay when they book?” I ask.

“Unfortunately not,” he says.

“That must be a disaster in this place,” I suggest.

He sighs, “I don’t make the rules.” He points across the way to a forlorn palm reader. “No-one’s turned up there all day.” Then our conversation is interrupted by a man wanting his neck looked at, if there’s a gap in Giles Cleghorn’s schedule.

“Hmmm,” he ventures, “There might be… let me take a look.” I leave them to it and stroll on, past a sign advertising Gua Sha. What’s that? “A type of pseudomedicine in which an object is used to scrape the skin, for claimed wide-ranging therapeutic benefits” says ye internet. “I’m gonna get my energy healed tomorrow,” announces a passing young woman in a black glitter baseball cap, loudly.

Down the hill, the bars are jammed in the heat, Everyone’s after Margarita slushies but most of the machines onsite are bust. Not here. I have a Margarita slushy and a lager top. Sets me just right. Which is lucky as it’s a culture shock heading into West Holts where Bob Vylan are playing. The noise and the sudden return to full festival.

“Death, death to the IDF,” the frontman asks the crowd to chant, soon after I arrive, between one of their rap-metal-ish songs. He tries it twice and the response is either muted or bellowed. It doesn’t catch on or get repeated while I’m there. I have no idea at this point it will kick up such a stink. As Sosa points out later, he should undoubtedly have chanted “Stop the IDF”, even “Fuck the IDF”. “Hate only breeds hate,” as Sosa so correctly adds.

Then again, Bob Vylan are punks, given to shock and over-statement in the name of ramming home points. Punks have always done it. The lyrics to some of those Seventies punk songs would now cause their makers a heap of trouble. Bob Vylan’s words are of the moment. They have little effect beyond expressing the massed frustration so many feel towards what’s happening “over there”.

On the other hand, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli state breaks international laws unchecked, with impunity, and is, much evidence seems to suggest, engaged in actual genocide in Gaza. The day after I arrive back from the festival the BBC has two headlines exactly side-by-side on its feed: “Police launch criminal investigation into Bob Vylan and Kneecap Glastonbury sets” and “Israeli strike on Gaza seafront café kills at least 20 Palestinians, witnesses and rescuers say”. A more broadly acknowledged appropriate balance of responses would be welcome.

So to Kneecap. I’m in the field well before their set because I know it’ll be locked off. It soon is, but not before Finetime makes it. The last time I saw this cheeky trio was in a tiny venue on Brighton Pier a couple of years back. Look at them now. Palestinian flags are everywhere, along with black ones saying “FREE MO CHARA” and one which says, around a daisy, “SUSIE SAYS HYDRATE, PEACE LOVE MISS HUNTS RATBAGS”.

There’s a sense of occasion, ramped up when a Steinski-style sonic collage of media vitriol towards Kneecap plays before they appear. Red and green smoke flares ignite in the crowd. Then they’re running around up there, energized punk-rap and rabble-rousing. Everyone sings along to the chorus of “Your Sniffer Dogs are shite”. Móglaí Bap advises us to riot outside Westminster Magistrates Court on 20^th August, when a decision is being made as to whether they have jurisdiction over his bandmate Mo Chara regarding an incident last year when he allegedly waved a Hezbollah flag at a concert. A song later he withdraws this comment and advises against rioting. Someone must’ve had a word. “That was for the Daily Mail,” he says, “Fuck the Daily Mail!” Now that’s a chant I can get behind and do.

He praises the Eavis Family for standing by Kneecap under huge pressure and wonders how the BBC will edit out all the Palestinian flags. The pair take a pop at Rod Stewart (“Old Rod the Prod”), referring to him as “older than Israel”. Aside from all the controversial banter, the music is lively-lively, notably “I bhFiacha Linne” which us old ravers enjoy because it samples 808 State’s monstrous synth riff from “Cubik”.

We leave before the end as we want to catch Aussie bogan-punk outfit Amyl and the Sniffers over on Other. Finetime drinks small, chilled lager tinnies because he can’t abide cider and they keep cold. “MORE MARX” says the flag next to us when we pick a spot. Probably a good idea. But not too much.

Clouds are overhead but it’s still warm. The crowds here are so, so up for it, willing the performers to give all. It’s in the air. Maybe it’s those invisible Atlantis energy connections old John Mitchell wrote about in ’69. Them leys.

Such ponderings are interrupted when Amy Taylor (pictured left) comes running into the sun wearing a blue and aquamarine bikini-style body suit with gold stars and tassels, dark glasses, throwing her blond film star hair about like a sweary Farrah Fawcett. First song is a cover of Bo$$’s 1993 potty-mouth hip hop “I Don’t Give a Fuck” (“Not one solitary fuck, motherfuckers”, just to be clear). She and her three male cohorts deliver a rollicking set of straight-up bar rock, interspersed with dribble-spitting. “I don’t like spitters,” says Finetime. He’s tutting because Busta Rhymes’ hypeman, Spliff, was also big on saliva salvos.

Taylor gives an off-the-cuff, heartfelt speech about Palestine, indigenous peoples, colonization and how both our governments “aint doing jack shit”. She admits she could be more poetic but it’s “better to say anything than to say nothing right now”. Punchy, shouty riff monsters such as “Tiny Bikini” and “Doing in Me Head” set the crowd surfing among the flags (“TITS”!) and a pair of graffiti’d hand-fans (“CUNT”, “MASSIVE CUNT”).

We don’t stay for the whole set as need to grab a decent place for today’s mystery Pyramid act Patchwork (who everybody knows is Pulp). A five-year-old cider brandy first. A half of the new fizzy medium cider. Refill the Evian bottle in its new purple macramé glory. I’m half apple by now.

OK, so I said everyone knew it was Pulp but, after the Lewis Capaldi debacle, at this moment I still have a thread of dread. Could be Ed Sheeran. Bods alternately in black and white pac-a-macs lines the front of the stage. We can’t see who’s coming on. Then those high plinky keys at the start of “Sorted for E’s and Whizz” break through. We’re good. Also, the second-best existential indie song about rave culture.

It’s followed by “Disco 2000”. Both renditions combine kitchen sink bleakness with nostalgia for a lost Britain. Jarvis Cocker, unshaven and clad in a very Jarvis Cocker brown suit, tells us they were first played live on this very stage 30 years and four days ago. The occasion when Pulp stepped in at the last minute because The Stone Roses couldn’t play. He brings out of his back pocket the scribbled set-list from that very gig and tears it to pieces, telling us, “It's all about now and what we can do right now.”

He's full of chat, so much so that their set runs behind and he occasionally cuts and hurries as it goes on. Makes no odds. They’re on fire and the crowd is exuberant. “Spike Island” next. It may be new but it seems to play over the speakers on the main stages immediately after every band finishes. Was there a deal? Happily it’s a solid addition to the Pulp canon. They storm through the likes of “Do You Remember the First Time”, “Mis-Shapes” and “Babies”, while more poignant moments include a stripped-back rendition of “Something Changed”, gathering the band together as if in Jarvis’s living room, and the uncharacteristically emotionally forthright newie “Got to Have Love”.

But, oh. It’s the last 10 minutes when the crowd loses its mind. Myself included. “Common People” is let loose. Like an angelic beast. A hysteria tears through the field. Everything is, indeed, now. Everyone is singing. Everyone moving frantically. When the Red Arrows jet over in formation at its climax, my mind goes pop. Ecstatic. My eyes are leaking profusely again. This phosphorus pinpoint of total pleasure, alone, is worth all the horrors and mope of the week after the festival. Such moments don’t come round often.

Where, readers of my decade-and-a-half of Glastonbury ramblings may be wondering, is regular accomplice Don Carlton? He and GB, his wife (they got together at Glastonbury 2019), are at a relation’s wedding. Poor, poor bastard. He’s in FOMO hell. He sends me WhatsApp gags and snippets of his sufferings. The best of which is an A.I. realisation of The Tory Field, a long-running discordian prank notion we sometimes throw about in the night zones; “Been to the Tory Field yet? It’s really kicking off…”

Finetime nearly had to miss Glastonbury 2020 because of a wedding, but then COVID cancelled both the festival and all weddings. There are currently people I know who might hold weddings in June 2027. Summer Solstice week is a popular choice. Terror haunts me already. I shall speak to them all. Awkward conversations to start.

Back at base camp, it’s eveningwear (not that sort!) and another Cuban sandwich. Every day the post-meal sweats grow worse. Mingle in the Nong-Nong-Noo-Noo flow and the fermented apples, the ageing body struggles. I lie on my back and look at the sky. The pylons hum. 36 hours to go. Look at my nails. Black grime. Nope. Onwards.

It’s big choice time. Unlike last night, when there were no main stage headliners worth seeing, tonight they’re all worth seeing. Rave-pop sensation Charli XCX on Other, savvy US hip hop star Doechi on West Holts, Scissor Sisters at Woodsies, and Neil Young on the Pyramid (and, erm, Caribou at The Park). Finetime and I decided earlier we’d go with our mood… so it’s Neil Young.

Later, checking the competition on TV, I reckon we made then right decision. Charli XCX was undoubtedly a BRAT party in excelsis but was also a gigantic glorified club PA. And when will I ever see Neil Young again? Grab the Makers Mark whisky and at ‘em. “I like the way you’re walking, man, with tall, savvy determination,” a deep voiced American in a Homberg hat tells me. I’m rollin’.

But I falter at the sight of the Pyramid field on arrival. Never seen it so empty for a Saturday night. Charli XCX should probably be on here but seems doubtful Neil Young would have worn that, given his general pre-Glastonbury cantankerousness about broadcast rights and such.

He roams crumpled and hairy onstage in plaid shirt and old-fashioned engine-driver’s cap, sits down with an acoustic and plays straight through “Sugar Mountain”. As it concludes, a thin man with glasses next to us starts twitching. Then he collapses jerkily to the ground. Finetime and I attend to him. He’s by himself and Croatian. He’s gone ghastly pale. He’s not on drugs. Some kind of seizure? The lights?

The band Chrome Hearts have joined Neil and are starting to rock out. Neil’s advising in his plaintive, take-it-or-leave-it voice to “save the planet for another day” (“Be the Rain”). The fallen Croatian is helped up. Try and focus on the gig but can’t help watching him surreptitiously. A lady selling vodka jellies from a glowing flower basket on her head passes through. The field is filling up. Then the Croatian goes down again.

This isn’t good. People around bend over him. Finetime’s in there, down by him, chatting gently. I don’t want to crowd him but, ridiculously, don’t want to seem callous either so turn to a guy in glasses on my right and, meaninglessly salving my conscience, explain that my medical skills are not very advanced. “I’m a doctor,” he says. Relief.

Happily, after a drink of water and few quiet words with the doctor and his girlfriend, the guy gets up and nothing more happens to him, except he bobs about, enjoying the concert. After a while, I stop side-eyeing him and relax too. Young and his Chrome Hearts play a fine, no-nonsense set. There’s not much chat or interaction, apart from the occasional “How y’all doing out there”-type stuff, but the music is just right.

I saw Neil Young before on this stage in 2009 but I enjoyed tonight more. The kickin’ takes on Crazy horse fare, Chrome Hearts guitar jammin’ loose’n’noisy yet precise around the likes of “Cinnamon Girl”, underrated 1990 grunge squaller “Fuckin; Up”, the lyrics-imprinted-forever-on-ya-brain “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)”, and my favourite of all (in its Live Rust incarnation) “Like a Hurricane” (which he didn’t play in 2009, geekoids). These are interspersed with slower lovelies such as “Harvest Moon”, “Old Man” (another personal favourite), and an acoustic “The Needle and the Damage Done”. Oh, and he played a song on Hank Williams’ guitar.

For an encore, of course, it’s “Rockin’ in the Free World”, not a fantastic song in itself but one which becomes great in the context of a communal singalong. That’s where he should have stopped. Instead - and it wouldn’t be a Neil Young gig if he wasn’t at least a bit perverse, he closes on 1995 Pearl Jam hook-up “Throw Your Hatred Down”. In truth, it seemed like business-as-usual for 79-year-old Young and his band, but it felt pretty special to Finetime and I.

Alejandro Sosa and Carlita have disappeared overnight to a mysterious event in Buckinghamshire. They left today and will arrive back tomorrow afternoon. Such a mission would be well beyond me. Packets, instead, are pulled from flak jacket pockets, Makers Mark, mentholated puffings and snortings and swallowings occur in the dusty fieldside warm June night as we scuttle by painted bins and stalls selling pizza. I grab a slice of margarita and force it down merely for energy.

We head to The Glade to see Richie Hawtin, arguably one of the two best techno DJs in the world. But something’s gone horribly wrong. He seems to be playing yukky Craig David-esque garage. Later I realise it’s me who’s gone horribly wrong. The area that used to be The Glade is now called The Glade Dome and the area where Hawtin is playing is a huge circus tent next door, now named The Glade. So much for my outdated old man knowledge. We traipse along with a chap who has his own portable projector creating circles of liquid lightshow on the ground.

In the wee hours, in the Hobbitty Green Fields, dark murmuring seated spaces and quiet darkness occasionally lead to small tents. They glimmer light and music. In once such, Small World, true festival band Duncan Disorderly & The Scallywags (pictured above) are setting up amid carpeted hippydom. We make ourselves at home, grab a beer. Bearded Disorderly, wearing glittery blue dungarees and a large fluffy orange hat, leads his femme-centric gang in a mostly skanking reggae-infused set to start. Songs about having a cup of tea and the like. It’s convivial and I expect they’ll jack up the pace in a bit but it doesn’t synch with our mood so we head out, along the track streaming with shadows. We end up at Arcadia’s large, flame-spewing psychedelic helicopter bug for Groove Armada DJing back-to-back with Jungle, a crowded rave-up that concludes with a bass-addled take on “Superstylin’”. A man rushes about us waving a glowing sign saying “STEAMED HAMS”.

As Ruger Hauer’s replicant Roy Batty eventually agrees in Bladerunner, “Time to die.” Slump home, aching. Green Promethazine dosage with added American bath salts. Oblivion sleep 3.30 AM.

SUNDAY 29^th JUNE 2025

Awake late lunchtime, rank and rotting, to the sound of early-Sixties post-bebop jazz blaring from the nearby Cuban Sandwich bar. So, this is what a fifth day at Glastonbury feels like. I creak. Survey surrounding tent-quake. Broken sunglasses. Broken sandals. Torn shirt. Torn brain. I have a new nerve making its presence felt, running from my sinuses through to my collar bone. In pyjama bottoms I pad over to GET YOUR OATS HERE, Mini Veggie. Earl Grey tea. The sweats come on.

For some years I’ve had a recurring dream. That it’s the last day of Glastonbury and I’ve missed everything. It derives from a real Sunday feeling, with me right now. It’s not so much bands one ought to see because young people (and writers at the Guardian pretending to be young people) like them. It’s more like… DIY banner making with Matilda Ellis, “Ceilidh with Kevin” (every day at Humblewell Active Platform), Feminist Mouse Circus, CBeebies House Party live at the Astrolabe Theatre. I never find out what Slagland: The Shy Slag is. And what about Formidable Vegetable? They play everywhere…

Just enjoy it. “The only way to do Glastonbury is to submit to it,” said Jarvis yesterday (mind you, he also sang “What if you never come down?”, equally apt). Head in hands, I come to myself. Time for a beer.

I trek over to West Holts, through Silver Hayes where the giant Ibiza-style clubs are already hives of life at lunchtime, rumbling basslines. Gym guys with tats and sculpted beards, triangular bodies such as, once upon a time, only Steve Reeves had, strut.

At West Holts South African cellist Abel Selaocoe (pictured below) is redefining what I might imagine a cello accompanied by strings could be. He and his Bantu Ensemble whip up a frenzy. He’s joyfully boogieing around, his chunky instrument a dance partner, chanting, singing and generally bringing it.

A very attractive woman nearby is relentlessly posing for selfies, pouting, clutching a fluffy pink card banner which says, “She’s a naughty girl with a bad habit,” around a photograph of comic Chris Lilley as drama teacher Mr G in Australian noughties mockumentary Summer Heights High. She chats with a guy wearing a tee-shirt that says, “THE SEA ISN’T REAL”. I think it’s a joke. But in 2025, you never know.

Cymande take to the stage and tell us they’re a south London band who everyone thinks is American. I have to move to see them due to a giant flag in my way saying, “IN LOVING MEMORY OF MIGUEL THE GOLDFISH, 2021-2021, FLUSHED BUT NOT FORGOTTEN”. The weather is cloudy but close, like a mild sauna. Cymande, our hosts, are amiably polite. A Seventies funk-fusion band rediscovered by hip hoppers and acid jazzers. Given a second lease of life. There’s spontaneous handwaving, flutes, the familiarity of “Brothers on the Slide”, the summery Sly Stone feel of “Bra”, and a lazy singalong to “How We Roll”. Bongo-groovy, smooth disco-soul suits the mood. Not too much energy required.

Rod Stewart, Eddie Tenpole Tudor once warned us, fronting the post-Rotten Sex Pistols, “He’s got a luggage label tied to his tonsils.” More lately Sir Rod’s been asking us to give Farage a chance. He was never my bag. At all. But Finetime and I feel we should check him. Lionel Richie’s not my bag either but ten years ago he gave me and 120,000 others one of the Pyramid’s most effervescent, party-tastic Sunday Legend slots ever.

We last five songs of white-shirted Rod and his ridiculously statuesque blond backing singers. He opens with “Tonight’s the Night” (“Spread your wings and let me come inside” – yummy!), for some reason dedicates a cover of The O’Jays’ “Love Train” to Ukraine, but our short experience is best summed up by his cover of Sam Cooke’s “Having a Party”, which makes The Commitments (if you remember them) sound like Marvin Gaye. His sound is leaden, chugging, plastic wedding band tosh for straights. Apparently, he later brings on the heinous Mick Hucknall of Simply Red to sing “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”. There’s no excuse for him. Ever. We escape.

Out in the marketplace it’s much more fun. Leeds 10-piece TC and the Groove Family are squeezed onto the bandstand like flowers in a vase. A small gaggle shimmies before them as they brass up dub-funk numbers from their 2022 album First Home. Just over the way, a man with a towel wrapped round his head nods along to Bath DJ Dani Whylie who’s bass-lining the innards of Babylon Uprising, a stage redolent of long-ago days before official dance areas, when clothes stalls had sound systems and held mini-raves.

We pass Black Uhuru playing West Holts and head on up the hill to Avalon. The ambience here is welcome. Like a pub beer garden in the country. Indeed, there’s a gigantic Dark Ages-looking wooden pub. We pick up pints. Finetime has a lie-down in the grassy shade of the tent where our next act is, Dutch psyche-rockers My Baby. Sosa and Carlita return, having blagged their way a second time into Hospitality Parking without the appropriate windscreen badge. Unbelievably, Carlita has been subsisting this entire festival on small tinnies of ALCOHOL-FREE lager. It sounds terrifying but she appears fine. Healthy even. They do not know My Baby but are soon converts.

The tent is empty at the start but, by the end, reeling with bodies, lots of tie-dye. My Baby are fronted by Cato van Dijck on bass and vocals (pictured left). She wears a diaphanous transparent bodysuit with pockets on the knees. Beneath it is a swimsuit-looking affair in blue leather. More like a series of straps than actual clothing. She strips to this, hallway through. The first song that catches fire is “Supernatural Aid”. The first word chorusing around. Cato’s drummer brother Joost amps the funk factor, bare-chested in shades and beret. Kiwi guitarist Dafreez Johnston attacks his pedals, setting wah-wah grooves in motion.

There are elements akin to Black Keys, Fantastico Negrito, and Ozric Tentacles but My Baby are their own thing. A compulsive rhythmic journey builds and builds. Blues-rockin’ but with a clubland pulse. Enough melodic song content to retain a pop edge. Johnston lays down virtuosic fret-widdles, a proper guitar hero. By the time they reach the climactic pairing of “Seeing Red” and “Uprising” the place is awash with hip-shaking hippy dancing.

“She sang, ‘If you hate someone set them free’,” says Sosa afterwards, “That’s a good point.”

We haven’t seen much of our friends this weekend so we wander away from endless bands. We buy creamy mushroom arancini, sit around under shaded awnings talking about Metallica, why metal doesn’t work on Glastonbury’s main stages (but does on the tiny ones). Swig pink shots that may be rose tequila. There’s even a brief revisit to Earth Circle Music Space in the Healing Fields where seven-piece Lost Padres, who’ve apparently played every day of every Glastonbury since the mid-Nineties, are laying down a song called “Your Love is a Healing Thing”, centred around a fiddle-accordion jam.

A plane creates a love heart in the sky from smoke trails. A while later, a smiley face. Crowds stare upwards like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We pause by Leftfield, Billy Bragg’s marquee of activist optimism. Listen to the propulsive spaghetti western indie of Liverpools’s Red Rum Club. The place is rammed and jumpin’. A man at a nearby clothes stall stands on a shipping trunk. He bellows into a bullhorn that everything is half price. The end is approaching. The last push to Moscow.

Parting with Sosa and Carlita, who we don’t see again (they fly back to Bolivia tomorrow lunctime), Finetime and I head towards camp to change and rev up. There’s a gorgeous mellow heat as evening draws in. The back of the Other Field, out across Silver Hayes, has a green-brown glow, stomping masses silhouetted by the sun, dust clouds above them, like a desert army on the march millennia ago. All is accompanied by the constant creak, squeak and crunch of feet on flattened wax cups and tinnies.

“I think this is the happiest I’ve been in my life,” says a girl in a Calvin Klein bra top.

“We need a five-star hotel,” says her gurning companion, eyelids fluttering precariously.

Back at base the Cuban Sandwich bar guy agrees to make me the last Cuban of the festival. It’s mid-evening and he’s been up since 5.00. Had three hours sleep each night. He’s looking forward to a beer.

There follows a classic timing disaster, akin to Don Carlton’s legendary last-minute need for a shower, Sunday 2017, when we ended up behind the sound stage during Justice’s set. This time, despite oodles of prep time, when we reach the Other Stage for The Prodigy, Finetime hasn’t allowed for buying a drink. While I hold a spot midway up the field, he goes off. Quarter of an hour later, when the band come on, it’s clear there’s no way he’ll be able to make it back. The place is chocka.

While everyone goes bananas to the sledgehammer beats of “Voodoo People” followed by “Omen”, I’m in a quandary. Should I stay here, where there’s melée and spirit, younglings jumping up’n’down like wallabies? Or should I locate Finetime so we can share this final headliner? I decide on the latter. The craic isn’t the craic on your own. All I can do is text to meet right at the back, by the Mexican Cantina food stall. I plough backwards through the mayhem. There’s Finetime, bright and behatted.

It’s the fourth time The Prodigy have played Glastonbury. 1995, 1997 and 2009. 1995 was the best, Jilted Generation era, Keith in his hamster ball. But tonight is tasty. They don’t use the side-screens except to give red, impressionistic flashes of the band. It’s all about the dance.

White-clad Maxim (pictured left), now essentially the frontman, reminds us they were due to play 2019 but for Keith Flint’s passing. “He’s here with us tonight,” he tells us, flanked by a guitarist and Prodigy main man Liam Howlett at a flight-deck of keys. Amidst sprays of lasers, we’re egged to move and we do, even the rather feeble jogging around us at the back. “Poison”, “Breathe”, “Their Law” all 24-carat one-song apocalypses. “Fuck Monday morning! Fuck going to work!” Maxim shrieks. Later, the chorus “The time has come. We live forever. Now” That’s about right. The last dribbles of energy being squeezed from all Maxim’s “soldiers” and “troublemakers”. At the close, a hearty sing-along to “Out of Space” in honour of Max Romeo who died this April.

But because Finetime and I are in the starers and wibblers outer range, we’re not worn to the tyre rims. Indeed, our wide-eyed Nakin-Nonkin NRG is running to red. Our advantage is we’re far enough up the field, we can easily gander to the South-East Corner, which will soon enough be locked off.

It blossoms into a long, blissed night. Young junglist Nia Archives playing blobby-tonica in IICON, the house-sized head with a television eye-mask. Celtic rave-jam in Lore, overseen by a leafy alien head. Texan electro-funker Marc Rebillet slinkin’ Shangri-La. Veteran New York DJ Justin Strauss, who’s worked with everyone from Skinny Puppy to Sergio Mendez, leading into the end-game from Genosys’ bulging sci-fi apartment block. These wanderings, cider running low, whisky’n’cokes a-go-go. And the rest. A glorious montage blur. A sped-up film of intense chatting, plotting moves, and eyes-agog dancing.

Final mention should go to BCUC playing Shangri-La earlier, around 1.00 in the morning. I’ve seen this lot before, an afternoon festival gig a few years back, and they were good. But tonight they’re UNHINGED. An Afro-punk Soweto seven-piece, their set is built around drums and percussion, riding a relentless throbbing bass, the lead singer a demented dervish, shrieking, throwing himself on the floor, making bird noises. Their sound is galloping and primal, reverbed and psychedelic, all-encompassing. The crowd is one animal. We are possessed. As if by something ancient.

“May this night be the most amazing night of our lives,” the singer howls.

We are all in this together.

And, yes, I did make it home.

Just.

See you in 2027.

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