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Glastonbury Festival 2007

Illustrated by Carl Albut

This year Creature embarked on our very own festival tour. We decided that we would like to document our journey in the Creaturemag Festival Edition. The tour included a selection of festivals from art and music to cider and cheese.

Stopping first at Glastonbury in June, then to the Green Man in August and finishing with the End of the Road festival in September, with many visits to smaller events in between, the tour really made our summer.

On his return from his first Glastonbury, Dan Shaw decided to write about his experience, the following text details the first day but pretty much sums up his whole weekend and sets the pace for the summer. It is all that was written by him about Glastonbury 2007.

 
 
 

 

WED20th June 2007

I took the train to Yeovil to pick up tent, Wellington’s, chocolate, lantern, balloons and other such necessities. Got the train from Yeovil to Castle Cary via Westbury and was greeted with miserable ticket checkers and police dog sniffers. Saw some people get led away for possession and shook my head, surmising that nearly half of the festival goers would have some manner of contraband on their person. But sadly, examples were made of the unlucky few.

The coach left after an hour of queuing and took about an hour and a half to approach the entrance. I was sweating like an animal before I even got inside, cursing the bastard God that would surely punish me with severe storms later on. The weather wasn’t going to be as treacherous as the forecasters had predicted. We all felt that. So I got in at about 4pm, after another queue, to be ushered, facially analysed, stamped, clamped and thanked, before slugging towards suitable terrain to make a phone call. Being at my first festival, I needed assistance and rung james for advice on where to head for the rendezvous.

Continued (scroll on) >>
 

 

 

After wandering lost for some time (the signs blown the wrong way round by wind, as in Roadrunner), I found an already visibly pissed and stoned Mark and James, lain on the field next to The Other Stage. In haste, James handed me a joint, clearly citing my need to catch up, and followed with a vodka and blackcurrant mixer bottle. I wasn’t to imagine it then, but the word and entire concept of debauchery was to become hopelessly redundant in the succeeding five days. Counting cigarettes and booze, there were to be several occasions where nine different drugs were consumed by each one of us separately, on the same evening, which is more than can be said for the variety in food groups ingested. So I pitched my tent. Twice. With aid from Mark, the thing was made waterproof and sturdy. Everything was in order.

We explored at a leisurely mince, stopping for a pair of cider bottles at £10 a piece. It was easy to take in the Glastonbury atmosphere-pocket-filling caterers at their heaving stalls, outrageous hat-wearing costume donning extroverts, part time punks, skater baggies, kids with rainbow dyed hair, ultimately born and bred in these very fields. The air was incessantly pungent with weed smoke at regular intervals. Later in the evening, I was offered some MDMA, again in order to “catch up”, and a line of coke to sour my snotty nose. I experienced the toilets for the first time and was still shocked, even to see and smell that I already had been told about, expected and prepared for.

 

 

 

We helped Bobby and Jenny carry their stuff up to the site where they’d set camp, and on the way a man shouted at us “Oii!! You Two!”. I could sense the shaved scalp, muscular physique, and pug face in the tone of voice. I carried on walking, well versed in the practice of eyes to the floor. Then “Oii….You in the brown jacket!”. Definitely me. I turned round and saw someone who I seem to inexplicably meet everywhere I go. It was jack from my old school. Several years above me and now a reputable drug dealer from Bristol. Without small talk, he offered me some acid, with his usual brand of wheeler dealer-isms. I told him the obvious truth that I was already spaced on MDMA, and somehow managed to drift a few yards away. Not for my first time I decided. Not here, on the first night of my first Glastonbury. I came out of my day-dream to see james licking his hand, and was faced with the only clear option. I’d read recently about Lemmy from Motorhead accidentally taking a large dose of acid back in the 60s, his friend was yet to divide the portions. So this other chap, being a noble one, took the same amount, and “went with him”. I just stuck out my hand. No big deal. Mind over matter.

Click here to read the rest of Dans Glastonbury piece.