Читать книгу Crap Days Out - Gareth Rubin - Страница 11

The hippy movement born in 1960s California was never going to translate wholly effectively to Britain, where the carefree spirit of sunny San Francisco was dampened – both metaphorically and literally – by this country’s ever-present rain.

And nowhere is this clearer than at Britain’s answer to Woodstock: the Glastonbury Festival, the biggest greenfield music festival in the world and where when it rains, it pours.

Like a message direct from God about the sins of free love and wearing tie-died T-shirts, Glastonbury rain is unceasing, remorseless, build-yourself-an-ark-and-start-gathering-animals type rain. And where rain leads, mud follows. In 1997, the muddiest festival year to date, torrential rain both during and preceding the festival turned the event into a scene resembling the Somme, only without the Red Cross packages or letters of encouragement from home. And with much worse food.

The other chief difference between Glastonbury and The Somme was that at least in the First World War you knew who the enemy was. At Glastonbury, the enemy is in your midst. He is from Liverpool, he is wearing a tracksuit, and he is stealing things from your tent while you are off cheering Muse.

By 2002, the festival had an average attendance of 250,000 despite ticket sales of 100,000; even a hippy can do that maths. So the site owner, festival organiser and God lookalike Michael Eavis called in Mean Fiddler to sort things out.

As well as the deployment of a team of jobbing bouncers, the company’s surprisingly obvious solution to the security problem was to put up a massive fence. This means that even though it might not have the First World War mud of previous years, it does at least offer the chance to meet an untimely death caught in a web of barbed wire.

As well as clearing off the scallies, however, the security crackdown has also cleared off the aged hippies, bearded magic mushroom sellers and other eccentrics that made the festival what it was; as well as all the young people. The crowd at Glastonbury these days is full of thirtysomethings bringing luxury camper vans and gazebos, folding chairs and yurts. People bring their kids, drink rose wine from a box and there is a long queue at the stall charging £8 for a ‘gourmet’ pie. It makes you nostalgic for the days when you could open a warm Stella, buy a fiver’s worth of hash from a crusty and try to dance to some Dutch techno.

Now ticket-holders are required to show their passport to enter. This means that entering the festival is much like entering the country – you pay a lot of money for a ticket, present your passport and enter, only to find that it’s a small rainy place where everyone has a tiny home and hardly anyone is working.

Sadly there will be no festival in 2012, with Michael Eavis blaming it on there not being enough police available for everyone to have a really good time.