Glastonbury (part 2) The festival passes in a fever dream. A literal fever dream for some of us. Sam gets heat stroke and merrily projectile vomits across the festival. The medical tent gives him some rehydration salts and we set his air mattress up in the shade of a wall of fluoro plastic tubs labelled TOILET WASTE. Someone taps on the tubs and assures everyone they’re empty. For now. In the process of moving Sam I stumbled into a patch of stinging nettles. The entire side of my arm goes numb and tingly. Oh yeah, it does that, our neighbour tells me, and suggests I rub yoghurt on it, but we’re in a field in the middle of nowhere and that sounds like a messy solution. Our sets are fun. People have really left their inhibitions at the gate, and are ready to dance. The thing that really gets me is how each little stage is its own self-contained world. But the worlds are jammed in next to each other. At our second gig we can hear the stage across the road from us over top of our own soundcheck. It’s absurdly loud, and people walking through the site are bombarded with music from three or four different areas at once. No-one seems fazed though. Continue reading “Glastonbury (part 2)”
Glastonbury (part 1) I get triaged by a lovely nurse who writes my name down as Natan. The doctor calls me Martin and tells me I’ll be fine onstage cause adrenalin is a wonder drug, but prescribes me some antibiotics for the yellow phlegm I’ve been coughing up all week. The pharmacist hesitantly calls out Martha Power, and when no-one goes up to the window I wander up to see if it’s me she’s waiting on. Oh, is that what it says? She asks, and then hands me a couple of packet of horse pills. They’re absurdly large, so much bigger than the pills I’m used to taking in Australia, but they do the job and in a couple of days I’m fighting fit again. It’s been a week of highs and lows. No mud, but a couple of days of heat in a field with no shade has turned the band into a sweaty mess, not to mention the hours of walking between stages. The festival is mammoth. A much larger scale than anything I’ve ever experienced. I guess there’s a reason everyone keeps saying it’s the biggest festival in the world. Continue reading “Glastonbury (part 1)”