Mudfest 98 - Son of Mudfest

The plan was to leave Bournemouth with Zeb about midday on Wednesday but due to having been born with an excessive quantity of crapness it was about 5:30 before we finally left. Still, that's better than most years. We arrived at Glastonbury at 7pm and were in and parked by 7:30 with no fuss.

Met the guys we were supposed to be camping with and followed them to the campsite. An excellent spot, very central (not telling where it is as we'll camp in the same place next year and we don't want you rabble there). Got the tents up before it got completely dark (wow, that's a first) and wandered off to the stone circle. Got a reasonably early night for some inexplicable reason. Next day me and Zeb did the usual things, checked out the stalls, took an inflatable duck for a walk, inflated the sofa, tried to think of a sensible use for all the bubblewrap we'd brought.

Later on we assembled the giant pants flag and took the inflatable sofa to the hill in front of the Pyramid stage to hold the first official Pants Appreciation Society meeting. Nervous apprehensive moment thinking that noone would turn up or they'd all be complete weirdos but eventually there were Zeb, Pete Rabbit, Barbera, K/Cathy, Trev, Smurf, Selina, Karyn & blokie, Dougal and Ermintrude (Fiona and Cathy), Sarah and her Danish friend and a few others I've forgotten the names of. Fairly nervous and freaky stuff but that's what I expected. Zeb did some stuff with his glow-in-the-dark red diablo, we threw lots of pants around and then went walkabouts for a while with the giant y-fronts (or "pants on a stick" as they've now been named).

I spent most of Thursday night "borrowing" a campfire near our tents as none of us could be bothered to start our own fire. This was later considered a good idea as the firewood we had collected near gate 2 had a rather unusual property for firewood in that it didn't burn. Even after 3 days being stored in a dry tent and sat on a hot fire for 3 hours it refused to burn. Even the mud and water around the fire were starting to give in, but not the firewood, not a spark. It must have been well-ard firewood from Newcastle, or maybe it just needed a minor thermo-nuclear reaction to get it going.

Our timing finally took a nosedive on Friday as for 3 of the 4 bands we went to see, Zeb's navigating or reading took us to the wrong tent. By the time we got to the correct tent in each case the act had either almost finished or the tent was full. We eventually got to a band on time but they came on late and by then I was due to meet Kylie and Pippa to go and see Catatonia on The Other Stage. The sound was pretty bad from the lake I was standing in and it was no fun so I decided from this point on to forget about enjoying the music as standing still in muddy puddles whilst being rained upon rather diminishes your enjoyment of the music, particularly if you've waded through rivers for half an hour to get there. Might as well just enjoy the festival and drift around from then onwards, I can get into the music at V98 and Reading.

2pm Saturday arrived, time to run around in front of the main stage with my giant pants flag again, this time alone as Zeb was stuffing bin bags into his trainers and said he'd meet me with the pink sofa and assist in the pants waving in 5 minutes. I got some very strange looks as I was dancing round in the mud, with what seemed like gale force winds and torrential rain. Never mind, I was enjoying it and Zeb would be there soon to assist my aching arms with the flag, or so I naively thought anyway. When my arms felt like they were about to be ripped from their sockets and I had given up on finding Zeb I headed back to the tent to find Zeb sat there, sheltering from the rain. Git.

At some point during the day we took the pants on a stick to see Tori Amos.

Went to see Robbie Williams just so we could throw pants at him. He was ok, even if some of his "I'm a rebel me, I'm really cool, 'onest mate" banter was a little bit planned and cheesy. The most enjoyable bits were Angels which was (even though I hate to admit it) good, The Beatle's "Hey Jude" and the La's "There She Goes". Personally, I thought he was trying too hard to prove he was a cool rebel and I don't think he has enough good material of his own yet. He may be good in a few years time though. We couldn't get close enough to the front to throw our yfronts on stage so we just threw them into the crowd instead. The high point of Robbie Williams - he made the sun come out.

Took our giant yfront flag to see Blur. Its amazing how easily you can get to the front of the crowd when you say "make way for the pants", "pants coming through" etc. We got real close to the front on the right hand side of the stage. Blur were ok but didn't play much of the stuff I liked and got a bit carried away with a ten minute feedback and guitar effects session before disposing of Song 2 in what seemed like 30 seconds. At least they didn't play Country House. It was pretty tightly packed at the front and I was getting thrown around a lot (not helped by trying to hold on to the pants flag with my hands and therefore not being able to pull my Dad's baggy waterproof trousers up from around my knees. Its very hard to avoid falling in the mud with waterproof trousers around your knees but somehow I managed it). I was enjoying this but Zeb didn't like it much and wanted to go further back (spoilsport!) so we did to join all the boring people stood still in pools of water.

On Sunday we decided we had to throw our remaining supply of pants (mainly big white yfronts sourced from charity shops the previous week but also including a prized pair of Dennis The Menace boxer shorts) at Space when they performed The Ballad Of Tom Jones. Me, Zeb, K/Cathy and Trev got about 3 rows back in the crowd and at the relevant point, threw our pants at the stage, prompting a big cheer from the crowd behind. Someone else threw what looked like a muddy pair of trousers onto the stage which the lead singer picked up and commented on.

Went to pay our respect to Bob Dylan just to see if he could make it onto the stage and back off again without dying, and he did, so we were most impressed. I'm not really into him but he was very good and I would have enjoyed it a lot if it was less muddy and I wasn't holding so many conversations, not to mention trying to hold up a rather large, very drunk guy called Pete every time he fell in my direction. Pete decided he was going to sing Phil Collins songs over the top of the quiet bits and shout "Burn the witch!" a lot. The mud was the only thing there to catch him at one point which was funny and after Bob had finished a group of us danced together to Bob Marley.

Felt seriously ill after this due to food poisoning or E Coli mud so went back to the tent.

A great festival overall, similar to last year's, more water but less sticky mud, definitely better organisation, far worse crime, not such good famous bands but still loads of talent to check out. All it needed was some good weather to make it the best festival ever, maybe next year (anyone else remember saying that last year).

Thank you Mr Eavis, you're a marvellous man and I had a most splendid time, the best weekend of the year so far. Don't you dare think about ending the festival. See you all next year.