Glastonbury 2007

Well a few days ago I just got back from the Glastonbury Festival. For
those who are not familiar with it. It is probably one of the biggest music
festivals in the world. See the website for more info
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk but basically it is a 3 day music
festival. It runs over Friday, Sat and Sunday but in order to get good
camping sites and start it all early people now arrive on the Wednesday or
Thursday beforehand. It is attended by 180,000 people!!!!! The campsite is
huge it takes one hour to walk from one side to the other, and that's sober
walking on flat ground (so you may need to double it for the state most
people were in). It basically functions as a big city for 3 days.

You wonder why people go on about how great Glastonbury is. Well now I
understand. Predominantly it is a music festival, there are several huge
band stages as well as dance areas however there is so much more to it.
It's hard to explain until you experience it yourself, not only is there
music and camping, there are huge areas such as the green fields full of
environmental displays and activities as well as many vegetarian food stalls
as you can imagine in the one area. There are outdoor cinemas. Healing
fields with massage tents, tents where you can simply go and have a sit down
for a cup of tea and cake. There is a huge circus area with rides and a big
performance tent, an areas called lost vagueness - where there are all sorts
of weird and wonderful things hard to describe what really goes on there.
There is also a huge kids area with all sorts of activities for little ones
to go nuts on. There are tee-pee fields where all the hippies camp and have
stalls and yes they really do move at hippy pace for example at one stall, I
asked

"do you have any cheese scones?"
"no but they'll be ready soon"
"ok how long?"
"well around 2 1/2 hours we still have to make the mixture......"
Ahhh hippies there lack on entrepreneurial skills is what I love and hate
about them at the same time.

Not only are there these dedicated areas I think the most lovely thing about
Glastonbury is the odd things that pop up anywhere. Such as a wizard that
lived in a row boat in a tree near where we were camped. He had a fishing
rod with a basket on the end and you had to write a wish and put it in the
basket. There are lots of lovely random things like that...but I could go on
and on, but as stated I think you need to experience it for yourself.


A few of you may have heard about the weather. In true Glastonbury style it
was hideous. It was not cold but it rained for 4 days, is was usually on
and off rain with a couple of sunshine breaks. But on Sunday it was
constant heavy rain. This lead to massive amounts of mud. Mud as far as
the eye could see, mud that was knee deep, mud that was ankle deep. Mud
that was like slushy water, mud that was so thick and sticky you could get
stuck in it. I think you get the picture there was a lot of mud. But in the
true "Glastonbury spirit" you just go on and still enjoy yourself. In the
sense of that spirit, when the sun ever did come out, it was to huge rousing
applause and cheers of the crowd, the sun probably got a bigger reception
than any band I received. I lived in my Wellington boots (they were a cool
blue colour with rain drops on them - but they ended up brown) and even
though most of my clothes were mud stained it never mattered because so were
everyone else's.


Ok to the music here is a list of what I got up to and the bands that I saw:

Thursday - Getting ridiculously drunk on pear cider (and laughing at friends
that were even drunker) that stuff is delicious and lethal.



Friday: Gogol Bordello, Amy Winehouse, Bloc Party, Rufus Wainwright, Arcade
Fire and Bjork.

Saturday: The Bees, a little of the Klaxsons (but they sucked), Maximo Park,
John Fogerty, Killers.

Sunday: Marley Brothers present 30th Anniversary of Exodus, Get Cape Wear
Cape Fly, Beirut, Pendulum (live) and Chemical Brothers.

Some other great acts I saw that don't really fit into the bill was a fire
show, complete with scantily clad girls with flame throwers, an arty "peep
show" and a Silent Disco. I was going to go into detail of my thoughts of
each band but that would be long and bore people to death. If you have a
query of what a band was like email me. Or for recorded live performances
video and sound check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/glastonbury/ for photos as
well, particularly the aftermath photos really interesting. You can also
see many of the other bands that were playing with so many stages and acts
is impossible to see everyone I wanted to see. Otherwise see my highlights
and awards below:

Highlights:
Bjork - She looked like an elf from the Lord of the Rings that was wearing a
cloth octopus on her head but she sang with such amazing passion as lovely
as she does on her albums and had an amazing brass band accompaniment.

Arcade Fire - Q magazine was right when they said they looked like they were
homemade tron costumes but with all those band members they sounded
fantastic and gave off so much energy.

John Fogerty - who the hell is he you ask? He's of the former greatness
Creedance Clear Water Revival, he no longer uses that name since his brother
died. But he played nothing but classic Creedance Hit after Creedance Hit,
it looks like he has not aged in 30 years and he has so much energy as well.
It was utterly fantastic.

Marley Brothers present 30th anniversary of Exodus - Again classic Marley
hit after classic Marley hit sung by his sons. Sounded fantastic and band
members included one guy whose job was to dance on stage with a Rastafarian
flag. Perfect gig for a Sunday afternoon, they even bought the sun from
Jamaica with them for an hour.

Silent Disco: You walk in they give you some wireless headphones you pop
them on, and dance away. There is no speaker system. You take the
headphones off and hear no music but watch people dancing away it's rather
funny. The best thing 2 different DJ's so you and your friend could be
dancing away to different tunes. We went on the last night at like 4am so
it was full of stragglers that were so out of it, they could not control
themselves, one guy was walking around with his trousers by his ankles.















With all those bands and people together and that fact that we had a group
of about 20 of us camping together, with phone reception sucking, how did we
ever manage to fine each other? It was all due to Bat Power. Yes one of our
group had a bat on a stick which danced about above the crowd making it easy
to find your friends if you had to meet or got seperated. How did we find
him at night you ask? At night our bat was adorned with glow-sticks. Much
fun was had with the bat, as the pole being flexible he often was made to
dangle over confused punters heads or randomly scare people much to
everyone's delight. Even the Bat feel off his perch and land in the mud be
he came through it ok....What a little trooper!















(Mr Bat pays Matt a visit while he has a toilet break, Bat and his master Mark)

Lowlights:
Toilets - Trust me you want me to spare you the details. Huge giant metal
pit toilets, enough said. I can't re-live the trauma.


Getting home - car park chaos with people constantly bogged in the mud.
After 4 hours in the car park it was away to freedom

Best Band Name: Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly. Sadly the guy does not wear a cape
on stage.

I really did have an amazing time and it's all a bit to hard to put into words in a blog you shall all just have to go yourselves.

Canada Again!

Yes, that's right a couple of weeks ago I set off on my 3rd trip to Canada since leaving home. What can I say I love it there. Sticking to the western part of Canada I flew into Calgary where Will met me at the airport.

After a lovely (almost missed welcome) we drove up to Edmonton. There's not much going for Edmonton (excpet for oil) however I had arranged a suprise for Will - which truely was a suprise as he had no idea. That night we went to see the Killers which I will have to say was really one of the best concerts I have been to, even in a ice hockey arena they sounded amazing. Better than on CD.

The next morning it was a drive to Saskatoon which is in the provence of Saskatchewan. It was a 6 hour drive and was very flat and quite lifeless. Will hates Saskatoon and is always harping on about how backwards it is and horried. I thought it was quite nice. There's a nice tree lined river, it's quite pretty. Granted that said there is not a whole lot going on there. It's quite small. We had a nice time though, cooked some lovely food, went out for dinner, a walked along the river. We spent 3 days there and then set off in the car again this time for a bit more of a spectacular drive.



We then drove back to Calgary. Another flat not so exciting scenery. We drove through Calgary to Banff, now this is my 3rd time in this part of the country and it is rather spectacular. Both times before I have been here in the heart of winter for ski season so it was interesting to see it in Autumn when it was nearly summer. It's still beautiful and there was still a lot of snow on the mountains. After Banff we kept going, and drove through the ice fields parkway to Jasper national park. I had wanted to do this drive for a long time and I had never had the opportunity to do it both times I'd been there before. It really is amazing it's so many mountains and beautiful landscapes.



What I was extra excited about was the fact that I got to see animals!!!!!! As I have said I have been to Canada 2 times before and I have seen none! none of the classic Canadian animals I was somewhat bitter about this. However I was lucky that this time I got to see some bears (they were little brown bears but I was still excited) a moose bum, only saw him from behind, some deer and some mountain goats. I was rather disappointed that I did not get to see a Beaver I really really wanted to see one. We spent the night in Jasper, then the next day we drove back to Calgary. I drove for a few hours, it was a bit weird driving on the wrong side of the road but I think I did alright, although Will may have been a little freaked out.




When we were back in Calgary we jumped on a plane and flew to Vancouver. Now my previous experience of Vancouver involved rain rain and more rain. This time the weather could not have been more perfect. I was staying with my friend Carolyn and on our arrival we managed to interupt her and Bucky getting engaged! A little awkward but it was a very happy occasion.



While we were in Vancouver we walked around Stanley Park in the beautiful sunshine, did some shopping & walked around downtown. Ate street meat Vancouver style - soy hot dog! As well as eat in some lovely restaurants. We went to the Aquarium. I got to see an otter so that was cool, it almost made up for not seeing a beaver.



It was also Carolyn's birthday so we celebrated by going to the local nudie beach. Yes it was hot enough to go the the beach. I kept my bathers on but I did see a lot of saggy scrotums. There were also people selling beer, food etc nude apart from a little bum bag for their money. That night we went to a fantastic seafood restaurant on Grandville Island to celebrate some more. It was so lovely to see Carolyn again, when her and I get together it's like the time apart has never mattered, we always manage to have a lot of fun and get up to old tricks again.



I had such a fantastic trip and I now have a new found love for Vancouver. I always did like it but you really see how spectacular it is when it the sun shines upon it. It was very hard to leave this time, a very very sad occasion.